Programming PDF

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.
3 Programming
By Carl Gustafsson
Beginners Guide to Game

Maker 4.3 Programming
This is a tutorial in how to start programming using Game Maker 4.0. It is

meant for beginners with little or no knowledge about computer programming
languages. I used Game Maker 4.0 when writing this, but today (2002-08-15)
the latest version of Game Maker is 4.2a. It ought to work just as well with
that version.
When version 4.3 of Game Maker was released, there were some changes to
the program that required a new revision of this guide. This is that revision.
Document written by Carl Gustafsson (carl.gustafsson@home.se)
Game Maker by Mark Overmars
This document is also available in online HTML format at:
http://www.gamecreators.nl, thanks to Martijn.
Document date: 2002-03-05
Revision 1 date: 2002-08-15
Revision 2 date: 2002-12-17
Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming
By Carl Gustafsson
1 Contents
1
CONTENTS .................................................. 2
INTRODUCTION ........................................ 3
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
SOME SPRITES.......................................... 5
CREATE OBJECTSS................................... 6
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT ....................... 6
SAVE, SAVE, SAVE! ................................. 7
ACTION ................................................... 7
REFINING THE ACTIONS ........................... 8
FIRST VARIABLE .................................... 10

FIRST FUNCTION .................................... 12
MORE VARIABLES ................................. 13
FIRST SCRIPT ......................................... 13
GETTING RID OF THE <NO KEY> EVENT 14
BULLET LOADING TIME ......................... 15
ENEMY AIRCRAFT.................................. 20
RANDOMIZING....................................... 22
OUCH! THAT HURT! .............................. 23
SHOOTOUT ............................................ 25
PYROTECHNICS ..................................... 26
ENHANCING THE GAME ...................... 29

6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
CENTERED SPRITES ................................ 29

SMOOTHER ENEMY APPEARANCE .......... 30
GOING GLOBAL ..................................... 31
WHERES MY ENERGY? ......................... 33
7
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND
EVERYTHING................................................... 36
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5
THE CODING BEGINS ............................ 10

4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
ENEMIES SIGHTED! ............................... 20

5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
CREATING A GAME ................................. 5

3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................ 3
GAME MAKER INFORMATION .................. 3
PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT .................. 3
OTHER REFERENCES ................................ 3
ABOUT CUT-AND-PASTE.......................... 3
FINISHED FILE.......................................... 4
WELL?..................................................... 4
A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY ................... 36

COOL WORD: PARALLAX ....................... 37
ENEMY FIRE .......................................... 38
MEANING OF LIFE .................................. 40
SCORING................................................ 43
FINAL WORDS ......................................... 44

8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
END OF THIS GUIDE................................ 44

COMMUNICATION .................................. 44
USELESS STATISTICS ............................. 44
BYE ....................................................... 44
By Carl Gustafsson
2 Introduction
2.1
Acknowledgements
I would like to use this space to say a heartily Thank You to Mark Overmars
for creating such a wonderful game building tool. Thank You Mark!
Thank you Martijn for converting this guide to HTML format and publishing it
at http://www.gamecreators.nl .
Thank You also to all members of the Game Maker community who are great
at helping me and each other with game building advice, help and hints.
Finally, I am grateful for all comments and suggestions that I have received
regarding this document from a number of Game Maker users.
2.2
Game Maker information

Game Maker is written by Mark Overmars. It is a complete game building tool
that can be used to create 2-dimensional computer games that can run on
Microsoft Windows systems. The program can be downloaded from the Game
Maker web site, http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html.
The application includes an integrated graphics creation tool that can be used
to create sprites, a drag-and-drop interface, making it a built-in
programming language that is similar to well-known programming languages
like C/C++, Pascal and BASIC.
With Game Maker it is possible to create computer games without using a
single line of code, thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop icons representing
game events and actions. However, to be able to create more advanced
games and really release the full potential of Game Maker the use of Game
Maker Language (hereafter referred to as GML) is an absolute requirement.
2.3
Purpose of this document

