#gamemakerlanguage

[fluxofwater]

I am no longer working on this project; however, it did teach me some valuable game development skills. The skills I’ve picked up along the way can help me in creating other projects. There’s definitely more to ‘creating’ a game than I assumed, and this is not even getting started with multiplayer ! If I was to give advice (although, obviously, not qualified with years of game development), I’d say that brainstorming the different variables that will be used in your game early on, will greatly benefit your coding process, and how smoothly it goes, later on.

[lloyd-mills-blog]

INK Source Code Analysis

To further develop my knowledge of coding in GameMakerLanguage from GameMaker: Studio, I’m going to study the source code of a game called INK. I acquired this form a humble bundle special with GameMaker: Studio where I donated some money and received codes for GameMaker: Studio, a bunch of games that were made with GameMaker: Studio and their source code too. From this, I believe I will adapt to their coding standards such as instead of labelling things as object_obj or sprite-spr, I do oObject and sSprite instead. The codes themself also tend to feature labells and or annotations, these tend to be some kind of note to tell whoever is reading what this code is exactly (lots of it seems to be random bits of code disabled using // at the start). One of my great research areas that would be the most challenging but helpful was source code analysis, where I could develop greater knowledge of coding in GameMaker: Studio (GM: S for short). There was previous a humble bundle offer where if  you donated a certain amount of money, you’d receive various codes for things, a GameMaker bundle came up offering GM:S Pro, various modules and a bunch of games with their source code. I took this bundle and looked at the source code for their most popular game, INK, because it was an eye-catching platformer. I first adopted INK’s coding standard for labelling, if something is a sprite then its name starts with s, objects start with o etc. I looked at the code and tried to determine what things meant and how they worked, but I fell back badly here. What I did in the end was try to understand some bits of code there, and if I’d try to apply that code to my game, this was mainly gravity and movement which looked very basic and simple, I thought I could type it up in a notepad doc and put it in my game but it didn’t work and set me back a little in production.