Tag Archives: gamemaker

GameMaker: Circular cooldown rectangle

GameMaker: Cooldown rectangle

I do not know the exact name of this visual effect (angular/clockwise fade-in/fade-out?), but it is one of the most common things that you can see in interface of RPG and RTS games, displaying progress of construction/upgrade/ability cooldown. So, to the point...
You can read how this is actually being implemented, or just scroll down to the bottom of post and grab the code and/or GMK file.
Implementation of such is actually pretty simple, Continue reading →

GameMaker: “flawed” AI path finding

In some cases, you may want object's AI to not pick exactly perfect path.

This example demonstrates creation of a basic "flawed" AI, that uses a rather plain method of finding path. Such will still make it reach destination in many cases, but will also allow player to "fool" the AI, making it stuck in dead ends or T-intersections (if player is standing right behind the wall).

To illustrate simplicity of concept, example is largely made in Drag & Drop.

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Continue reading →

GameMaker: Angular motion


It's like drifting. On a spaceship. In space.

This is an example of managing angular motion in GameMaker.
In turn, that means having angular speed with acceleration, friction, and limitation.
Such can be particularly useful for simulating a more 'smooth' rotation behaviour, when object will not start or stop rotating instantly.
If combined with relatively properly written code for linear motion, this can grant pretty nice behaviour for space games.
Also there's a "trail" effect added, originally just to demonstrate how it works.
Everything is pretty nice and simple.

Download GMK

GameMaker: Studio theme – GMGreen+

Today, instead of doing something possibly more interesting for a hour and some, I've spent those to edit standard theme that comes with GameMaker: Studio.

Modifications are as following:

  • Active window now has grey border, rather than a indefinitely green one.
  • Window captions now have a slight tilted line texture. Makes these a tiny bit less boring to look at.
  • Window control buttons are now better-spaced and cleaner.
  • Window border is now 3px instead of 4px, also with smaller amount of "rounding" on top of windows.
  • Fixed issue with 2-3 magenta pixels appearing near top-right corner when resizing MDI windows a lot.
  • Menu text is now of light-grey colour.
  • All sorts of buttons now have a grey colour for currently active one, and easier to distinguish green border for mouse-over.
  • Checkboxes now have an actual (non-triangular) "check"
  • Radio buttons are now properly anti-aliased.

I'll try to also include an icon file soon, but until then, a preferred method of installation is baking up of original "GMGreen.skn" and placing .skn from archive on it's place. Restarting GameMaker: Studio is required, obviously.

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GameMaker: Animating backgrounds

This simplistic example demonstrates how to cycle backgrounds in a room at a fixed rate, as you would do with images in a sprite.
Obvious advantage of cycling (animating) room backgrounds is that these are handled and drawn by engine, which makes them generally faster than something you can achieve in a short amount of time.
Seen method supports any number of backgrounds larger than zero.

Download GMK

GameMaker: Turn-based battle engine

Today I've spent some time making this intermediately impressive turn-based battle example.
It supports infinite number of unit "teams", configurable properties, inheritance, and more.

Built-in system will also attempt to reduce chances of developer (you) accidentally messing up something.
And there's easily configurable AI built-in too.

Overall, I somewhat got carried away while making original example, which was planned just include turns with unit selection.

Download GMK