Best products from r/gamemaker

[BlackOpz] Zoo Escape! - Almost didnt do a posting for this game since it came together so quickly but since I've been documenting almost all of my other projects I might as well give this Android/HTML5 game the same treatment. Its available now for Free on Google Play, Amazon and SlideME.

http://i.imgur.com/rc3Kyzn.png

I actually didnt expect to get this done so quickly but since I've been using Gamemaker pretty heavily over the past year, I have a nice collection of re-usable scripts and objects. I use Rescue Time to track my hours (its tracks time an app is in the foreground) and the 'blue' productive hours went off the charts for a few days where I went into 'the zone' and dived into GM:Studio head-first!! (I track GM: Studio as a 'productive' app. The following days after the first 3 were mostly play testing and tweaking but I had a playable game at that point) A lot of the tweening and animation logic is pulled from my game Cheaters Blackjack 21. GameMaker can output to multiple platforms so it was pretty simple to fashion the Android version while I was working to keep it HTML5 compatible.

• http://i.imgur.com/0bt5IVn.gif
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKxxSTz48TI
  
  This was a very interesting project. It made me strip the game concept down to the one core mechanic of selecting but still give it a story that makes sense even in that limited form. Catch the animals. You have a net graphic and it overlays the animal when you're capturing them. To me it makes logical sense and combined with the story that says you're supposed to capture them.
  
  I already know this was a rare gem that came together easily from concept to programming and projects like that are few and far between but It'll be on my phone for a while. Now I'm gonna see if I can get lightning to strike twice. (I've actually get a fun idea for my next game but dont have the graphic assets yet so in the meantime I'll try to make another single concept Android/HTML5 game)
  
  http://i.imgur.com/WQFyUPI.png

I don't know how Animal Crossing is working, but from your description the way Spelunky Classic (which was made in GMS1.4) might be something that could help you.

Here is a good article with examples.


Derek Yu (Spelunky's designer and developer) has also written a wonderful book about how he designed and programmed the game

Here's the gist of the state machine implementation I learned from GameMaker Game Programming with GML by Matthew DeLucas.


CREATE EVENT


//state constants, any states you want to have can go here, just assign each one a different number 0-15.

idle=0;

jump=1;

//state machine variables

//track what state you're in. I'm choosing idle to be the starting state.

state_id=idle;

//track whether your current state is different from the state you were in last step.

entered_new_state=true;


STEP EVENT


//temporary variable used for determining if our state has changed.

var current_state = state_id;

//All of the game logic for each state is going to be put into user defined events. The 0th event for idle, the 1st event for jump, etc.

event_user(state_id);

//the code that changes our state is going to be put into the user defined events. This will set entered_new_state to true if our state changed during the user defined event that happened this step.

if(current_state != state_id) entered_new_state=true;


USER DEFINED EVENT 0 (example)


//if we just entered this state, do some stuff...

if(entered_new_state){

sprite_index=spr_player_idle;

image_index=0;

image_speed=0.2;

entered_new_state=false; //turns off this variable so that this code is only run when we've just entered this state.

}

//here you can have any code that you want to happen while you are in this state.


//finally, you put your state transition code at the bottom.

if(keyboard_check_pressed(vk_space)) state_id=jump //jump when we push the space bar.


ALL DONE!

This is a very powerful and flexible system. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

If you haven't read it, I recommend Code Complete. It's a classic for a reason.

You read code far more than you write it, so do whatever you think is necessary to make the code more readable. You seem to be beyond the basics (self-documenting code, etc), so a few advanced tips:

• Within a script, you can open up additional tabs that let you write more scripts so that they're all bundled together under one script name. You can use this to break a complex script down into smaller and smaller sub scripts without cluttering up your resource tree.
  
  
• Abolish "magic numbers." In your example, if there's a number that you use that could potentially change, make it a macro (constant), enum, or global variable with a descriptive name. Macros and enums are substituted at compile time, so they don't have any "look-up" overhead during run-time.
  
  
• I think you've already discovered why a lot of developers use scripts as often as possible: because it's easier to find and fix them than delving into an object's various events (or a room's creation code). Other than drawing, I usually have an event call a script, and the scripts are named hierarchically, e.g. sc_Creature_player_move
  
  There are a lot of good practices such as encapsulation, information hiding, and idempotence, that are too in-depth to get into here. IMO, GameMaker makes it really hard to follow some of these good practices, so I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.

Not GML-specific but these are my two favorite game development books.

