GML Visual Tips for a newcomer to GMS2

JeanSwamp

Member
Hello!

My name is Ivan and this is my first post here! I'm a videogame enthusiast but with not much idea of programming nor artwork, but I can manage myself to do a little bit of both thanks to drag and drop engines.

My first and only engine has been Construct 2, which I learnt for a few months but due to full time job I was left with no time to keep learning. I was doing a small platformer game on my own, code, art, and sounds. Thankfully now I have a friend of mine which is going to help me with art and I can focus on learning code.

This is why I decided to swap into GMS2 and learn from scratch, and this is my Hello I'm new post, where I kindly ask for begginer tips, good tutorials to start off and all the info I can gather.

Our goal is to make a small platformer game aiming a little bit for a retro but fresh look.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
 

Tthecreator

Your Creator!
Hi @JeanSwamp Welcome to the GMC!

What's a good tutorial eventually comes down to preference, do you prefer text or video?
Here are some youtube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/user/999Greyfox http://shaunspalding.co.uk/tutorials/
https://www.youtube.com/user/uheartbeast
https://www.youtube.com/user/yoyogamesltd

And some complete sets of courses:
https://www.udemy.com/user/gurpreetsinghmatharoo/

I can't seem to find any text tutorials though, so if that is something you want then that is quite unfortunate.

Just make sure you follow a course for GMS2 , not GMS1. Most of it is probably the same but small differences might still occur.

A few tips are:
-Don't blindly copy code.
-Programming takes a certain way of logical thinking that might only develop over years. Just know this.
-try things on your own.
-If you don't want to be only a programmer or only an artist then don't be. Make sure you spend adequate amount of time in both of them. If you're only interested in programming or art you can ignore this tip for the most part, but not entirely.

I hope this helps.
 

hogwater

Member

My favorite platformer tutorial series which unfortunately stopped updating, but there's more than enough there.

Read the manual and try to focus on solving problems yourself whenever you can.
 

JeanSwamp

Member

My favorite platformer tutorial series which unfortunately stopped updating, but there's more than enough there.

Read the manual and try to focus on solving problems yourself whenever you can.
I need stuff like this but Drag and Drop based, don't want to put much weight on me with code. Drag and Drop is what I need to start off!

Also thanks @Tthecreator for the tips.

Watching some tutorials my first doubt is.. if you're going for a platformer retro game with pixel art, I suppose 60 fps are not a good way to go, or is it?
 

Tthecreator

Your Creator!
Just always 60 fps when you can. For a beginner I recommend starting off by designing it for 60 fps. Later on you can make it variable using delta timing.
As far as tutorials go, I don't think there really is any full d&d tutorial, just basic ones. See game maker studio 2 hasn't been out for that long.
There probably exists one for gms1 so you could try that but it isn't going to be optimal.

Anyways take a look at this:
 

JeanSwamp

Member
Thanks everyone for the quick replies. Feels good to be new and already have people willing to give some tips. THANKS!

Regarding the fps, so you recommend 60 fps even if I aim for SNES type of games? Also. Another question, what is a normal resolution for this kind of games? I always thought 640x360 is a great way to go since it scales evently to 720p, which is a pretty useful resolution to go with I believe.

Also! Do you set a screen size by default or you can only set it as a View in the Room layout?
 

Tthecreator

Your Creator!
As for resolution, anything that is 16:9 should work. What works the best are highly composite numbers (or just numbers that can be divided into a lot of values in general).
Later on when you are better at coding you can work on making your game responsive, something still way to few people spend time on.
 

JeanSwamp

Member
Something I notice on the demos from the marketplace (sadly, they're GML so I can't figure it out) is the tilemap for collisions. They using basically 3 empty tile with different colours, and as I can suppose, each color collision has a different interaction. In the platformer the yellow tile I'm guessing is the ladder mechanic, red one is solid and the other one is another solid but seems to interact with the ghosts..

Now I can't figure it out by the code how to use that collision properly. Is such a same how hard it is to find D&D tutorials. Hopefully soon we will get a few
 
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