Module 2: Programming & Design Basics (Lesson 3)

Lesson 3 Transcript

So before we actually start programming, which is what we’re going to tackle next, I just wanted to show off some of the games that GameMaker Studio has made. Probably some titles you recognize just to get you excited about what it can do and to show you where your game can end up once you get it made.

So they have a little showcase here. I’m just going to click this and play it and let you watch it because it’s really, really cool and shows off some of the most popular games that they have right now.

(01:00)
So you can see that there are some really, really awesome games that they’ve got. And if we go down, they actually have listed a lot of games on here, some that you might recognize, like Hyperlight Drifter, rivals of Ether Under Tail Minute.

These are games that I have played that are really, really awesome. Rivals of Ether is a fun 2D brawler, kind of like Super Smash Brothers Minute is a fantastic game. If you haven’t played these, go and do it. It will show you what GameMaker Studio is capable of and what you’ll be able to make inside of it.

GameMaker’s specialty is 2D games, but as you saw in the showcase, it can also do 3D games. So there is really nothing you cannot do as long as you put your mind to it and you are willing to work hard.

You can make anything you want, which is really, really cool.

(01:52)
So that’s some of the games that Game Makers Studio has created. And now I want to just go through GameMaker Studio and cover the UI and some of the parts that make up a game.

We’re going to go more in-depth in these as we go through the module of creating our first game, but I just want to introduce you to these concepts so that they are not totally new as we use them.

So the parts that make up a 2D game are sprites, which are the images that you actually see and interact with and move tile sets, which are traditionally the background and the level design that you use Sounds, which are music and sound effects.

Then you’ve got objects, which are basically everything you interact with. If it can do anything based on code, it needs to be an object. So they are the core of everything you’re going to do inside of GameMaker Studio two.

(02:45)
And then you’ve got rooms, which are levels, just a different name, but that’s all that they are. And we’re going to put all of these together in your first game as well. Or not the tile sets, but those will come in our action platform or the last game that we’re going to make.

But we’re going to put everything else together as we go through this course, and you’ll be totally familiar and ready to create anything you can set your mind to. The last thing I want to show you is just a few preferences and shortcuts that we’re going to be using.

So you can see this resource bar over here inside of GameMaker. Everything is actually tabbed, which means that you can grab it and you can move it. So it can be docked like this, or you can dock it to the bottom or the left.

(03:27)
I am going to keep mine on the right as that is just what I am used to. But you’ve also got down here, you can slide to increase and decrease the size of this. If you double-click on this little square, it bumps up to 150%, which is what I always have mine at.

You’ve also got recent windows down here, which you can right-click and close or minimize or use it, but we’re not going to really be using it for this course. So I would just close it for now. Give you more room over here.

And then you’ve got the F 12 key. Yeah, it’s a key. If you press it, it takes away all of the tabs on the bottom, which can come up like this, and on the side and on the left, which happens when you open up a room.

If you need more space to see or do anything, you press F 12 and you’ve got a bunch more space, you press it again and they all come back.

(04:21)
I’m going to be using that key a lot. The other one I’m going to use a lot is F five, which is to run your game, as you can see right here, and F6, which is to debug it, which we’ll talk about later.

But if you press F5 right now in a blank project, it will open up this room. We don’t have anything inside of it, but this is your first game.

Well, I wouldn’t really consider it a game, but it’s your first time running GameMaker Studio, which is a good thing to know how to do. The other thing I want to talk about is file preferences.

So there’s a lot of stuff you can change in here, but the big thing that I know has helped me a lot is to change the background.

So you click on general settings background, and then you can select what you want in here, change the scaling of the image and press apply.

(05:10)
This is really, really important I think, because it helps you to stay motivated. You can take some concept art for the game you want to make and throw it on the background to inspire you every time you open up GameMaker Studio.

Or you can put some art from your favorite game, something that I’ve done, something that just inspires me to keep going, to show me what I can do and remind me why I started in the first place.

So definitely take advantage of that and if there’s anything inside of GameMaker that you want to change that you don’t like, it’s probably in here in the preferences.

But that’s all I want to cover right now. What we’re going to do next is start programming. We’re going to ease into it nice and slow by just writing a few lines of code and talking about how it works and why it does what it does.

We’re going to do that next.