This guide was written as an attempt to introduce users that are used to
create games using the drag-and-drop method, to the concept of GML.
2.4
Other references
I am going to make a lot of references to the Game Maker PDF manual
(Game_Maker.pdf), so I suggest you have it ready. It can be downloaded
from the Game Maker web site (see 2.2 Game Maker information)
2.5
About Cut-and-paste
You might feel like cutting-and-pasting code from this document into Game
Maker, instead of writing it. That might work, but it seems like Word is doing
something bad to the minus signs (-) so I really encourage you to write it
down manually in Game Maker instead.
2.6
By Carl Gustafsson
Finished file
The Game Maker file that will be the result if you follow this guide can of
course be obtained by sending an email to me. But, again, I encourage you to
really carry out the actions described in here yourself. At least I learn a lot
more when doing than when only reading about something.
2.7
Well?
Well? What are you waiting for? Read on! ;)
By Carl Gustafsson
3 Creating a game
We need something to work with in order to be able to understand the
concepts of GML. This means that I, in the beginning, am going to refer to the
graphical drag-and-drop icons and compare them to the GML code.
So, start up Game Maker and create a blank game (File -> New, but I am
sure you know that).
3.1
Some sprites
In order to see anything in our game we are going to need some sprites. If
you do not know what a sprite is, I suggest you scan through Chapter 3 of the
Game Maker Manual. There are some sprites included with the Game Maker
installation, and to make things easier (this is not an image creation guide) I
am going to use them in the game.
For the player sprite, we are going to use the image called SR71.bmp. It can
be found in the Sprites \ Transport folder of the Game Maker installation
directory. The image looks like this:
Ah, yes! The SR-71 Blackbird is my absolute favorite plane! Add a new sprite.
In the name box, write sprPlayer. I always use the prefix spr in the names
of my sprites, since if a sprite has the same name as an object, errors may
occur. So, I consider it a good habit to have a naming convention for sprites
and such. Then, when the object is created, you do not have to worry about
the name coinciding with a sprite name. Another good thing about this is that
later, when you look at your code, for example when debugging, you
immediately know if you are referring to a sprite or not with a variable name.
For objects, I suggest the use of obj as prefix.
OK, so you have named the sprite? Good. Now, click the Load Sprite button.
In the file selection dialog that appears, browse through the Game Maker
install directory until you find the SR71.bmp image file. Select it.
Make sure that the checkbox marked Transparent is checked (that is, there
should be a tick mark in it). Otherwise, check it. This will make parts of the
sprite transparent. Which parts? All pixels that have the same color as the
pixel in the lower left corner of the sprite will be transparent when the sprite
is later drawn on the screen.
Most games I know involve some kind of shooting. For shooting we need
bullets. Create a new sprite and call it sprBullet. For a bullet image, let us
use a red ball. Red balls are common in games. Load the image ball2.gif
into the sprBullet sprite ( ). The image file is located in Sprites \
Breakout in the Game Maker installation directory. Make sure the sprite is
transparent (see above).
That is all sprites we will need for now.
3.2
By Carl Gustafsson
Create Objectss
The sprites we have created are just dumb images. OK I agree, they have
some intelligence, like transparency and bounding box information, but they
really do not do anything. The things in a Game Maker game that actually
performs some actions are the Objects. Did you read Chapter 3 of the Game
Maker Manual? If not, please read it now, since it explains the meaning of
objects.
Create a new object and call it objPlayer. Now you see it was a good idea to
call the Player sprite sprPlayer, and not just Player. In the objPlayer
objects sprite selection box, select sprPlayer. Now our objPlayer object
will look like the sprPlayer sprite. Great!
Time to create the bullet object. Create a new object. Name it objBullet and
select the sprite sprBullet as the sprite for the objBullet object.
3.3
Room for improvement

Now we need a place for the objects to act. This is done in a room.
Create a new room and call it Room1 (OBS! no space characters). You may
be tempted to call it Room 1 (with a space before the 1), but then you
would have a hard time referencing it from the GML, so never use spaces in
the name for your objects, sprites, rooms, etc. If you need to separate two
words in the name, use the underscore character instead _.
Click on the Background tab in Room1 to view the background settings.
Make sure Draw background color is enabled and click on background
color (upper right corner of background settings). Select a nice green (like
grass) color. Now your room should be all green. The room size should be
width: 640, height: 480. If not so, change it to these values. The default
Speed setting is 30, which is pretty normal for games. This means that a new
game frame will be created 30 times each second. Hence the expression
FPS, Frames Per Second. Not to be confused with FPS, First Person
Shooter Sorry, just being stupid.
We are now going to place an instance of our objPlayer object in the room.
Click on the Objects tab in the room properties window. In the Object to
add with left mouse selections box of the room, select objPlayer. Now click
ONCE in middle of the room. This should place an objPlayer instance where
you clicked. If you happened to click more than once, or move the mouse too
much when clicking there might have been created more than one objPlayer
instance in the room. To remove them, right-click on them. Make sure there is
only one objPlayer instance in the room.
Here we pause a moment to contemplate on the terms object and instance.
To explain this, I am going to use a metaphor. Hope it works. Your object is
like a cookie-form, you know the ones you use when making ginger-bread
cookies. When placing your objects in your room, you are actually placing
instances of the objects, which is like stamping out the cookies using your
cookie-form. Each instance will act just as described in the object, but each
instance will have its own local variables, like x and y position and speed
(more on variables later). Just like each ginger-bread cookie you stamp out
using your form is shaped like the form, but you can give them all different
looks with some icing. Hey! I am getting hungry! Back to the game.
Click OK to close the room window.
3.4
By Carl Gustafsson
Save, save, save!

Now we are almost ready to start the game, just to check that the objPlayer
instance is displayed properly in the game room. But before we run it, SAVE
IT! Remember to save your game often and ALWAYS save it before you run
it. It MAY happen, under certain circumstances, that the computer freezes
completely and all you can do is to restart it. NOT FUN if your game is not
saved.
Right. Save it with an imaginative name (I called mine GMLTutorial).
Now it is time to start it. Hit F5, or click on the green arrow to start the game.
Okaay! Now we have created the foundation for a Windows game. If you do
not see the green background with an instance of objPlayer in the middle,
you have missed something earlier in the tutorial, or something else is wrong.
Check back to see if you missed anything.
Close the game window through pressing [ESC] or clicking on the windows
Close icon (the cross-mark, you know).
3.5
Action
In order to be able to call our creation a game, we need to be able to interact
with it in some way, and preferably something should be moving too. We will
start out by making it possible to move the objPlayer with the cursor keys of
the keyboard.
Back in Game Maker, double-click on the objPlayer object to open it. Now
we are going to create some actions. When something happens to an object,
it is called an event. The objects response to this event is called an
action. What we want is that when we press any of the cursor keys, the
objPlayer should start moving in that direction.
There is a button in the objPlayer window that says Add Event. Click it. It
brings up a new window called event selector. Here it is possible to choose
which events that the object should respond to. Click on the event button
called Keyboard. It contains a list with some sub-lists containing events that
are triggered when different keyboard keys are pressed. Select the <Left>
key in this list. Now the event list of the object should have an event called
<Left> in it. It should be selected.
Now we can define the actions that should take place when the left cursor key
is pressed on the keyboard. The list of actions is to the right of the object
window. Find an action that is called Start moving in a direction. It is the top
left action on the Move tab, represented by 8 red arrows pointing away from
the middle. Drag this icon onto the white space between the event list and the
action list. We can call this the Action sequence.
A window will pop up when you drop the action in the action sequence. In this
window you can specify the parameters that are needed to define the action.
Click on the left arrow to select it in Directions, and set the speed to 5.
Then click OK.
What we now have done is to define that when the left key is pressed on the
keyboard, the objPlayer will start moving left.
Now, add the event for the <Right> key in event list. Look above to see
how to add an event if you have forgotten how it is done. Add the Start
moving in a direction action to that event, set the Right direction, and set the
speed to 5.
By Carl Gustafsson
Repeat this for the keys <Up> and <Down>, setting their corresponding
direction in the Directions section of the Start moving in a direction action.
Save the game and start it again.
You should now be able to move the plane using the cursor keys. Note
however, that it is not possible to stop the plane. Neither can you move
diagonally.
3.6
Refining the actions

