First Game Maker Homework (due Tuesday of week 3)
Task
Plan enough time for this homework assignment. Come to see me, if you need help. If you can't use Game Maker on your own computer, you can use the computers in the lab (Olin 102) or in the Computer Science Resource Room on the second floor of Steinmetz.
Using the basic mechanics of the dragon game, create a different game with a totally different atmosphere and story/theme by changing the aesthetics, that is, by using different images for the sprites and background.
Slight modifications to the mechanics are allowed, if you want to explore them. You can also play with adding background music and sound effects. (Check out the Gamemaker manuals.)
Resources
- On Blackboard you can find an implementation of the Dragon game we have been working with in class. In this game the player controls a dragon, which can move up and down and can be made to spit fire balls. The dragon is fighting against a monster which sends out flying demons. When the demons get hit by a fire ball, they die, but if a demon hits the dragon, the dragon dies. If the dragon dies, the game pauses for a second and then automatically restarts.
- To prepare images to become backgrounds or sprites, you may have to make some changes to the image. You can use any image manipulation program that you like (e.g., if you have access to Photoshop). We have a program called GIMP installed on the lab computers. (full GIMP documentation
- How to crop an image with GIMP. (I.e., how to cut out a section.)
- How to scale an image with GIMP
- Images a rectangles, but what you want to see in Game Maker is normally not the whole rectanlge but just some figure within that rectangle. Game Maker, therefore, takes the color of the pixel in the bottom left corner and assumes that that is the background color. It then makes all pixels of that same color transparent. That means, you have to make sure that your whole background (everything that you don't want to be visible) is of the same color. (What exactly the color is, is not important.) You may have to open your image in GIMP and color in the desired regions by hand.
- Information on creating sounds in Game Maker.
- Information on the "Play Sound" action.
Submit
Upload your game onto Blackboard.