Noobs beware! older GameMaker tutorials don't work.

As per my last blog post, I was trying to refresh my skills. I was partially following the old Matharoo tutorial and the Peyton Burnham rpg tutorial, when I kept running into walls. 

It's been hours and I've gone nowhere! 

All the code I had written in my TXT file was trash. Literally none of it worked even though it was a near 1 to 1 copy of the tutorial with some names adjusted for clarity. (moveSpeed instead of move_speed) I thought I understood the math, so adjusting some names and cross referencing both of the tutorials should've worked. 

NOPE, nothing. It wouldn't even take the inputs. It was like it had no code.

So I recreated each of the old tutorials band for band and I still get nowhere. With my limited knowledge, the only way I could make that work was by copying the 8-way movement from the GML manual. It seemed like it was working, and I was happy even if it was a little stretched out. I tinkered around with the x and y values for speed and thought I was doing alright.

Now I'm trying to avoid using too many variables because I assumed that's where the problem was. I move onto collision, and I cannot get the math to function without custom variables. What the manual gave me was a giant If, Else monster, but it worked and was easy to read. Easy to read doesn't equal easy to work with, and I learned this the hard way when I had to scrap my previous work because I couldn't work around it.

The modified manual code was something like this, but without the "moveSpeed".

//controls and movement speed

if keyboard_check(vk_left) or keyboard_check(ord("A"))

{

    x += - 1 - moveSpeed;

}

if keyboard_check(vk_right) or keyboard_check(ord("D"))

{

    x += + 1 + moveSpeed;

}

if keyboard_check(vk_up) or keyboard_check(ord("W"))

{

    y += - 1 - moveSpeed;

}

if keyboard_check(vk_down) or keyboard_check(ord("S"))

{

    y += + 1 + moveSpeed;

}

if keyboard_check(vk_shift)

{

    moveSpeed = moveSpeed * 1.1;

}

I  had added the movespeed thing on (with the variable defined as 1) so I could add in that last Shift to Sprint thing in. Trying to do that was a huge headache too because I had to keep tweaking the math equations so that the player wouldn't fly off screen at mach Jesus. Almost none of this mattered, because it all had to go anyways.

So you might be wondering... Why didn't you just follow the new tutorials???

Simply put, I don't like them that much. They aren't as simple to follow, and require you jump between videos too much. It feels like the videos are just a source of revenue and feature showcasing. And that's no shade to Matharoo, because yoyogames made him scrap his og video project, which smells like corporate meddling to me. 

This isn't to say they aren't useful. The collision code in the first part of the new rpg tutorial is what saved me, but it's annoying how many places I had to look just to find the collision that worked with the newest version. They have a dedicated collision tutorial also posted on their YT and linked on the site, but its not cleanly formatted and it didn't help with what I had issues with.

OK back to the grind, see yall.

post edit: I forgot to mention that I can't get the dual controls to work. It just ceases to function when I put the "or" in the keyboard checks. If somebody knows how to fix this, HELLLLPPPPPP

Back on my Bullshit

It's been ages since I touched gamemaker. I got confused, and then I got bored, but now I'm back into it.

    Lemme tell you. I have not made jack shit of progress. Other than having collected enough stray tiles to pretty much cover anything I feel like making (Thank you YMS pixel art world.) and then smushing a few different tilesets together to make one big school set. I guess I've narrowed the idea down to some horror set in a school (very original), but beyond that I don't have too much. I wont be worrying about that until I have my actual framework in.

Framework Struggles

    Gamemaker is not RPGmaker. Anyone who has ever even looked at the two softwares can tell you this. If you want RPG mechanics, you need to build them in from the ground up. That is what I'm currently working on.

    The newest update of GMS  came out in like April or something, and it added in a good amount of things and fixed some bugs. Not only that but there are new tutorials and more written about the engine. I figured it was worth taking a refresher course on what little I knew, and cross referencing it with my old notes. 

The guy who's tutorials I was following very early on (Matharoo) got hired by yoyoGames to make in-house tutorials for GMS. (I mention using his assets in this earlier post.) So he went dark on his channel for a bit while he worked on the tutorials for the official page. This meant I went into the tutorial dark ages, because his were the best. However those videos are out now, along with the new version of GMS. Allowing me to continue on a fresh note.

That new RPG tutorial series came with a partially complete template, which I am studying as best I can.

However I am stupid, and get very easily overwhelmed by massive chunks of new information. It's bad, I get heart palpitations every time I open GMS on my computer. 

