Module 1: Course Snapshot (Lessons 1-2)

Lesson 1 Transcript

Greetings and welcome. My name is Aaron Craig, and I’m going to be your instructor for this course. I am super stoked that you decided to take this course with me because it is going to be an awesome time.

We have a ton of content, and if you have come here looking to become the best game designer that you can, then you’ve come to the right spot.

We’re going to be talking about game design and programming and everything that has to do with those, and the way we’re going to do that is by making three awesome games.

The first game we’re going to make is this. It’s a game inspired by the classic game of snake. In it, we’re going to be learning functions, variables, the software that we’re going to be using and how to create our first game.

Then we’re going to move on to making a classic arcade space shooter that looks like this. Inside of it, you can see that it is a fun, awesome game that you will be proud to show off.

The last thing we’re going to do is make a really cool action-adventure platforming game called The Castle of Doom. Here’s a little bit of gameplay.

(01:27)
As you can see, it is a really awesome full game that you’re going to be able to tweak and customize to exactly what you want to create, and through it all, we’re going to be learning about game design topics. We’re going to be learning how to program and everything you need to be the best game designer that you can be.

So let’s just jump right in and get to downloading GameMaker Studio.

Lesson 2 Transcript

So the software we’re going to be using is GameMaker Studio 2, and we’re going to need to download that and install it. Then I’m going to show you just a few customizations that you can do.

Before we get started now, go to YoYogames.com or just search for GameMaker Studio 2 spelled like this and it’ll bring you to this website. Might look a little bit different depending on when you’re coming here, but this is the right place.

You can click on free trial or click on GameMaker up here. Either one will take you to this page here where you need to either log in or register, and I’m going to show you how to register here.

I’m going to use a temporary email, which is just a throwaway email, which gets deleted after a little while because I can’t show you it with one I already have.

(00:47)
You have to use a password that is mostly secure. It has a couple of requirements there, so 8 to 64 characters, one uppercase, one lowercase, one digit, one special, and then you have to click both check boxes.

Once you do that, then it’s going to look for an email. So now it’s going to send us an email right here. I can open it up and click on that link to activate it so we have to activate our account before we can actually get into downloading the software.

The first thing is going to be preferences, so you can get emails for all of these different things. I’m just going to click unsubscribe all.

Then you have to set up a security question, which you should actually do. I’m just going to put in a fake answer here, and you should use two step authentication. It’s always a good thing, and then you have to set up a username, so username with some numbers, set up a first name and a last name.

(01:45)
Choose your skill level and click complete. Then you can finally get to the place where you can actually download it.

If you want to use the free trial, which is what we’re going to be using, then you just click on download GameMaker right here. Otherwise, you can go to buy GameMaker as there are lots of different versions you can get, and we’re going to click on this.

It’ll take you to this page now where you can download the IDE for Windows or Mac, click on the download button and get it going. Then you go through the entire installation process.

I’m not going to show you that. I’m sure you’ve installed many programs in your days, but go through that and then it will be installed and you’ll be ready to go.

Once you have it installed, it should bring up something just like this, so you’re going to be able to create new projects, open up a previous one, import or explore with marketplace tutorials or demos. You don’t need any of those. That’s what we are going to be doing.

So I’m just going to show you a couple of things. I’m just going to load up the last game we’re going to make. Don’t worry about anything you see inside of here right now. All I want to do is I’m going to close everything, so I don’t want to show you how GameMaker works yet. We’re going to have an overview,

(02:59)
But there is one important thing I want to show you, and that is file preferences, Sprite, editor, this default Sprite origin, the very first option, I have mine set to middle center.

Now the default is top left, so I encourage you to right now go ahead and change middle center so that you are following along with me exactly. You’ll be able to understand what this is when we get to it.

I’m going to explain what the origin is and how to manipulate it and why you might want it to be different for different sprites, but I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page for when we get started. That way you don’t have any confusion over where your sprites are being placed and so forth.

So mine is middle center. You should change yours there as well. But with that, we now have GameMaker Studio 2 downloaded, installed, and are ready to go.

In the next video, I want to give you some encouragement for going along with this course and how to make everything we do your own so you’re not just copying me, but the games you create will have your own unique flare inside of them.