Try out this one for software architecture, wish I read it earlier
Read this to get thinking about game design

It is a different way of making games for sure.. Takes a lot of practice. I have spent the last 8 months doing almost nothing but multiplayer programming. I have some random videos about various aspects on it. I will just link some content here. In addition, I have just created a UDP framework for making multiplayer games. It simplifies writing your buffers and handles connection management (something you must do manually when using UDP).

​

GloomyNet Intro (Ongoing Series):

https://youtu.be/7GRh3bjG9zY

​

Talk about a lot of essential multiplayer concepts here:

https://youtu.be/9dNIy_mXUU4

​

THE MULTIPLAYER BOOK (In C++ but lots of useful concepts):

https://www.amazon.com/Multiplayer-Game-Programming-Architecting-Networked/dp/0134034309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539322352&sr=8-1&keywords=multiplayer+game+programming

​

THE BLOG POSTS FOR MULTIPLAYER:

https://gafferongames.com/

​

You will need to learn about data types, buffers, UDP (unless you are planning to do a smaller game.. you can use TCP). Learn about reliable packets, unreliable packets, and then... you can start..

​

​

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The Manual

Gamemaker Language is also a good overview, has some good examples. Though you can probably find most of this stuff on the net if you look long enough.

I also had some issues after doing the official tutorials, but this was mostly because the game was updated while the tutorials were left behind in the dust, making it kind of iffy to actually learn what the tutorial was trying to learn.

So here are some links and hints that were given to me from others in this subreddit:
>Youtube tutorials


>Easy to learn GML tutorial

>A book that will teach you all about the different features of the DND aspect to GM:S aswell as coding, etc etc (note: this needs the HTML5 extension)

I personally just got the book last week, I'm about 70 pages in and it really is helpful. It's showed me the things I can do with gamemaker's DND functions (which is what makes GM:S the program it is) and right now I am learning a lot about art, imagefiles and pixels.

I'm basically following along with this outdated book which is required for my game design course: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590596153/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The movements are declared with GMS's event/action GUI. I wish I could explain it better, but this is literally the first day that I'm using GMS. The only script that I wrote is for the game pause functionality and as well as the text prompt window.

I would highly recommend this book: Mazes for Programmers: Code Your Own Twisty Little Passages

I spent a few weeks working through it and it taught me a lot about iterating through grids to create mazes and paths - including an implementation or two of Dijkstra's pathfinding algorithm.

1. Try to download tutorial websites for your smartphone or something else so you can learn GMLanguage offline.
   
   
2. If you have money, buy books about GameMaker Studio and GMLanguage generally, for example this book.
   
   
3. Contact GameMaker Studio developers and ask them for advices or help.
   
   
4. If you have a computer science in your class then ask your teacher for adding GameMaker Studio on PC's. Personally, my teacher added Scratch in PC's and we are often making projects in there.
   
   I hope you will find out the solution of your problem.

I've used GameMaker on a Toshiba Encore 2 Write 8-inch tablet. It also has an Intel Atom processor although it looks like it does have 2 gigs of ram.

Basically, running/creating executables takes a fair bit longer (creating an Android apk took 1-2 min on PC, but took around 5 minutes on the tablet - just running the game is faster though). Everything else was fine.

don't know. I just printed it by myself.

There are another printed book, but it is not full (like the absence of primitives and on) and has some chapters for newbies, but I found some cool ideas there.
http://www.amazon.com/GameMaker-Language-InDepth-Guide-Cover/dp/1329419561

Derek Yu wrote a book about the creation of Spelunky.

https://www.amazon.com/Spelunky-Boss-Fight-Books-Book-ebook/dp/B01CYVHYSS

This is a real thing, but I don't know if it's outdated.

https://www.amazon.com/GameMaker-Language-InDepth-Guide-Cover/dp/1329419561

If you prefer reading check out HeartBeast’s book . It’s for GMS 1.4 BUT a LOT carries over to GMS 2. I’d say about 90% carries over.

I bought this book. It teaches GML extensively:

GameMaker Game Programming with GML by Matthew DeLucas http://www.amazon.com/dp/1783559446/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_.qF3tb0PG407M

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmSLCkK6I5cONb-5N0v18Kw

Sub my channel, going to start an Advanced AI series very soon.
Other than that,

https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498320096&sr=8-1&keywords=artificial+intelligence

This is a decent book, but I am not sure exactly what you are trying to find!

dont laugh.

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-ThinkPad-T40-Centrino-Notebook/dp/B000GW7QJ0