Year End Review.

Its the end of the year and i would like to review the things i have done. When i got into this class i was originally planning to do some coding. But a group of friends invited me to join their group, using game maker. To start off i had no idea what or how to start on game maker, so i found some tutorials in you tube, and online. Also i got tips from time to time from Howard, which improved some of my knowledge towards game maker. In a few weeks, i learned how to create Pause buttons.  Although it was amateurishly made, i think it still works for the game. That week i had to tweak a few things to actually made it work, which made me pretty interested in game maker then. From then on, i looked through other tutorials, online websites and their main site for more hints/tips for the gml (game maker language).

 In about a month or two, i created other codes to implement the game, save's main menu, and health. The things i could do were limited simply because i was completely new to game maker. Half way through the semester, the game that my group and I tried to create all went down, for some reason some unreasonable corrupted files were present. After this event we all restarted and tried to start from what we have left from the backup. With my knowledge i thought to myself to make a mini-game inside our game. Which i believe was a good choice because that way i could explore other ways to make a game better. Nearly the end of the semester i created many sprites, many objects and learned how to use variables with game maker. I'm confident that if i had to make a really bad game, i can do it.

Day 81

Today i tried to make my character invincible, so far i have made some variables to make this work. Two different variables to make it work, (learned from Howard). Next i tried to make a a few codes to make it work, for instance when i tried to make a code, i make it so that when they die they would be invincible for around 7-8 seconds. So far it hasn't been working so i just created another sprite to show that the object is invincible for a few seconds. To do so, i tried to make two images and made one image the opposite color of the other image. Next time ill try to figure it out how to make it invincible.

Day 80

Today i successfully created two separate the lives for the players, now both die and will make the a "Game Over" font pop up. It took awhile until i found a way to make the two players separate, we played with the codes, me and Howard tried a few things like changing the else and if statements. Although it worked for the most part we didn't particularly get the "Game over" font pop-up until we have to create another object and created the codes. So i made it so that if both of the players were to die, then the Pop-up will come up, and it worked in the end. Tomorrow i will add invincibility for the game.

Day 79

Today I changed how my first shipped looked, some people say that the first ship didn't look cool so it took me awhile to think of another ship to build. Its new, fatter, and it looks pretty strong. Next i fixed some codes for the power ups, sometimes when you use both the power ups, it cancels out and starts to shoot normally, now it shoots 3 different directions and rapid firing. I'm trying to fix the global life problem, so far i changed a the global to a variable and it didn't work as i hoped, so i changed it back to the way it was. Next time ill try again.

Day 78

Today me and Howard played with the random spawn object with my game. We tried multiple ways to create random spawns in the game.Right until later we figured it out, we need to either create a separate object or, use a controller object. Also we made sure that both the players receive the power ups. Next we created the rapid fire power up, and it works as well with the triple shot power up. Next i create a sprite for the rapid fire object so that you could go towards it and receive the benefit. Throughout the class for around half an hour, me and Howard had a little squabble over fixing the little random spawn code. It was a time well spent. Tomorrow i will try to change a few things to make it look a bit better.

Day 77

Today i changed all the names so that i could implement the mini game into the zombie game that my group is currently building. I changed all the e's to 3's which i believe we can still sound out the real word. Next i got a bit of help from Howard to create some power ups, so far we decided to create a 3 bullets in 3 different directions. Also i have to rename all my sprites and rename all codes to satisfy the interaction with the codes and objects. It took awhile but i got it done. Next class i'm planning to create another power up that shoots multiple bullets at one time. Another thing is i have to make the power ups randomly pop up in the game in timed intervals, which i will try next class.

Day 76

Today it took me a bit to figure out how to implement explosions on the game, the sprite i created uses 15 frames, which isn't entirely important. Next i tried the game, but the sprite became continuous when the bullet and the meteorite collided. I tried a few things to fix this little problem but it didn't work until later in the day. What worked was creating an image index which records the sub-images. Then I made it so it gets destroyed after those 15 frames. Which in the end worked. Also i fixed the problem with the continuous bullets, i changed the events to (Key press) only so when you need to shoot, you must press constantly. Tomorrow i will try fix a problem with the lives in multiplayer, because i haven't found a solution just yet