    Back to the main topic. Before I start doing any story stuff in my game, I want to have a solid template I can work off of that has everything I need, and nothing I don't so it doesn't overwhelm me.

Very specifically, I want a movement system that supports WASD and arrow key input. This is because WASD is popular, but I like arrow keys. I think I can carry this sort of dual-control system into other things like object interaction.

I also want to have a similar menu system that shows a list inventory along with character stats. I'll need to play a few more RPGmaker games to get the feel of them in order to replicate that better.

What now?

    Since I'm working in TXT files, the next move after I'm satisfied is to test it all in engine. After I'm happy with what I've got, I'll post my findings for future reference.

Asset art decisions

Carrying on from my last post, I'm gong to talk about what types of tiles and sprites I want to use.

  I'm trying to avoid worrying too much about art direction on this project since I mainly wanted to focus on programming and game design. So I decided on using mostly premade free assets. (I still wound up worrying, but I don't spend time drawing so idk) 

  Originally I was going to use LPC style graphics because there are a lot already made, and I'll probably still use some things from that, but if I'm planning on making a horror game, I want something a little less cartoony.

LPC graphics have the benefit of being open source with a style guide, so there are new sprites and bg tiles being made in the style still.

  The next set, (the set that I plan to to go with) is the older pixel work from Pixel Art World. I'm looking to use mainly their pre MV 32x32 environments and objects. Their autotiles are pretty good also. The styling is notably less toony with softer more natural colors. 

I this style is a good in-between of the LPC style and the more realistic "Mack" style that gets used the most in RPG horror titles. Graphics with a little bit of realism work well in horror setting because they are adaptable. 

I fell back into the asset hunter abyss

  So I finally have a decent, concrete concept for a game. And then I proceeded to get no work done. I had the stupid dummy moron idiot idea to switch to 16x16 instead of 32x32, because that's the Yume Nikki resolution, and then I was back on the tileset spiral.

I eventually realized that was fucking dumb, so I didn't go through with it. But that was only after I downloaded a few tilesets, and resized a few more. My art program resizes things blurry so sizing down isn't the move.

I was out Saturday, and then I slept all day today, so no tangible game progress has been made.

first serious steps into game creation using the peyton burnham method

  Next project file. I'm following Peyton Burnham's basic RPG tutorial. I got majorly sidetracked looking for tiles and other assets because I am lazy. More importantly, I don't like having to stop and do something else and then go back, but it seems that I wound up doing it anyway. I took a long cut. 

  After a day(night) of lollygagging I've got the footage above. 

Don't be like me. Don't waste time hunting down tilesets. You might not even like tilesets. I might not even like tile sets. I debated back and forth after wasting time researching tile sizes, and scrubbing through old half broken blogs, if I even liked how tile based environments worked.

  In some cases, tile based can speed up the level building process, but the rigidity can severely slow you don't if you don't know what you want or need. I had the issue where I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to make, so I didn't know what type of tiles I needed. Everything down to the plot, location, tile resolution affects what kind of tiles you wind up using. Art styles clash if you can't find everything you need from one person. Making the 1st room was a headache, but today when I made the 2nd room (a hallway) it was much easier.

It's hard when you're making all of the original decisions, but once it's decided and you're just slapping down walls and floors, it gets much simpler. 

Although, I did the furniture wrong. So I'll have to go back in and change the tileset and then make another one for the furniture exclusively. Very annoying. The process of setting up the tileset in my art program is what was so slow and annoying in the first place.

  Currently as of writing, I have the game set up in multiple layers of tiles. It's kind of annoying though, and since I did the furniture off a whim and didn't go back to the video, I put the furniture on the tileset instead of letting them be their own sprites and objects. This slows the room building down. I also have another layer over the player and other objects, that allows for depth through layering, but again, it is slow and annoying. 

If anyone knows other ways of doing this separate from Peyton's method of making the furniture objects and not background tile pieces, let me know in the comments.

The day I wasn't really working I was also brainstorming whether or not I want to use prerendered flat backgrounds like in the game Moon to 

1. maybe make the game run smoother in the end, because as an old pc haver, I hate unoptimized games.
2. have softer more natural visuals, because tiles are Very Square.

Alternative methods of making a 2d game didn't originally occur to me, because I was so used to the tileset RPG method of map creation. Game maker isn't made specifically for RPGs the way RPGmaker is, so I can technically do whatever I want and just give off the illusion of a standard puzzle RPG.

This process will probably take a lot of experimentation, since forums tend to not be very helpful in their attitudes. Whatever I discover will end up on this blog.