Game Mechanics Creating a Dating Sim game with GameMaker?

[sallychan]

Hi all! I'm very new to programming, but prepared to put in the immense amount of time to learn a program--I'm just curious if GameMaker is the right program that I should be using?

The idea I have for my (final) game is similar to most social sim games but with a 'dating' aspect to it.

What I'm looking to do is have standard things like different 'store' to purchase (virtual) items from, daily quests to earn in-game currency, and a way to track how much an NPC likes you. There would also be a simple, 2D animated map with small sprites that walk around and have minor animations. Customization to your home and character throughout the game is another important aspect I'd need to include.

My best examples for apps like this are things like Tiny Farm, and Sims Freeplay.

I'm aware GameMaker is capable of making all sorts of games, but I don't know a lot about programming and I wonder if there is a program that's more suited to a 2D, click based sim game like this? Thanks in advance!

 

[sitebender]

There are dating sim engines out there. However, if you want Tiny Farm and Sim's Freeplay I'd recommend GameMaker or some other grander engine than a simple dating sim engine.

 

[Genetix]

Definitely possible - My mobile game College Days was built with GMS and has over 300,000 downloads. If you run into any specific problems in designing let us know!

 

[MagnumVulcanos]

Definitely doable.
Gamemaker shines when making simple platformers and top down stuff. A point and click is easy to create in many engines, gamemaker included. What's great is that the most difficult part of programming, creating the graphic part of your game is as easy as selecting an image to use for an object that does stuff. Animating is only slightly more difficult, and you have Spine2D you can make sprites that move easily. From that perspective, pittied against something like java, your game is halfway made.
And if by any chance you decide to add a couple of minigames to your game to score some points to the side, making a platformer, an asteroid clone or anything like that is extremely easy.
Gamemaker is very forgiving to begginers since things like punctuation aren't as rigid to it's compiler.

 

[sallychan]

@Genetix Wow, that's fantastic!! I'll definitely be posting more on here as I run into bumps haha
@MagnumVulcanos That is such a relief to hear. I'm capable of doing the graphics and animations by myself (I'm definitely more artist than programmer) but I'm not sure what kind of file type you'd use for animations in a non-pixel looking app. GIFs allow for transparency but at the cost of losing your anti-alias edges! Is there a specific program I should be using (besides Spine2D?) that supports the necessary file types? And what are those file types if not GIF?

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

For the app layout I'd like something similar to most RPG games, where the dialogue boxes and character portraits appear over the, still-moving, 3rd person map where the sprites would be doing idle animations and such.. is there a tutorial for GM that covers the basics on doing something like that? Thanks again!

 

[NightFrost]

When talking about your typical VN or RPG 2D animated mugshots, you don't necessarily need Spine (though you can use it of course). A normal animated image in GMS would involve defining a sprite and adding a number of subimages to it, one for each frame of animation. Then at display time you can set an appropriate animation speed, and switching between animations simply means changing the sprite you are displaying. You wouldn't want to do the artwork in GIFs, you'd export your art in PNG format and then import to GMS as sprite images. You can import entire sheets at a time and have them chopped up into individual animation subimages.

 

[sallychan]

When talking about your typical VN or RPG 2D animated mugshots, you don't necessarily need Spine (though you can use it of course). A normal animated image in GMS would involve defining a sprite and adding a number of subimages to it, one for each frame of animation. Then at display time you can set an appropriate animation speed, and switching between animations simply means changing the sprite you are displaying. You wouldn't want to do the artwork in GIFs, you'd export your art in PNG format and then import to GMS as sprite images. You can import entire sheets at a time and have them chopped up into individual animation subimages.

Oh okay! I'm familiar with sprite sheets from making mods for Stardew Valley. So if I was going to have sprites move around in the background, or have the players sprite walk to an area when that spot is tapped, I could use sprite sheets with GM to animate that?

 

[NightFrost]

If we're talking about Stardew Valley size of character animations, there isn't much point in doing skeletal animation (which is what Spine is for) so you'd draw them in your image editor and import as sprite sheets. Or better yet use a tool made for pixelart animation. For larger ones, depends if you need fully articulate animation. Most RPGs and VNs don't really animate their character shots at all or have something simple enough that doesn't really require full-blown skeletal structure.

 

[Yal]

GIFs allow for transparency but at the cost of losing your anti-alias edges! Is there a specific program I should be using (besides Spine2D?) that supports the necessary file types? And what are those file types if not GIF?

PNGs allow for transparency too, it's just that MS Paint doesn't support it. I'd look into GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) if you're going to work with art in general, it's basically as powerful as Photoshop but free. Especially for stuff like dialogue portraits, it's kinda handy, and it has a bunch of tools that makes it easier to import scans/photos of hand-drawn art and make it digital.