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.