This week is programming week, and the challenge activity is to create an interactive ‘grey box’ prototype.
Week 3 is all about programming and examines the fundamentals of programming within a game engine and exploring how game mechanics are added though coding.
The challenge activity for this week is to create an interactive prototype or ‘grey box’. We can use any third-party assets as a starting point, such as tutorials and game templates, so knowing that coding is probably my weakest area I decided to follow Peter Morgan’s Udemy course: How to Make Tile Based Platform Games in Gamemaker Studio 2 as my starting point.
The course consists of just under ninety tutorials and gives a comprehensive guide to creating most aspects of a 2D platform game.
I chose this course over a variety of others, due to the thoroughness and completeness of the game project, as this will allow me to make my own changes and additions (such as bosses and power ups) with just what has been explained and how it was coded.
Specifically, one of the most useful things I've found from the tutorials so far, is how the use of scripts and arrays are much more efficient and can save a lot of time - especially the larger the game gets.
Here, I've followed the tutorial to create a variety of scripts that can be recalled from within objects and re-used when needed for multiple instances - which is a much cleaner and efficient way than constantly adding new code to an object when needed.
After completing a good number of the tutorials and then adding enough of my own graphical assets I felt confident that prototype had just enough of its own identity to upload it. I’ve been using Github for source control and have found this very useful to keep track of the different builds and also to locate any errors. My source files can be found here: wil1333/Dungeon_Raiders: Engine build for combat platformer (github.com)
A downloadable Windows compatible executable can be found here:
The prototype, allows the player to jump in straight away with some combat, platforming and item collection, as well as get a feel for the in-game aesthetic.
Once I’ve completed the tutorial and designed a handful of linked levels, I will then collect feedback via user playtesting.
Feedback will be very important to the overall design, as going forward, my game will need to be intuitive and player friendly – unlike some of the retro games I’m drawing inspiration from. Players will need to understand the controls and gameplay mechanics early on and will also expect and enjoyable experience, so the gameplay will need to flow correctly. User feedback will be extremely important to get this right.
References:
Udemy. (n.d.). How to Make Tile Based Platform Games in Gamemaker Studio 2. [online] Available at: https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-make-tile-based-platform-games-with-gamemaker/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2021].
Ask Gamedev (2019). 8 Solo Game Developer Mistakes to Avoid! [2019]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umpp1ytp4Zk [Accessed 19 Feb. 2021].
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