Game Maker

Game Maker is a program that allows you to make exciting computer games, without the need to write a single line of code. Making games with Game Maker is a lot of fun. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games within very little time.

Pacman With A Difference

http://www.onemorel evel.com/ games3/pacxon. swf

Check out the Ancillary Game Maker Activities for a more wholistic approach.

	Web www.bettscomputers.com

Using The Help Menu

There is plenty of documentation on Gamemaker and the help menu that comes with it is a great start to understanding the program.

Use F1 or click on help and then contents in the top menu.

The User Interface

At the left, you see the different resources mentioned above: Sprites, Sounds, Backgrounds, Objects, Rooms and two more: Game Information and Global Game Settings. At the top there is the familiar menu and toolbar. In this topic we will describe briefly the various menu items, buttons, etc.

Adding Rooms
The first thing you need to do when starting a new game is to add a room. A room is where the game actually occurs. You can add new rooms to make different levels or different parts to the game.

Adding Sprites
Sprites are the visual representations of all the objects in the game. A sprite is either a single image, drawn with any drawing program you like, or a set of images that, when played one after another, looks like an animated motion. For example, the following four images form a sprite for a Pacman moving to the right. NOTE: You can import animated GIFs as sprites.

When you make a game you normally start by collecting a set of nice sprites for the objects in your game. Many collections of interesting sprites can be found on the Game Maker website. Other sprites can be found on the web, normally in the form of animated gif files. 

these notes come from the Gamemaker help file

Adding Objects
We need sprites to enable us to bring programmable graphics into the game but sprites need to become objects before they can be programmed. A sprite can become multiple objects with different instructions.

Objects: Action Icons

Actions are what take place as a result of an event. To see the action menu click on an object.

Use the help menu and click on "Move Actions" to see specific details about each icon.

ClickBall: (a good place to start: 4-6 40 min lessons)

Once the concepts are mastered the game can be made very quickly. But for novices it takes a little while to get their heads around the program. With some direction and the instructions the game can be completed very quickly. Working by themselves is difficult to begin with. This is a brilliant first time game because the concept is simple, there are important basic skills learned but at the same time the game is fun with levels of complexity which can be added. The clickball resources have been produced by Bill Kerr and reproduced here with his permission. His website is absolutely brilliant. Click here

On the left is a screen dump of the game also produced by Bill Kerr.

Shooting Objects

Space Invaders game used as an example of an easy shooting game.  

By now you should be familiar with the interface. Try making the game by following the instructions in the first 3 tutorials which are inside the folder "Resources for Space Game". Unfortunately it only has the first stages. It does not have the instructions for programming the actions. Use the skills you learned in "Clickball" and "Challenges". Think logically about what you are trying to do and try to only implement a single change at a time to make it easier to fix bugs. Versions of the solutions can be found in the the resource folder. Best of luck.

Now Make Your Own

Make your own game based on the principles of the Space Game. For example maybe you want a monkey firing bananas at coconuts to knock them down from trees. use your imagination and see what creative ideas you come up with. This means that you are going to need to use an image program to create or modify images to suit your game.