Hey, game development is something I have been interested in since I was a child, I picked up the game maker pro bundle from humble bundle, but I have no idea where to start. Any pointers, or suggestions?
Hey there! Sorry if this is old—I didn’t get notified about this message.
I’ve come to learn that “pointers or suggestions on where to start” when it comes to making games is a surprisingly vague question that comes with a whole set of other questions:
Have tried making games before? How much experience do you have (i.e. are you comfortable with code or do you want to drag & drop)?
Do you know much about games in general? Do you need help with learning about game design and ideas and stuff?
Do you know how to use the game engine just need guidance on how to actually get started on a game? Or do you need to learn how to use your tool first?
Do you have an idea for a game that you’d like to make already, or do you just want to make games in general?
One important thing about making games is learning about what makes games compelling and figuring out how you can do that for your game. This falls into the sphere of game design.
If you’ve got time, check out Extra Credits on YouTube and basically just watch all their videos from start to finish. They’ve covered a lot of interesting game design topics and even some helpful tips for how to get started as a game designer (i.e. how to research games, what to look for when playing games, how to integrate ideas into your games, etc.). Their playlists page is pretty nicely organized, so check that out.
Game Maker is an excellent way to get started on making games! This is mainly because it is its own full IDE (that is “integrated development environment”, if you’re like me and are never sure what those acronyms stand for), which means that you can make all your art, organize all your objects, rooms, and scripts, and adjust all your settings from a single program. When I moved to Unity, I really missed that integration. Game Maker also allows you to choose between doing drag & drop programming and using an easy-to-learn programming language.
If you have the patience, the first thing you should do is read through the Game Maker help file. It’ll take a while and some of it might not make sense at first, but if you can do it, you’ll at least have a good idea of where to find help for specific things quickly when you need it later.
When you’re done (or bored silly) reading the documentation, a great way to get started is to try to remake simple, old games. A great game to start with is a top-down scrolling shooter like Galaga to learn basic movement and collisions. Game Maker has tools called Timelines that makes timing sequences for games like that really easy. From there, I’d move on to Asteroids to learn rotational movement (Game Maker has object variables called “speed” and “direction” that make this super easy) and creating more objects from another object. Then maybe try a top-down adventure game like a stripped down Legend of Zelda without an inventory so you can practice with scrolling and multiple rooms. You should only move to side-scrolling platformers when you’re ready to try some math. From there, you can try to move on to looking at tutorial games that others have provided. Game Maker used to include tutorial games with its installation, but I don’t know if they still do that.
After you’ve recreated some old games, you can expand on them and make them more of a unique product that belongs to you. But the most important thing is to keep practicing and keep learning.
Next, join the Game Maker Community forums and ask for help when you need it, but always search around before you post things—it’s very likely that someone else has had the same exact problem/question as you before. But if you have trouble finding an answer, ask for help. Don’t be ashamed. If the GMC isn’t doing it for you, there are countless other game development communities. Just ask around.
I’m always willing to try helping out, too! If you have any questions about how to do certain things or what certain game development terms mean or anything else like that, feel free to ask me, and I’ll do my best to answer the best way that I can!
Some blogs off the top of my head to follow on Tumblr for game development are @neilmakesgames (he’s learning Game Maker right now, too, and frequently shares helpful resources) and @guilelessmonk (he has lots of essays and thoughts on his blog about game design and development).
Here’s a (huge) post from @vine2d that has LOTS more information:http://www.vine2d.com/post/17243872646/indie-game-dev-faq
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