Why did you choose the tutorial and the game engine you did? What advantages did you think it would give your project?
In this assignment, I used Game Maker to create a single-player, turn-based RPG called Thelema. This was a different game engine than the ones answered in the game engine survey. I originally made my game in Roblox Studio; however, it did not save my progress. Nevertheless, it worked for the best because Game Maker has given me the opportunity to make Thelema like I intended. Roblox Studio had many constraints on aesthetics and style, why Game Maker can be designed exactly like how I desire. I am following Peyton Burnham's tutorial on "How to Make and RPG from Scratch" and "Branching Dialog Textbox." In the first video, I was able to understand how to make a side-scrolling game. The second video made it so I can initialize choice which is an important element in Thelema. My intention for this was so players discover an internal drive that makes living worthwhile.
What five things worked well? How did the game engine help you achieve these goals?
I decided to make my character sprites and backgrounds on Procreate, which Game Maker successfully imported. Game Maker was overall very Flexible. In addition, I was able to run the animations smoothly.
While my original intention was to make Thelema a platform game, I opted to make it a side-scrolling game due to my lack of experience and time. In the tutorial, it was set as a top-down game, but I was able to configure it as a side-scrolling narrative game. This made creating the backgrounds easier as I lack experience creating backgrounds, but it worked out because pixel art made it simplified.
Using the tutorial, I was able to make the game interactive. As the textboxes were very important to the game. The textboxes are important to execute the narrative.
The narrative and dialogue were the lengthiest part of the process. By giving the players choice and trying to convey the initial idea of the game took time and strategizing as I had to limit it for this assignment.
Making the menu system was also something that was successful. While I could not configure the settings using Peyton Burnham's tutorial, I was able to use Game Maker's "Menu System" tutorial. This made sure from the start, players can enter, exit, and receive instructions in the beginning.
What five difficulties did you encounter? How did you address these difficulties?
While the sprites were easy to important from Procreate, each of them imported with a white background- which was really inconvenient. I had created speaking and breathing sprites beforehand. Ultimately, Game Maker allowed me to edit the sprites, but I limited the animations for time's sake.
Setting the boundaries for the player took an immense amount of time because I had to ensure the player was leveled consistently and properly. I ultimately opted to extend the backgrounds during the warping process, which increased the challenge of making sure the player transitioned smoothly.
Initially, I wanted to use a pre-made font in Game Engine, but after using several tutorials- I ultimately had to make my own. This took its own amount of time as they had to be made in a specific way and order, but it turned out well.
When drawing the textboxes through programming, I encountered a lot of coordinate issues. As someone who has barely any knowledge in computer science, this became a repetitive dilemma. Ultimately, I just had to review the video and test different numbers.
When learning how to make dialogue, I had to understand how arrays worked as it became a reoccuring issue. I was able to learn the difference between compiling and logic errors amidst this. Learning how to do this made it so my options can be set up nicely.
How did the game idea you outlined in your mini-proposal change as a consequence of your experience working with the game engine or other related factors?
The game changed a lot in the mini-proposal. I plan to expand on this game over the summer as I found this game making challenge a fun and fulfilling experience. In addition, it would look nice in my portfolio. The things I had to cut down was the narrative, animations, the adventuring gameplay, object collecting, side characters, the turn-based battle, relationship statistics, and music and SFX. With more time, I am sure I can do all of this- but time is important as the difficulties mentioned took a lot of time to solve as someone who does not know how to code. Nevertheless, this experience has helped me think constructively and critically so I could attempt to give the player a fulfilling experience.
What did you learn?
Time is everything when making a game from scratch. In addition, I really have to learn how to read and understand code. I did learn what everything meant after repeating the process a lot, but I still have ways to go. I am very happy I learned how to make an RPG, sprites, animations, backgrounds, boundaries, textboxes, and interactions. While this is the smaller side, this helps me understand the fundamentals. I plan to make a lot of pixel RPG games, so this will be beneficial.
This game also taught me how important challenge and resources were to the game. I dislike the idea of making a game linear. I truly value the butterfly effect in games and how incorporating more interactive elements (i.e. relationships and fighting) make it more of an enhanced game. In addition, constraining the game to just narrative makes it lack fun and emergent gameplay. Essentially, after the narrative, I plan to focus on the following fun aspects of the game.