1. Syllabus

2. Course Outcomes

3. Lab Rules

4. Course Info Slides ( Also posted to the left)

5. Google Folder Setup

6. Gamemaker download (2023.8.1.102) - Lab version

You're welcome/encouraged to install this version at home, but do not update when prompted or your version of Gamemaker will not match the lab version.

1. Gamemaker Concept Review (Cheat Sheet!)

2. Gamemaker Posters Quick Reference

3. Gamemaker manual (programming page)

4. Gamemaker Website

5. Gamemaker Website - Tutorials

Gamemaker Youtube Channels to check out:

• Gamemaker

• Shaun Spalding

• Let's Learn This Together

Game Development Playlists

• Extra Credits: Game Design

• Extra Credits: Making Your First Game

• Game Maker's Toolkit: Game Design 101

By the end of this course students know:

• How to create sprites

• What Events are

  • What a create event is

  • What a step event is

  • What a keyboard/mouse event is

    • Differences between down, pressed, and released

    • global mouse events vs normal mouse events

  • What the Draw event is

  • What the collision event is

  • What an alarm is

  • What the game/room start/end events are

• What Actions are and how they differ from Events

  • What built-in variables are

  • What programmer-defined variables are.

  • What temporary variables are.

  • What built-in functions are and how they differ from variables.

    • Random Functions

    • Movement Functions

    • Collision Functions

    • instance functions

    • Room functions

    • game functions

    • alarm functions

    • draw functions

    • keyboard/mouse functions

• Object Inheritance

• Conditionals

• Loops (optional)

By the end of this course students will understand that:

• Sprites, Objects, and Rooms are the primary assets we'll use.

• Sprites, Objects, and Rooms must all have unique names to differentiate them from one another.

• Sprites are visual representations of:

  • Objects (costumes)

  • Backgrounds

  • Tilesets

• Sprites contain collision & positioning (origin) info

• Objects contain Sprites & Events

• Events contain linear sequences of action.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Create Sprites to be the visual representation of an object

• Create Objects to be the conceptual representation of an object

• Create Rooms to act as levels within a game

• Add Events and Actions to Objects, programming them to act in their environment

• Program actions that

  • store data (variables)

  • Choose options (conditionals)

  • Add variability (randomization)

  • Use pre-built commands (functions)

• Put all of these items together (Sprites, Objects, Rooms, Events, & Actions) to build a game.

Watch the video "How Computers Work: Hardware & Software"

• Take notes on how computers work.

1. Ted Talk - Everyone Can Draw

2. Article - "How to Make Pixel Art For 2D Games"

3. Youtube Playlist - AdamCYounis - Pixel Art Class

4. Video Series - Riot Game Art Education

1. Video - "Gamemaker Sprites in 60 seconds"

2. Slideshow - Sprites Tutorial - Sprite & Image Editor

3. Slideshow - Making a Background

4. Slideshow - The Wall Sprite (Simple)

5. Slideshow - The Bubble Sprite (Intermediate)

6. Slideshow - Pixel Art (Advanced)

   1. Video on PixelArt with Mega Man Template

1. 1. Copyright And Creativity Lessons

   2. Creative Commons - Free resources

   3. Open Game Art - Find free game sprites/backgrounds

   4. Kenny.nl - Design your own creature, avatar, or airplane

Youtube: Gamemaker - How to Use Events in Gamemaker

• Recurring events (Step, Draw)

• Triggered Events (Create, Alarms, Collisions, Room Start, etc.)

Gamemaker Manual - Object Events

Youtube: Let's Learn This Together - GMS - All of the GameMaker Events Explained

Walkthrough:

• Create a Sprite

• Create an object and assign the sprite to the object

• Add Object to the room

• Add the following events + actions

  • Key Down - Right (or Key Down - D) - Increase x by 4

    • Figure out left, up, and down

  • Mouse Left Down - Jump to random spot on the screen.

  • Mouse Global Right Down - Jump to mouse's location

Key Concepts

• Objects contain events

• Events are triggers that occur throughout the game

  • When the object is created

  • Every step of the game

  • When this object collides with a wall

• Events contain actions (what to do when the trigger is activated)

• Actions are programming commands

• x & y represent this object's location in the room

• += means "increase by"

• -= means "decrease by"

• mouse_x & mouse_y represent the mouse's location

• random_range(low, high) & irandom_range(low, high) allow you to generate a random # within a range.

• Gamemaker's top-left corner of the room is (0, 0)

• x is + as it moves to the right

• y is + as it moves down (opposite of what you learned in math)

Watch the 4 minute Bluey video "Robo Bingo" (full clip must be accessed on Disney Plus)

• Variables

  • Instance

  • Local/Temporary

  • Game variables

    • Depricated

• Conditionals/Booleans

  • See Boolean Logic Video

• Loops

(a better write up for this will be created later)

This is a program based off the Monte Carlo method for estimating Pi which basically says if you take a circle and square that have the same radius/width and randomly generate a bunch of dots in it, then:

4*(# of dots in circle/total # of dots)

should roughly equal pi. (see https://www.101computing.net/estimating-pi-using-the-monte-carlo-method/#:~:text=The%20area%20of%20the%20circle,of%20points%20within%20the%20circle.)

We can simulate this by:

1. Creating a square room.

2. generating a large # of dots randomly located

within the room. Increase a total dot

counter.

