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[SuperJonty]

Hi everyone, fairly new to Gamemaker and whatnot - I've read various tutorials and I'm wondering what the best way to go about things is.

For example, moving the player. Is it better/more efficient to have a controller object that detects any/all inputs and a separate player object that checks the controller and takes action accordingly, or is it better to just have any detection and action in the object that's directly affected?

[oahda]

The latter can be useful if you want to implement an AI or cutscene controller that you can use instead of the input controller sometimes.

[Xorglord]

I think you should use a controller object. I haven't used Gamemaker much, so I can't give you specific feedback, but the way I do it (in Unity) works really well for me.

Input is received by my "controller object". Objects register with the controller object, saying that they will need to receive certain controls, and when the controller object detects these inputs, it passes them to the objects.

This works well for me because I have a number of times when I want to stop input from happening, or manually pass different inputs to characters (for example, in a cutscene). By doing it this way it makes it very easy to block / fake input without having to rewrite a lot of code.

[muki]

My visual brain loves control objects. It helps "solidify" code and routines and effects as objects you can drag in and out of your levels. That probably sounds weird.

At a glance you can look at a room, see the control objects and know it's running this and that.

[ProgramGamer]

Controller objects make input remapping really easy, because you can just have an array of valid keycodes for an action. Plus, it's all in one place, which as other have pointed out, makes it conceptually easier for our stupid monkey brains.

[Josh Bossie]

My visual brain loves control objects. It helps "solidify" code and routines and effects as objects you can drag in and out of your levels. That probably sounds weird.

At a glance you can look at a room, see the control objects and know it's running this and that.

Yeah, absolutely agreed. I think this is especially important for a language like GMC which lacks classes and other ways to keep code, uh, 'solid'. There's gotta be a better term for it, but I also use it and whatever, it works!