LIL’ TOMMY DEVELOPMENT #2
So in Carlie’s lesson today, I decided to dedicate some more time towards the production side of this project and focus on actually developing my game. Over the three hours I spent, I managed to get a lot of things done, and I am very happy with the outcome.
Firstly, I started to create the health menu. I will soon create an actual health bar, but for now an on screen draw event will work. I did this because it was necessary to know what health I am at when testing, but easier than taking the time in making the health bar way before I actually have enemy AI movement, and what would be the point in that, because without movement from my enemies my character won’t take damage anyway. I did this by creating a step event that included 2 lines of code. The first line is for the colour of the text (Black). The second line is for the display... The display part was the hardest as I had to create views that display the score and global string.
I dedicated this lesson towards the development side because I have finished the production side of the project, and the task for this week according to my gantt chart is production.
Enemy Spawn
Next, I created the enemy spawning variables, I started off doing this by adding an alarm for my enemies when spawning. I wanted to originally make a separate variable for enemy movement and direction; however, for efficiency, I decided to combine both into one in a single alarm event.
Lastly, the AI movement... This was fairly easy, as I didn’t need to write a lot of code. These two lines of code communicate with my obj_enemy, allowing my enemy to move towards the player when near. This is all done by x and y variables, and this is what controls the movement in the room.
Today’s developing lesson has been extremely productive as I have managed to code two of the hardest variables when it comes to implementing an enemy in your game, In tomorrow’s lesson, I strive to add a 60FPS view camera - making the game feel smooth. I also aim to add rain particles, to add game immersive elements for my target audience when playing. If I get time, it would be great to add a coin drop feature that adds to your score when picked up; coins will be dropped by enemies and once picked up add towards count towards your score - allowing you to purchase other weapons and power-ups.