3. If the dots have a distance from the center

of the room that is less than or equal to

the radius of the circle, color them red

and increase a counter. (this will start to

form a circle of red dots)

4. Draw

* the # of dots in the circle

* the # of total dots

* the solution to the Monte Carlo equation

4*(#dotsInCircle/total#dots)

Increasing the spawn rate of the dots will

improve accuracy over time... kind of.

For this project we'll need a:

• 900x900 room

  • No background (either remove it or make it invisible)

• Spawner object (no sprite)

• Dot object (w/ 1x1 sprite)

The spawner needs

• Create Event:

  • 2 variables

    • totalCount (representing the # of total dots created)

    • circleCount (representing the # of total dots within the circle)

  • set the depth to -1 to draw on top of all the dots.

• Every step

  • generate a random x value (between 0 & the room's width)

  • generate a random y value (between 0 and the room's height)

  • Create a dot at this random x & y location.

• Draw

  • the # of dots within the circle

  • the total # of dots

  • the estimated pi value based on the equation give earlier.

The dot needs

• Create Event

  • "if the distance from this x & y to the center x & y is < 1/2 the width of the room, change the image blend to red and increase the spawner's circleCount"

  • Increase the spawner's total count

• Post Draw Event

  • After the dot has been drawn on the page, we can delete it (because there's no background, the sprite will still show, but the Object will be gone, making it so the program won't slow down over time).

This section is designed to provide you with a series of short tasks that we often do in games. Hopefully these will help provide you with resources you can come back to as you attempt to create your own games.

1. Chaser - Follows the mouse, but could be adapted to follow other objects as well.

This example is J. Gosnell's version of Reign of Enemies.

20 Points

• Player Movement using the move_and_collide function

• Spawner that spawns in enemies

• Enemies that move down the screen

• Game restarts when the player is hit by the enemy

• Enemies get destroyed when they pass the bottom of the screen

• Score is displayed - score increases by 1 every time an enemy is destroyed by reaching the bottom of the screen, or by 1 every second (or 10th of a second) they survive in the game.

Extra Credit

• Anything above and beyond the points above requirements

  • Utilizing both - a timer (tracking amount of time you're alive) & a score (tracking how many enemies you avoided getting hit by).

  • Having 3 lives

  • Adding some sort of power-up that makes you invincible for 5 seconds

  • Not immediately starting, but instead stopping all enemy movement and leaving the score in place for 5 seconds before restarting.

Birkel's TODO: 

• Update Pong Slides to use solid bouncing, not all bouncing - currently the ball gets stuck if it hits a wall & paddle @ the same time.

• Update Pong Slides for player movement to use the move_and_collide function instead.

Pong Slides

• Recap on different movement types

  • Autonomous (speed/direction)

  • Manual (x/y)

• New Concepts

  • randomize()

  • Choose()

  • if statements

  • while loops

  • game_restart()

  • place_meeting()

The following is only the basics on getting a car to start driving around. You'd need to add additional code/objects to make it more interesting.

Youtube: Easy Racing Game

Spacedots Slides

• Different movement (jump to mouse)

• Coin collecting

• Score keeping

• Multiple Levels

In the above image, the following shapes represent

• Blue Square - Player

• Yellow Circle - Coin/Collectible

• Red Square - Simple Autonomous (Marches back and forth or up and down)

• Gray Square - Walls

• Brown Square - Door

• Not shown:

  • Trap object

  • Chaser

  • Ref/Score

  • Extra Credit

1. Make an object that moves autonomously using speed & direction, wrapping the screen & bouncing off solid objects.

2. Make an object that moves by chasing something (like the mouse, or another object).

3. Make an object that moves with key presses (WASD or arrow keys). It should calculate horizontal & vertical movements then move using the move_and_collide function.

4. Make an object that when clicked on will teleport (change in x & y) to a random location within the room's size (room_width, room_height).

You should be able to collect items and track points in a game (points can be earned by more than just collecting coins) .

When tracking points, there are 2 primary ways to do it and you need to know how to do both:

• Objects track their own points (great when you have multiple players, each with their own score)

• A Ref or Game object tracks points (great when you want your points to carry over from room to room).

Basic steps

• • Create event (player or ref object) - set points to 0.

  • Draw event (player or ref object) - draw text to the screen

    • If the player is tracking his own points, draw_self().

• When collectible is touched by the player

  • The coin/collectible should disappear

  • Points should be awarded to whoever is tracking the points.

Other ways to score points include (but are not limited to):

• destroying an enemy

• clicking on an object

• colliding with an object

• surviving for a certain amount of time

Many times you can get away with simply using collision events, but you should know how to use collision functions(functions that check for collisions) and the differences between them.

The primary collision functions are:

• place_empty - specified location is empty (no objects there)

• place_free - specified location is free (no solid objects there)

• place_meeting - specified location contains a specific object/instance.

Each of these return true or false

They also each have an opposite using the ! operator:

• !place_empty - specified location is NOT empty (there is an objects there)

• !place_free - specified location is NOT free (there is a solid objects there)

• !place_meeting - specified location DOES NOT contains a specific object/instance.

These functions are usually used with if statements:

• if(place_empty(x, y))

• if(!place_free(x, y))

• if(place_meeting(x, y, oEnemy))