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[Theophilus]

So there it equals 0. Just use some fancy math to make it go at least X notches in whatever direction.

[Desert Dog]

So we start to add additional code.

Perhaps the question askers code could look like this


diff=angle_difference(image_angle,direction);

if abs(diff)>90
{
turn_toward_direction(xot style)
}
else
{
//use sin method.
}

[eyeliner]

I would love to see someone making a tutorial about how to create a light. I'd like to make a platformer and every single example I've found presented me with a strange inability to implement them because of scarce explanations.

I'd like to make lamp posts or even a flashlight. I know there's examples out there, but my limitations prevent me from understanding other people's work.

[Geeze]

Maybe you could make simple lighting like this:
- Have a surface named surf_lights (name doesn't matter)
- Fill the surface with the "ambient color", the darkest shade of light you want.
- draw all the light sprites with additive blending mode (bm_add) on the surface
- draw the surface with proper blending mode(bm_max or substract, I'm not sure) on top of everything else.

And if you want to disable lighting, just skip the last step.

[Erinock]

Thanks for this!

[Houndninja]

Omg thank  so much dude now I can feel good about making games co they are done with code!

FOR THE WIN!

                         
                 
                       
       
 

[andotherisms]

Thank you very much for the tutorials and the various hints in this thread. Faint praise but you guys are better than TV.

[BomberTREE]

Looking back on old game maker 3d videos.. I'm wondering how Saijee Higuchi animates his 3d characters in game maker..








He uses anim8or to create and animate the characters.. But where does he go from there?
The animations are too smooth to be frame by frame saved models. Maybe he uses Ultimate 3d to actually be able to animate the mesh? D3D?

All and all, I'm wondering how I should go about animating 3d characters in game maker  

EDIT: I asked him, he makes his animations in Anim8or and then uploads them to game maker via the Ultimate3d.dll.

[richicon]

I am trying to use the Seamless Screen-Scaling example in GM Studio - but it doesn't appear to work.

Anyone using Studio here that has got it working? I followed the steps - the only change I had to make was to remove the screen-refresh as it is an obsolete command.

[Petethegoat]

It's actually not necessary in studio, so far as I can tell. The default scaling has worked fine for me so far, without any seams or anything.

[AbortedSlunk]

I'm sorry if this has already been addressed, but re Tutorial #4, I am trying to add a pixel font using the font_add_sprite function and nothing is showing up, even though I've pretty much exactly copied the code to display text in that tutorial.

If it helps, I'm using an arcade-style colour bitmap font (does it only accept black and white or something...?) and I'm using Game Maker 8.1.

Much obliged

[PogueSquadron]

I seem to have hit a brick wall with the tutorials since I don't have the full version of Game Maker. Does anyone have any advice as to how to proceed (until GMS goes on sale on Steam)? Should I just take the other lessons in the tutorial as far as I can, or am I going to get more and more frustrated with the options not available in the free version?

[Glyph]

AbortedSlunk: That's a pretty general question. It might not work because you're mis-entering arguments into the function, or the sprite is in the wrong sequence, or the drawing alpha / position / color are in such a way that you can't see anything. For more specific help, either link to the game or paste the code.
PogueSquadron: The free version is pretty lame. You just simply won't be able to do some things in it, and there's not really any way around that, shy of purchasing it. There are also questionable methods of attainment which I won't detail here.

[PogueSquadron]

I was actually looking at comments from Derek Yu regarding Game Maker, and he said that it was more for games that look like they're from the 90s or earlier. After seeing what he's done with Spelunky (even though it does look pretty retro) or the art done for DustForce, is this still true? The examples on YoYo Games' site like Froad and a few others seem modern enough.

What exactly is GameMaker's graphical limitation with 2D visuals? And if at some point over the next couple years I would meet or exceed that limitation, would the knowledge I've learned from Game Maker help me jump to another program/language? (Maybe Derek is around to comment? Itching to play Spelunky btw!)

[ink.inc]

What exactly is GameMaker's graphical limitation with 2D visuals?

screen tearing, ugly scaling, ugly rotation

[PogueSquadron]

(deleted and editing post)

I guess where my confusion comes in is with a game like Dustforce. Wasn't that created using GameMaker? It looks pretty beautiful, no? Runs at a solid, silky smooth framerate and has beautiful art. You say that it doesn't scale or do rotation well, and I guess Dustforce doesn't use either of those techniques (unless the camera zooms in and out and I never noticed). Can smooth rotation/scaling problems be fixed using GML? I'd like to possibly learn the language and not let D&D features limit what I'd want to do.

Outside of Dustforce, are there any other examples of really beautiful games made with Game Maker? I'm really interested in any games that push its limits from a graphical level. Is Dustforce simply an example of really well made sprites and tilesets that hide any of GM's deficiencies?

[Ant]

The protoype for Dustforce was made in GameMaker, I assume they didn't use it for the full game because GM8 only works on Windows and cross-compatibility is a selling point nowadays. I just had a quick look and visually they pretty much look the same so you could make something like it in GM. The only other examples of GM games that use higher-res art I can think of are Saturated Dreamers, They Need To Be Fed and Cinders but I can't see a reason why you couldn't do a similar style to say Super Meaty Boy if you were careful.

The limitations of GameMaker are that of performance and modern graphical techniques. Having lots of objects active is a problem, I remember Derek saying he was constantly fighting this limit when making Spelunky. Particle effects aren't super fast either so you can't do something like heavy rain/snow or realistic smoke. Graphically you couldn't recreate Limbo because having a lot of transparent overlays reduces it to a chug and surface effects are performance heavy. Apparently Shader support is being added in the next Studio update which should make it easier to do some stuff like bump mapping but again performance will be an issue. 3d games are limited to doomlikes and very low poly models.

And yes the skills you learn from making games in GM are transferable because it mostly comes from the act of making games itself. Every game you make you'll learn new best practices that's useful for game making in general no matter which engine or coding base you later use. But you should definately switch from drag and drop to GML to familiarise yourself with basic coding disciplines and it's just more efficient to write code than faff about with a bunch of dragdrop events.

[PogueSquadron]

I think then, that I might make the plunge and get the full Game Maker. I haven't been using Drag and Drop at all, and have gotten up to the point where I can draw my own spite font, but I can't. I have an idea for a simple game I'd like to make, building on what I've been learning so far (kind of like a Paperboy clone).

For now, I won't worry so much about hitting any limitations, and I'll take Game Maker as far as I can. Once I feel like I've hit a ceiling with it, then I'll move on to something more complex. I've read that trying to learn C++ or something like that is like trying to learn Calculus before basic Algebra, so I'm going to start with this probably and build from there.

I just wish GMS would go on sale. Apparently I missed it going on sale not too long ago. Does anyone think it'll drop to $25 before Christmas? $50 is a lot to me at this time of year, though I suppose it isn't even more than buying an HD retail game. And who knows, maybe I can build something simple enough and get 50 people to give me a dollar for it, haha.

[TeeGee]

What exactly is GameMaker's graphical limitation with 2D visuals?

screen tearing, ugly scaling, ugly rotation

All fixed in GameMaker Studio apparently.

[siskavard]

Just trying to learn GM via tutorials. I just tried the one on here for screen scaling, but I'm getting an error "Unknown function or script: screen_refresh

Does anyone have a solution or alternative ?

Cheers