Tag Archives: gamemaker

GameMaker: applying “with” to multiple objects

As you may know, GameMaker Language has a Pascal-like "with" structure: 

with (value) { code }

but it's not exactly like the Pascal version. In GameMaker, it can take an instance: 

var bullet = instance_create(x, y, obj_bullet);
with (bullet) direction = 180;

or an object type (and will apply the expression to each instance of it): 

with (obj_bullet) instance_destroy();

This can be rather handy under the multiple circumstances.

However, initially the same block can not be applied to multiple values, and that's less handy.

Sometimes you can cheat by applying the expression to a shared "parent" type of objects, but that is not always the case (and can have side effects if there are more object types meeting the condition).

So let's consider your options for applying a piece of code to all instances of several types: }

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GameMaker: Tetris in full Drag & Drop


Click to launch the HTML5 version of the game

First, take a look at the above link. There's score, 7 tetriminos, slowly growing difficulty - standard things for a Tetris game. The catch? There isn't a single line of code. Nor a single variable. It's all done in GameMaker's "drag & drop" visual scripting.

The story of how this even happened is like so - yesterday was another day when my internet connection disappeared for half of the day without any logical reason whatsoever. As I look at the top of my now-static TweetDeck timeline, and notice this bunch of tweets from Vlambeer's Rami Ismail. While you can generally agree with points outlined, few things could have had better clarification:

  1. Difficulty depends not only on developer's coding skills, but also on the tools used.

    For example, making a "space invaders" game in most modern tools with built-in memory management, collisions, and function sets is easy enough, but should you go lower level... storing invader information in an array? Storing and moving around dynamically created player and invader bullets?? Programming trajectories and destructible defenses??? Not as much careless fun as you may have envisioned. Pong may seem suddenly simpler with base requirements of just a bunch of variables and inverting ball x/y velocity for bounces.

    Additionally, certain tools are best suited for certain task. For example, it is easy to make a turn-based puzzle game in PuzzleScript (hence the name) due to the way engine is based on "rule" definitions. Making a platformer game in PuzzleScript, however, is a much harder feat. It isn't, by no means, impossible, but requires more planning than it would take with a "platformer-centric" engine.

  2. Game development isn't just about having the right tools/resources/experience, but also actually using them creatively. As such, programming in general is often about finding an approach to the problem that isn't the most blatantly obvious or expected but produces results more efficient in terms of computer of development time.

To not make it all look like a rant or a opinion piece, the rest of this post is about creative use of tools - particularly, making the aforementioned Tetris in GameMaker without a single line of code or variable.

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Hosting HTML5 games on Google Drive

Hosting HTML5 games on Google Drive for free

Being able to quickly upload a HTML5 game to the web is important.

It's not just a more comfortable format for sharing, but sometimes a requirement, since games created with GameMaker: Studio, Construct 2, Haxe+OpenFL and many other tools may not necessarily fully function when launched locally due to browsers laying restrictions over local file access (meaning that sending a ZIP with game files may not quite work).

While it used to be possible to host HTML5 games on Dropbox for free (or, rather, it still is possible, but only if you have enabled the public folder before the late 2013, else it'll cost you some), you can still host HTML5 games freely on Google Drive.

And this article explains the process of hosting your games on Google Drive in detail.

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Adding thousand separators

string_thousands

Often, games and applications may display numbers. Sometimes, large numbers. In some cases, numbers with so many digits that you aren't even sure about most suitable notation.

And that's where use of thousand separators is handy. Since delimiter symbols (normally commas) appear in fewer quantity than digits, they are easier to count, and user can tell the order of magnitude easier.

This post covers detail of doing that, both in algorithm and code.

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Introducing: Spelunky SD!

If you've been following me on the social networks, you may already know, that for the past three months I was working on a Spelunky Classic modification called Spelunky SD. It is a pretty broad project, implementing a number of fixes and improvements to the original game, and, most importantly, adding a 2-player cooperative online game mode.
Today, I am proud to announce the first public release of this project.
And this is a blog post about my experiences.

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GameMaker: trace/log function

A scribble reads "trace(x,y)"

Debugging games can be fun! Or not fun. Depends on what your definition of "fun" is.

Either way, starting with GameMaker: Studio, GameMaker has a proper debugger with breakpoints, step-by-step execution, watches, profiling, and other conveniences.

There is also an Output panel, to which you can write messages using show_debug_message. This can be preferable if you need to inspect order of execution or are in a hurry - after all, throwing a quick look on the panel is fast. You know what's not fast though? Using show_debug_message to do so.

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GameMaker: GM8 code editor color scheme for Studio

If you are using GameMaker: Studio and find default dark theme to be odd, you probably have already switched to lighter "GM8" theme via File - Preferences dialogue.

But, alas, switching to "GM8" theme does not change code editor color scheme, and you still get the default dark gray-orange theme in middle of your light-colored IDE.

So I thought that it would make sense to publish a GM8-esque color scheme that I've made and am using locally for a while now.

This color scheme follows GM8 style closely, with few exceptions like displaying resource names in teal instead of yellow (which grants higher contrast and generally looks better).

To import a color scheme, go to File - Preferences - Scripts and Code, click Import button, and pick the obtained file.

It is hard to make a large post about thing as small, so here's the file:

Download COL

Alternatively, file' contents (to be saved as gm8x.col and imported into GMS): 

<Colours>
  <Color0>0</Color0>
  <Color1>8388608</Color1>
  <Color2>16711680</Color2>
  <Color3>32768</Color3>
  <Color4>128</Color4>
  <Color5>128</Color5>
  <Color6>128</Color6>
  <Color7>8388736</Color7>
  <Color8>11171870</Color8>
  <Color9>16777215</Color9>
  <Color10>14744314</Color10>
  <Color11>10512464</Color11>
  <Color12>5988454</Color12>
  <Color13>16120058</Color13>
  <Color14>255</Color14>
  <Color15>2633011</Color15>
  <Color16>11913437</Color16>
</Colours>

Have fun!

GameMaker: Testing two game instances at once

If you are using GameMaker: Studio to create multi-player games (via not-so-recently added network_ functions or by utilizing existing DLLs) without separate projects for server and client, you might have stumbled upon one annoying limitation - you can't run two instances of game from IDE.

From a glance, this looks like a small issue, but it gets tedious really fast - to run a second instance, you have to either compile the game (takes time and monotonous file dialog actions), or find a compiled .win file in depth of temporary directories (or otherwise retrieve it's location via means of WinAPI), and pass it to the runner via command-line, like 

...\AppData\Roaming\GameMaker-Studio\Runner.exe -game (path to *.win file)

But that's no fun, right?
At least I've found so.
So I took a bit of time and made a small GML snippet to lift this unfortunate limitation.

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