We will now refine the actions a bit, as well as add a Shoot action.
Open the object window for objPlayer. Add the event <No key>, which is
also found among the other Keyboard events. This event will happen when
all keys on the keyboard are released. Add a Start moving in a direction
action and select the square in the middle of Directions. Click OK. This
should make the objPlayer stop when no key is pressed.
To add a shooting action, we need to decide which key should be used to fire
the bullet. I usually choose the [SPACE] key for this.
In the object window for objPlayer, add the <Space> key event. In the
action list, select the Objects tab to display the actions that have something
to do with objects. Select the Create an instance of an object (looks like a
light bulb) action. Drag it into the Action Sequence list. In the window that
pops up, choose the object objBullet and tick the checkbox marked
Relative. This means that an instance of the objBullet object will be
created at the same coordinates as the instance of the objPlayer object.
Click OK.
Now a Bullet will be created. But it needs to be moving too, to be of any use.
To do this, open the object window for the objBullet. Add the Create
event. Add the action: Set direction and speed of motion. This action can be
found in the Move tab, and looks like 8 blue arrows. In the popup window
for the action, enter 90 as the direction and 15 as the speed. This will
make the bullet start moving in the direction 90 with speed 15. Directions
are measured in degrees and work like this:
90
180
270
So, 90 would be straight up.

One more thing needs to be done before starting the game. What happens to
the bullet that reaches the top of the screen? Nothing. It just continues on
forever. So, when enough bullets are fired, the computers memory will be
filled up with data about bullets that moves up, up, up, and we never see
them. The thing to do is to make sure the bullet is destroyed once it reaches
the top of the screen.
By Carl Gustafsson
Add the event Outside room, which is found in the Other event list. This
event will happen when an instance moves outside the room. Add the action
Destroy the instance from the objects tab of the actions. The default
values are OK. Now the bullet will be destroyed once it reaches outside the
screen.
Save and start the game and try moving, stopping and shooting.
By Carl Gustafsson
4 The coding begins

All right. If you have followed the directions above, you should have a small
game with a plane that moves and shoots. The reason I created this is just
that now that you have done some dragging-and-dropping, we can relate the
code statements to these actions to improve the understanding. (At least,
that is a theory I have ).
Coding. That may sound spooky to some people, while others will relate it to
very cool stuff. Really, coding is like doing the thing we did before, with the
icons and such, but with text instead. Actually it is possible to create a game
builder where a game creator is able to do everything with icons and dragand-drop that is possible with coding in Game Maker, but that would mean
hundreds of different icons, and the list of icons in an action sequence would
be longer than the screen, and it would be impossible to gain a good
overview. (Wow, Word complained about a long sentence )
So, this is actually a situation where a picture does NOT say more than a
thousand words.
4.1
First variable
The first thing we did with the drag-and-drop actions was making the plane
move when the cursor keys are pressed. We are now going to exchange the
action icons for code.
Open the objPlayer object and select the <Left> key event. Remove the
Start moving in a direction action from the action sequence list by selecting
it and pressing [DEL]. Now, view the Code tab in the actions list. The two
actions I use the most here are Execute a script and Execute a piece of
code. Drag the action Execute a piece of code to the action sequence.
What now pops up is something that looks like an empty window a CODE
window <Tension-building music score here>. This is where we enter the
code that should be executed as a response to the <Left> key event.
Enter the following code:
direction = 180;
speed = 5;
What this means is that the variable direction of the current instance of the
objPlayer object is set to 180, and the variable speed is set to 5. This is
called variable assignment. To read more about variables and assignments,
see section 24.2 and 24.3 of the Game Maker Manual.
10
By Carl Gustafsson
Essentially a variable is a place in the computer memory that can hold a

value. There are different kinds of values that a variable can hold. Game
Maker differs between two different types of variable information: numbers
and strings. A number is just a plain number, like
1
5
2.21
63.132
24
Strings are lists of characters that are enclosed in single-quotes or doublequotes, like:
Hello
This is a string
This is another string
The use of both single-quotes and double-quotes for defining a string is one of
the nice aspects of Game Maker. It makes it possible to easily include a
single-quote or a double-quote in a string. Think about it. If you only could
define a string with double-quotes, how would you tell the computer that you
wanted a string that CONTAINED a double-quote? This code:
aLittleString = And she said gasp and fainted;
will be very confusing for the computer. It would be treated as TWO strings,
with the word gasp between them. The same goes for single-quotes.
Instead, this code could be used (note the difference):
aLittleString = And she said gasp and fainted;
Back to the game.

The variables direction and speed are built-in variables, and every
instance has them. When we are writing variables like this, we are referring to
the so-called local variables that belong to an instance of an object. This
means that if we would check the value of direction in, for example an
instance of the objBullet object, we would not see the value 5, but instead
another value, that is local to the objBullet instance.
By setting the variable direction to 180, we tell Game Maker that the
direction in which this instance should move is 180 (left). Setting the speed
variable to 5 instructs Game Maker to move the instance 5 pixels each frame,
in the direction of the direction variable. Fair enough?
So, why is there a semicolon (;) at the end of each string? This tells the
program interpreter that this is the end of the statement. Each statement
should end with a semicolon. Works about the same as . (dot) for people.
Dots mark the end of a sentence. A statement in a computer program is about
the same as a sentence to people. Actually, the GML does not need the
semicolon. It understands the code anyway, if each statement is placed on a
separate line, but it is considered good programming to use semicolons.
OK, now we are done with the <Left> event. Click the green check mark to
store the code changes and close the window. Otherwise, this window blocks
all other windows. It must be closed when you are done editing.
11
4.2
By Carl Gustafsson
First function
Let us go to the <Right> event.
Remove the Start moving in a direction action from the <Right> key event.
Add an Execute a piece of code action instead.
Now, we could do this in the same way as the <Left> event, by setting the
direction and speed variables, but just to learn other ways to do the same
thing, we do something different. We are going to use a function.
A function is like a collection of program statements that are bundled together
and can be executed by calling the function name.
When your math teacher speaks of functions, he means something like this:
y(x) = 4 + 3x
This is a definition of a function. The name of the function is y. The x in
the parentheses is called an argument to the function y.
The result of, for example, y(5) would be 19. (4 + 3 * 5). The * (asterisk)
character is commonly used as multiplication operator in computer languages.
What we have done here, if it had been a computer program, would be to call
the function y with the argument 5. A function is called, takes some
arguments, does some computing, and returns a value. Not all functions
return values, and not all functions take any arguments at all, but this is the
general idea of a function.
Note: in other languages the concept function could be called other things,
like procedure, method, subroutine etc, but practically speaking they work
very much the same.
So, if you look in the Game Maker Manual, on page 80, there is a definition of
a function called motion_set. The definition looks like this:
motion_set(dir, speed)
The text after the definition in the manual explains that this function will set
the speed of an object to the speed argument, and the direction to the dir
argument. OK, so now, let us use this function in the <Right> key event.
Do you still have the code window (empty) for the action in the <Right> key
event? Good. Otherwise, double-click it to open it up again.
In the empty code window, write:
motion_set(0, 5);
Now we have called the function motion_set with the arguments 0 and 5
in the places where dir and speed should be defined. And voil! When the
<Right> cursor key is pressed in the game, your instance should now start
moving in the direction 0 (right) with speed 5.
We have now done the same thing, but in two different ways. Which way is
the best depends on the situation. In this case, I think the second way, with
the function call is the best, but suppose that you just wanted to change the
speed of the instance, and not the direction. If so, it would be easier to just
assign a new speed value to the speed variable.
Later in this guide, we will define and use our own scripts, which works in a
similar manner as the built-in functions.
12
4.3
By Carl Gustafsson
More variables
There is a third way to accomplish what we have done in the <Right> and
<Left> key events.
Select the <Up> key event for the objPlayer object. Add an Execute a
piece of code action to the action sequence. In the code window, write:
hspeed = 0;
vspeed = -5;
Now, what was that? hspeed and vspeed are two other examples of
variables that are built-in in an object. These variables define the horizontal
and vertical speed of the object. If you are a mathematician, you could say
that hspeed and vspeed defines the speed vector in rectangular
coordinates, while direction and speed defines the speed vector in polar
coordinates.
Anyway, setting the vertical speed vspeed to 5 means that the instance
should start moving upwards. That is because the y axis on a computer
screen is pointing downwards, so the further down the screen you go, the
higher the value of the y coordinate. So, in order to make an instance move
upwards, we must have a negative vertical speed.
The horizontal speed is set to 0, meaning that the instance should not move
left or right at all.
The only movement left now is the <Down> key. We are going to create it in
a fourth way. Close the code window for the <Up> key.
4.4
First script
This time you are going to learn how a freestanding script works. Create a
new script (Menu: Add -> Script).
This will bring forth a code window, much like the ones we have used before.
The difference is that this window has a name box on its top. Enter the name
MovePlayerDown there. The name could be anything, but should describe
the scripts functionality in a good way. Remember; do not use spaces in the
name.
Enter the following code in the script:
hspeed = 0;
vspeed = 5;
Then you can, if you want to, close the script, but you might as well leave it
open.
Go back to the objPlayer object window. Select the <Down> key event.
Remove the existing action from the action sequence. Add an Execute a
script action.
A new window will pop up, where you can select which script should be run,
and enter some arguments to it. To the right of the Script: textbox there is
a selection icon. Click it. A list of scripts should appear. Only one script exists
in the list so far, the MovePlayerDown script. Select it.
Our script does not use any arguments, so leave the rest of the window as it
is and click OK.
Now, when the player presses the <Down> key, the objPlayer instance will
call the MovePlayerDown script, which in turn will start the objPlayer
moving downwards.
13
By Carl Gustafsson
What is the point of making a freestanding script? Well, in this case, there is
not much of a point, but if the script would be very long, it is easier to
maintain if it is freestanding. You do not need to open the object and search
for the correct event to find and edit the script. It is also possible to have
many freestanding scripts open at the same time. That is not possible with
scripts that belong to an object event.
The most important reason to make a freestanding script is that any object
may use it. If an instance of the object objBullet needed to move
downwards with speed 5, it could also call on this new script, and the script
would act on the objBullet instance instead of on an objPlayer instance.
It is also possible to call a freestanding script from another script.
Almost forgot about the <No key> event. That is where the plane is stopped.
Close the code window, and select the <No key> event. Remove the Start
moving in a direction action and add an Execute a piece of code action
instead. Write the following in the new code window:
speed = 0;
The direction does not matter when the speed is 0, right?

Dats it!
We have now exchanged the graphical drag-and-drop icons for the code text.
It did not require much coding, did it?
But there are lots of things to improve with coding, so we are going to
continue on this game a bit more.
Save your game and try it. You should not notice any difference. The code
works in the same way as the icons did.
4.5
Getting rid of the <No key> event

Actually, the <No key> event is no good for stopping a player-controlled
instance. You might have noticed that if you are shooting while moving, and
release the move key, but keep holding the shoot key, you are still moving.
This is because since you are holding down the shoot key ([SPACE]) you are
not getting any <No key> event. And you can imagine how many <No key>
events we would receive in a two-player game. No, not many. How can we
solve this?
This is the way I would solve it.
Open the objPlayer object and select the <No key> event. Then click on the
button Delete below the events list. This should remove the <No key> event
and all its actions. (You may have to answer Yes to an are you sure?
question first though).
Select the <Left> key event, and double-click on the Execute a piece of
code action in the action sequence. This should bring up your code window.
Instead of setting a speed and a direction for the objPlayer here, we could
just change the coordinates for it ourselves. In that case it would ONLY move
while the key is pressed. Another thing we will gain with this is that we will be
able to move diagonally as well. Great!
So, delete all code in the code window, and write this instead:
x = x 5;
14
By Carl Gustafsson
This means that we set the variable x to itself minus 5, that is, we decrease
its value by 5.
The x variable of an instance contains its x-coordinate in the room. So, by
decreasing the x variable, the instance will move 5 pixels to the left. This is
repeated for each game frame as long as the player holds down the <Left>
key. That is exactly what we want.
We want the same thing with the other direction keys, so let us change the
code for the other keys too.
Open up the event for the <Right> key in the objPlayer object. Double-click
on the action in the action sequence to open the code window. Delete the
motion set function call and write the following instead:
x += 5;
This is the same as writing

x = x + 5;
only this is shorter.

Now I think you know what to do with the <Up> and <Down> keys. That is
right. The code for the <Up> key event should contain:
y -= 5;
and the code for the <Down> key event should be:
y += 5;
For the <Down> key we made a freestanding script. We could as well keep it
and edit that instead of changing the action into an Execute a piece of code
action. So, just open the script MovePlayerDown and change the code as
stated above.
Now it is time to save the game and run it again. There are two things I want
you to notice about the game now.
1. The plane does not continue moving when the fire key is held down but
the move keys are released. Good.
2. It is possible to move the plane diagonally. That is good too.
4.6
Bullet loading time

When shooting bullets from the plane you may have noticed that they come in
a never-ending, uninterrupted flow. We may want this, but I do not think it
looks very good. So, let us add some loading time to the gun. To do this, we
will use the alarm feature of the objPlayer object, and a local variable.
The theory behind the loading time goes like this:
When the [Space] key is pressed, before firing a bullet, a local variable is
checked to see if the gun is ready to fire. We can call this variable
gunReady. The variable gunReady will take on one of two values. Either it
is true, that means that the gun can fire, or it is false, which means that
the gun cannot fire right now. If gunReady is true when [Space] is pressed,
a bullet is fired, and the gunReady is set to false. This means that when
[Space] is pressed again, the gun will not fire. However, at the same time as
we set gunReady to false, we set an alarm timer. When the timer runs out,
it is going to set the variable gunReady back to true and we can shoot
again. This will repeat itself during the whole game.
OK. The first thing to do is to make sure that the variable gunReady has a
value the first time it is checked when pressing the Fire button. This is called
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By Carl Gustafsson
to initialize a variable. If it is not set to a value before it is checked, the game

will be halted with an error.
The CREATE event of an object is a good place to initialize variables. Open
the object window for the objPlayer object and add the CREATE event. Add
an Execute a piece of code action to the event. In the code window that
appears, write this:
gunReady = true;
That will set the variable gunReady to true. The word true is one of
Game Makers built-in constants. Practically speaking, using the word true is
the same as using the number 1. The word false is another of Game
Makers built-in constants. It represents the number 0. That means that we
could as well write
gunReady = 1;
and achieve the same result. But using the words true and false kind of
makes more sense.
I will take this time to introduce a new concept in coding; the concept of
comments. Comments are very important in code. The comments are meant
for the human reader of the code, and not for the computer, which will simply
ignore it. Use comments a lot to describe what you mean with your code. This
will make it a lot easier later when you want to change something. Or debug
it. To add a comment, write the two characters // before the comment. Like
this:
// Make the gun ready to fire.
gunReady = true;
The computer will completely ignore the comment and execute the other
code. But when someone sees this code segment, they will understand more
about what is happening than if they only saw the computer code.
A comment can also be added after a program statement, like this:
gunReady = true; // Make the gun ready to fire.
but I prefer the style with the comment on its own row. You do whatever you
like.
Now, remember how we shoot the bullet? In the <Space> key event of the
objPlayer we create an instance of the bullet object. Open the <Space> key
event for the objPlayer. Delete the Create an instance of an object action
from the action sequence. Add an Execute a piece of code action to the
event. This will, as usual, open up a code window. The first thing we will do
here is to check if the gun is ready. That is, we will check if the variable
gunReady is true. How do we check the value of a variable? That is what
the if statement is for.
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By Carl Gustafsson
The definition of the if statement is like this (excerpt from the manual):
An if statement has the form
if (<expression>) <statement>
or
if (<expression>) <statement> else <statement>
The statement can also be a block. The expression will be evaluated. If the (rounded) value is
<=0 (false) the statement after else is executed, otherwise (true) the other statement is
executed. It is a good habit to always put curly brackets around the statements in the if
statement. So best use
if (<expression>)
{
<statement>
}
else
{
<statement>
}
Hmmm. That might be a bit hard to understand if you are not a programmer.
To clear things out, I will simply write out the if statement as it should look
in our code window. Write down this:
if (gunReady = true) then
{
}
That was not so hard, was it? This means that if the variable gunReady has
the value true, the code that we (later) put inside the curly braces will be
executed. Otherwise, it will just be ignored. I have added the word then
after the parenthesis, but that is not required. It just adds to the readability
of the code. You may use the then word or not, as you like. The so-called
curly braces will be used a lot in the code. They come from the C/C++
language. The thing is that if we just want to perform one single code
statement inside the if statement, the braces are not needed, but it is
considered good programming style to always include them. The braces kind
of create a block of code that, to the language interpreter, looks like a single
statement. To understand why this is useful, consider the following example.
If the variable speed is higher than 5, we want to move the object to the
position where x = 40 and y = 80. Simple enough. So, we write:
if (speed > 5) then
x = 40;
y = 80;
But THAT will NOT work as we would expect it to do. The if statement only
affects the FIRST statement, just below it. That means that if speed is NOT
higher than 5, the x = 40 will be skipped, but the y = 80 will be executed
anyway. To solve this, we need either another if statement for the y = 80
statement, that is the same as the first if statement, or, much easier, we
could use curly braces. Like this:
if (speed > 5) then
{
x = 40;
y = 80;
}
This means that both the x thing and the y thing are included in the if
statement. Now, if speed is NOT higher than 5, neither x = 40 nor y =
80 will be executed. If speed however IS higher than 5, both the following
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By Carl Gustafsson
statements will be executed. Now, do you understand the point in using curly
braces? They are used for more statements, but we will take them as we go.
Now, back to the game code. In your code window you should now have a
complete if statement with curly braces. But there is still nothing inside
the braces. Here we will create an instance of the objBullet object. Earlier
this was done using a drag-and-drop action. Now we will do it in code. It is
quite simple. We will use the function instance_create. It can be found in
the Game Maker manual, in section 26.2, page 83.
Inside the curly braces, enter this:
instance_create(x, y, objBullet);
There! Now you have created a bullet. But what about the x and the y?
Should we not enter some numerical value there? Actually that is what we
have done. The variables x and y holds the position of the current
objPlayer instance (remember, we are in the objPlayer object while
coding), and these coordinates will do as the starting coordinates of the
objBullet instance. This is the same as creating an instance with the dragand-drop icon and checking the Relative checkbox.
Now, that was not all we should do, was it? No. We also should set the
gunReady variable to false to make sure that the gun can not be fired
immediately again. Enter this, just after the instance_create line:
gunReady = false;
That was easy!

Now we will have to set an alarm to make sure that the gunReady variable
becomes true again, after some time. Setting an alarm is done like this:
alarm[0] = 10;
There are 8 alarm clocks (alarm[0] alarm[7]). We have used alarm[0] here.
These brackets ([]) are used to define an array. An array is like a list of
variables that all have the same name, but are numbered to make them differ
from one another. We will look closer at arrays in another tutorial. Now the
alarm alarm[0] will trigger in 10 frames.
We are now done with the code in the <Space> key event. If you want, you
could shorten the if statment row like this:
if (gunReady) then
Because that is the same as checking if gunReady contains ANY positive

number, which it does if it is true.
So, the code should now look like this:
if (gunReady) then
{
instance_create(x, y, objBullet);
gunReady = false;
alarm[0] = 10;
}
The three lines between the curly braces are indented, that is, you should
add a TAB character before them. This is just to make the code easier to
read. The language interpreter does not care about indentations at all, but it
is good for human readability. It is easier to see which part of the code is
collected inside a curly braces block.
Alright!
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By Carl Gustafsson
One thing remains; the alarm[0] event. Close this code window and add the
event for alarm[0]. Add an Execute a piece of code action and write the
following code in the window:
gunReady = true;
That will make sure that when the alarm goes off, 10 frames after the bullet
has been fired, the variable gunReady is set to true again.
Now, save and test your game!
If you have followed the directions correctly, the objPlayer should now fire
with longer intervals (about 3 bullets per second). Much better.
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By Carl Gustafsson
5 Enemies sighted!
There are very few games that do not include computer-controlled enemies to
the player. After all, we must have someone to fight. In this chapter we will
add some enemy craft and learn to use the random function and check
collisions.
5.1
Enemy aircraft
I have decided that the enemy should consist of enemy aircraft that appear at
the top of the screen and fly across to the bottom of the screen.
We need to do the following:
-
Have the craft appear at random time intervals.
The craft should appear at random places along the top screen.
When the craft disappear at the bottom of the screen, they should be
destroyed.
Later we will add a collision event between the enemy craft and the
objPlayer.
First, we must create an enemy craft sprite and an enemy craft object.
I have decided to use the image Mig41.gif from the folder Sprites \
Transport in the Game Maker directory. It looks like this:
Create a new sprite, call it sprEnemy1 and load this image into it. Did you
forget how? Check chapter 3.1 Some sprites. The craft is however facing
upwards, and we need our enemy craft to face downwards, unless of course
we want it to attack in reverse, but I do not think that would look good.
In order to rotate the craft, open the sprite and click the Edit sprite button.
Click on image 0 to select it, and choose Transform -> Rotate 180 from
the menu. That should rotate the craft to face downwards. Click OK to close
the sprite edit window. Click OK again to close the sprite window.
Now we need to make an enemy object. Create a new object and call it
objEnemy1. Choose sprEnemy1 as the sprite for the object.
We want the enemies to come down at certain intervals and fly across the
screen. In order to control the creation of the enemies, we need a control
object. We could use the objPlayer as this object, but I prefer not to. I
would rather have a dedicated enemy control object.
Time to explain the term control object. The concept of a control object is to
have an instance of an object that is always present in the game. It should
not be possible to shoot it down or otherwise destroy it. This control object is
used to create instances of other objects, such as swarms of enemies that
come flying down. Instances of control objects are also good at keeping some
data in their local variables that cannot be kept in, for example the instance of
the player object, since it is destroyed at times (we will come to that). A
control object is usually invisible, so that the user does not know it is there. It
does its dirty job undercover.
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By Carl Gustafsson
So, the instance of this control object will not be visible when playing the
game, but we need it to be represented by some sprite anyway, in order to
place it and see it in the room. So, we do like this.
Create a new sprite, called sprEnemyController and load into it the image
trigger.gif from the Sprites \ Maze folder in the Game Maker directory.
That looks good for a controller, doesnt it ? Create a new object, call it
objEnemyController and assign the sprite sprEnemyController to it. Make
sure the checkbox Visible in the object window of objEnemyController is
unchecked. That will make the controller object invisible to the player, but
we will be able to see it when designing the game.
Open Room1. Add an instance of the objEnemyController object somewhere
in the room. It does not matter where you place it. Just somewhere you can
see it. Also, the player instance (the objPlayer) should be placed at the
bottom of the room in order to give the player time to react before the
enemies come. If you placed the objPlayer somewhere in the middle of the
room, like I did, delete it by right-clicking on it, select the objPlayer instance
from the Object selection box and place a new instance of the objPlayer
object in the middle, near the bottom of the screen. There!
Now we should create the script for initializing a new enemy. Create a new
script and call it Enemy1Init. For a starter we only want the enemy craft to
travel down across the screen. So, in the new script we write:
vspeed = 10;
That will make whatever object calls the script move downward across the
screen with a speed of 10.
We also need the enemies to disappear once they move below the screen.
Create a new script and call it EnemyDisappear. Enter this code:
instance_destroy();
That code is a call to the function instance_destroy, which destroys the

instance that calls it. See chapter 26.2 (page 83) of the Game Maker manual
for more information about this function.
That is all code needed for the enemy so far. We will make it a little more
advanced later on.
Now we will add two scripts for the enemy controller object. Create two new
scripts and call them EnemyControllerInit and CreateEnemy1. In the script
EnemyControllerInit, write the following:
alarm[0] = 30;
That will set the alarm[0] function of the objEnemyController to trigger after
30 frames. That is about 1 second in real time provided that the room speed
is 30 FPS. When the alarm triggers it will call the other script, called
CreateEnemy1. In that script, write:
instance_create(50, 0, objEnemy1);
alarm[0] = 30;
The first line will create a new instance of the object objEnemy1 at the xcoordinate 50 and the y-coordinate 0. Check chapter 26.2 (page 83) of the
Game Maker manual for more information about this function.
The second line sets the alarm[0] once again to 30 frames (1 second) to
make sure another enemy appears after 1 second.
Now we should make the objects call these scripts. Open the object
objEnemy1. Add the event CREATE. This event will happen when an
instance of the object is created. Add the action Execute a script. In the
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By Carl Gustafsson
window that pops up, select the script Enemy1Init. Click OK to close the
action window.
Add the event Outside. Add the action Execute a script to the event and
select the script EnemyDisappear. Click OK to close the action window.
Open the object window for objEnemyController. Add the event CREATE.
Add the action Execute a script and select the script EnemyControllerInit.
Close the action window. And, finally, to the event Alarm 0, add the action
Execute a script and select the script CreateEnemy1.
Save the game and run it.
You should see enemy aircraft appearing and flying across the screen,
disappearing at the bottom. Note that the instance of the object
objEnemyController is not visible when running the game. If it is, you forgot
to uncheck the checkbox Visible in the object window of
objEnemyController.
5.2
Randomizing
The appearance of the enemies is quite boring though. We would want them
to appear at random positions along the top of the screen, and at random
intervals and random speeds. That would make the game a lot more
interesting, dont you think? That is what the random function is for.
Check out the definition for the function random in the Game Maker manual,
chapter 25.2 (page 78). The random function could be used to make things
happen randomly, for example simulating a dice. It returns a random value
that is always less than the specified value. Like this:
random(3);
The above line will return values from 0 to 2.9999999999999999999. If I am

correctly informed, Game Maker works with 20 decimals.
To get rid of the decimals, we could use another Game Maker function, called
floor. This function simply takes away all decimals, so that, for example:
floor(1.23423) = 1
floor(2.999999999) = 2
If we wanted to simulate a 6-sided dice, we would use:
myDice = random(6);
The above line would give values from 0 to 5.9999 Then we use the floor
function:
myDice = floor(myDice);
As the argument to the floor() function, we use the variable myDice itself.
This is perfectly OK. The result will now be an integer between 0 and 5.
Almost there. We could now add 1 to the result.
myDice = myDice + 1;
And finally the result would be values from 1 to 6, all with the same
probability.
To save some place in the coding window, we could do all there calculations in
one line:
myDice = floor(random(6)) + 1;
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By Carl Gustafsson
The above line might be a bit hard to read, but it carries out all the previous
calculations in one statement.
Now we will put the random function to work in three places of our code.
Open up the script CreateEnemy1.
First we want the enemies to appear at random positions along the top of the
screen. That means we want to use random values ranging from 0 to 639,
which is the width of our game screen (640 pixels wide). The statement
random(640);
will produce values from 0 to 639.999999. Adding the floor function,

floor(random(640));
will produce values from 0 to 639 with no decimals. That looks good. But what
if we later want to change the screen size? No problem. In Game Maker there
is a variable that can be used to determine the size of the screen. It is called
screen_width. So, instead of using 640, we will use screen_width. (see
manual chapter 28.6, page 103). So, now we can change the first line of the
script to read:
instance_create(floor(random(screen_width)), 0, objEnemy1);
Be VERY careful with the parentheses, since Game Maker might crash if they
are not all there.
If you want, you can save the game and test it.
We also want the enemies to appear at different time intervals. Say between
0.3 and 2 seconds. 0.3 seconds mean 10 frames, and 2 seconds mean 60
frames. So we want a random number between 10 and 60. Change the
second line in the script to:
alarm[0] = floor(random(51)) + 10;
That will result in alarm times from 10 to 60 frames.

Save and run the game again.
Finally, we want the enemies to fly at random speeds. Open the script
Enemy1Init and change the code line to this:
vspeed = random(8) + 2;
This will give speeds from 2 to 9.999999. We do not use floor here, since
speeds with decimals are OK.
Test the game. Now you will see that the enemies appear at different places,
at different times and at different speeds. Just what we wanted!
5.3
Ouch! That hurt!

So far, the enemies are not dangerous. There is no point in avoiding them.
Well, that we will have to remedy!
If you have created any game before, you have probably used the Collision
Detection feature of Game Maker. It is really great. We will use it now to
detect collisions between the player and the enemies.
Create a new script and call it PlayerEnemy1Collision. Open the object
window for the objPlayer object and add the event for collision with the
objEnemy1 object. That is the event button with the two red arrows pointing
at each other. Click on the selection box next to it and select objEnemy1.
Good.
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By Carl Gustafsson
Here you add an Execute a script action and select the script
PlayerEnemy1Collision for the action. Close the action window and the
objPlayer object window.
Now we can concentrate on the script. We want to make it possible to run into
a number of enemies before the player dies. Otherwise the game may be too
difficult to play. So, we are going to use something we call Energy to
measure how much beating the objPlayer can take before it blows up. Lets
say the objPlayer starts out having 100 energy units. Then, every time it
runs into an enemy craft it will lose 30 energy units. Fair enough? Then, when
it reaches 0 energy units, it will be destroyed. The enemy craft will be
destroyed immediately when hitting the objPlayer.
In the collision event script we will therefore need to decrease the energy of
objPlayer. It could be done like this:
myEnergy -= 30;
We also need to check if the energy is 0. If it is, the instance of objPlayer

should be destroyed. Remember the if statement?
if (myEnergy = 0) then
{
instance_destroy();
}
Here I have deliberately included a bad thing about the if statement. Can
you see what is wrong? It is the test, =. This statement will only check if the
energy is exactly 0. But what about if the energy is first 10, and then you run
into an enemy and lose 30 energy units, and the energy becomes 20? Then
this if statement will not trigger and destroy the instance of objPlayer. So,
it is better to use the <= test operator. It means Less than, or equal to.
So, write this instead:
if (myEnergy <= 0) then
{
instance_destroy();
}
That will destroy the objPlayer if the energy is 0 or less than 0.

We also want the enemy to be destroyed, so add the line
with (other) instance_destroy();
to the BEGINNING of the script.

This introduces the with statement. The with statement is extremely
useful. It allows us to do something to another instance. In this case we want
to destroy the instance that we collide with. This is called the other instance
in a collision event. So with the other instance we want it to destroy itself.
The code line above is the same as writing instance_destroy() in the code of
the other instances object.
So, the entire script PlayerEnemy1Collision should now look like:
myEnergy -= 30;
if (myEnergy <= 0) then
{
instance_destroy();
}
Now we only need to set a starting energy level. We decided to start at 100
energy units. This should be set in the CREATE event of the objPlayer. We
had better create a script for it, this is what this tutorial is for after all. So,
create a new script and call it PlayerInit.
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By Carl Gustafsson
Enter the following line in the script:

myEnergy = 100;
If we do not initialize the variable myEnergy to anything, an error will

appear when the objPlayer hits an instance of the objEnemy1 object. You
could try to run the game (save first!) before setting the CREATE event of the
objPlayer to see what it looks like when you forget to initialize a variable. It
could be good to know, because it is easy to forget it. When you hit another
craft it says:
Unknown variable or function: myEnergy
So, click Abort and let us set the CREATE event of the objPlayer object.
Open the objPlayer object, select the CREATE event. Here you will see the
Execute a piece of code action that we added earlier. Double-click on it. It
should only contain one line of code; the initialization of the gunReady
variable. This is a good thing to move to our new PlayerInit script. So, select
the code in the code window and copy it. Close the code window and delete
the action Execute a piece of code from the action sequence. Add an
Execute a script action and select the script PlayerInit. Now, open the
script PlayerInit and paste the code from the action we just deleted. If you
have done it right, the script PlayerInit should now contain:
gunReady = true;
myEnergy = 100;
Now, save the game and run it again.

You should notice that the enemy aircraft disappear when you run into them.
When you run into the fourth craft, the instance of objPlayer too disappears.
Right! Now there is a point in avoiding the enemies.
5.4
Shootout
So far your bullets have done nothing to reduce the oncoming swarm of
enemy craft. The point of having a gun in a game is to be able to do some
damage. So we need the bullets fired from the objPlayer instance to
damage the enemy craft.
We will make a script that takes care of the collision between a bullet and an
enemy craft. Create a new script and call it BulletEnemyCollision.
This script should work in almost the same way as the collision script for the
objPlayer and objEnemy1. The energy level of the enemy should be
decreased, and a check should be made to see if the energy level is 0 or less.
Lets say that the enemy craft start out with an energy level of 100, they too.
Then when a bullet hits them, their energy level should be decreased with 50
units, which means that it takes two bullets to kill an enemy.
Here is the script we will use:
with (other)
{
// Lower enemy energy
myEnergy -= 50;
// Check if enemy energy is 0 or less
if (myEnergy <= 0)
{
// If so, destroy enemy.
instance_destroy();
}
}
// Destroy this bullet
instance_destroy();
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By Carl Gustafsson
The difference between this script and the previous is that here most of the
work is done on the enemy instance, and not on the instance of the object
that contains the code (the objBullet object).
To have more than one statement inside a with statement, you could use
the curly braces like this. As you can see, it is also possible to nest the curly
braces. That means, in this example, that you can have an if statement
inside a with statement. When you do like this, you usually use two TAB
characters in the beginning of the deepest nested lines to show that they
belong inside the if statement. Once again, the TAB characters, or, as it is
also called, indentation is only important to the human eye. The computer
does not care.
So, this script lowers the enemys energy with 50 units and checks if the
energy level is 0 or less. If so, the enemy is destroyed.
Finally the script also destroys the bullet. