Tips for newbies?

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Nescko

Guest
I'm not the type that likes posting or talking about themselves but anyways. I'm new to gamemaker, and the whole process of making games. A year ago I made a platformer on stencyl for android and uploaded it to test it out. It was literally just a test game with no sound, no killable enemies, no points, hp, etc. Just moving, jumping, and art stuff to see how the whole creating and uploading worked. It took me just a week to figure everything out and do it although, I'm just a quick learner, decent artist and good with understanding mechanics of how things work. Since then a lot of personal things came into play and I had to stop. I'm now in a steady job with a lot of free time and able to finally get back into it. I've had Game Maker for a couple days and all I've done is watched tutorials and tinkered around all day. Now I figured I'd ask people with experience of all the trial and errors, how did everyone start and would recommend starting out if in my position? Should I start small, smaller, not-as-detailed games; or spend a lot of time on my first project? (small seems a better choice but as perfectionists go, it's hard to throw out something that you didn't put your heart into) :confused:
 

Gamer (ex-Cantavanda)

〜Flower Prince〜
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/popular-gamemaker-books.948/#post-12792
Here's some game maker books to learn a lot about the programming and GML code.

I would recommend downloading engines and examples, and checking/figuring them out so you can see how everything ties together in a finished product.

And try different smaller projects with all their own unique things, to step by step learn to overcome problems, you're a fast learner, so that won't be hard. If you try directly something big, it's not a good idea, since either you're gonna have too much problems and difficulty due lack of experience. Or the second, and worst scenario is that you will learn fast, and develop fast, while working on the same project, which will result in you not being happy with previous scripts/objects or wathever, and having to remake things. Imagine a fast-learning boy who wants to become a painter, for his first painting, he immediatly wants to make his masterpiece, so he buys a... I don't know how it's called, let's just say "paper" that is 10 meters high and wide to paint on. He works on that very hard for four months, which isn't a lot, but he's a fast learner, so it's possible for him, in those months he has learned shadowing, perspective, expressions, brushing techniques, and so on. Let's say the painting is full of humans, at least 100, in a forest full of animals. How will the first tree/doge/human look compared to the last one? Not a good idea.
Imagine if that guy made 10 different paintings, all containing humans, plants and animals, that are just 50cmX50cm, not only will the paintings be more in harmony with theirselves, but he will see his personal growth, which is satisfying.

And try a lot of different projects in different genres please, if you make different games, and they're all platformer, you won't have learned that much, challenge u'reselve!
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Hi there! Welcome to the forums... :)

My advice is to start small. You can start a big project, but it's much easier to get frustrated if things don't go right. Smaller projects can be great for teaching you specific things, like make a shooter game, a pong game, a snake game, etc... each one will teach you a different aspect of coding. I would also STRONGLY advise that you read through the manual and at least revise ALL the functions available to you. Just skim the different reference sections, as that'll put the names of the functions in your head and it'll be easier to know what to look up later when you need to (also, pressing the MMB or F1 on ANY function in the IDE will bring up that function page of the manual... very handy!). Oh, and check out the tutorials by our own Shaun Spalding or by Heartbeast. Both do excellent work!

Whatever you start with, the important thing is to have fun and don't take it too seriously to start with. You'll make mistakes but that's what we are here to help with and you can always post questions in the Programming forum.
 
If you are brave and strong, start a giant project and never look back. If you are weak and cowardly, do some small projects first, instead. The choice is yours, user.
 
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Nescko

Guest
@Cantavanda Thanks for that, I was looking for stuff like that to learn more. I also thought the same thing, I knew if I made something and as I got more into it, I'd see things in 10x easier ways, try to go back, impliment them and things would get tedious and probably mixed up.
@Nocturne Those 2 guys are both ones that I've been watching frequently on YouTube, extremely helpful stuff.
@RichHopelessComposer lolololol. Go big or go home is sometimes a good idea:confused:
Thanks guys, it's basically as I thought it was but I just wanted to make sure completely so I didn't choose the wrong paths because I don't trust my gut. I know longterm I'll do really well, I'm just thinking efficiently the quickest and best way to get to there. I wish I could say I was more humble and not doing this for money, but it is a big part of it. I even see art being sold on the marketplace and might even indulge in that if possible. But passionately speaking I'd like to sit down and make revolutionary things eventually.
 
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gibberingmouther

Guest
study the manual so you don't ask stupid questions. also you can check out the archives. but at some point, there are things you probably aren't going to get unless you ask questions.
 
N

Nescko

Guest
Yeah I'm not going to ask stupid things that have been asked 50 times like "How do you make you character jump"
 
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heyimdandan

Guest
GameMaker is capable of doing some amazing things at amazing speeds. With proper planning high quality, high resolution HD games are definitely possible. My advice would be:

  • Put your vision to paper as thoroughly as you can before entering a single line of code to GM. Plan ahead, and stick to the plan as closely as you can.
  • Adding in brand new features to the main mechanic of your game you never planned for at the beginning of your project can and will require revising a lot of old code later. Again, plan ahead!
  • Tutorials are an invaluable source of information, and the forums (old and new) are indispensable. Sean Spalding's YouTube tutorials are fantastic.
  • Become familiar with all the trig functions and how to use them - you can do some amazing looking things with some inventive mathematics.
  • Add plenty // comments and documentation to your code so you know what you're coming back to when something doesn't go right later.
  • Learn to turn objects like enemies 'on and off' by using 'nested' if statements such as: "if abs(x-obj_player.x)<1000" or "if distance_to_object(obj_player)<1000" to save processor cycles when they're not on screen.
  • Learn how to manage all your assets/resources so that sprites used in certain levels are only on specific texture maps.
  • If you're keen on making a commercial release get friends and family to help look for bugs and glitches and work out how to recreate and resolve them.
  • Don't be afraid to scrap code that doesn't work - you can always save it in a .txt file and poach bits from it later if you need to.
  • Learn how to carry and/or use variables to/from other objects, it will open a whole world of possibilities.
  • If things are getting stuck in walls (and they will!), there are always elegant solutions to the problem - like checking the space around your player before (prevention) or after (resolution) a collision takes place with a !place_meeting(x,y,obj)
  • Often, the best sprite masks for hassle free collisions are usually rectangle shapes, not the shape of your player or enemy! Not always, but often!
  • Create an object you can 'call' with an 'instance_create' that will turn off all the sound effects that run on a loop prior to ending a room! Your player may die/progress before the sounds get switched off by the code you designed to do so.
Those are the main ones for me!
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Topic tidied. Please, Hitler does NOT have to be in every conversation in off topic. Keep posts appropriate to the themes being discussed. ;)
 
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