Games for Social Change

IDM 111
Union College
Spring 2010

Second Game Maker Homework (due Tuesday of week 5)

During the last class you picked a "verb card". Your task for this assignment is to use Game Maker to implement a mechanic to represent the action you picked. The result does not need to be a complete game. It should be a prototype that lets you test this mechanic. For background, read this description of how prototypes for the game "Cloud" were made.

Step 1: Brainstorming and designing the mechanic

Think about your verb for a while. Come up with ideas of how this action could be implemented in a 2D computer game. You can use the keyboard and/or the mouse as input devices.

Step 2: Plan the Game Maker implementation

How can you implement your design in Game Maker? Come to see me to discuss this part. I can help you with aspects of Game Maker that we haven't talked about in class, yet. And I can point you to the right events and actions to use.

Step 3: Implement a first protoype in Game Maker

Do not use any fancy graphics. Just build your prototype using simple geometric shapes as sprites. I provide a set of shapes on Blackboard to get you started, but you can modify them or make your own if you want different colors, sizes or shapes.

(Optional) Step 4: Add more interesting graphics

Replace the simple shapes with more interesting graphics.

Submit on Blackboard

Submit your prototype using just the shapes on Blackboard. There is a link for submitting this assignment under the "Assignments" tab.

Optionally, you can submit a version where you replaced the shapes with more interesting images in addition to the shape based protoype.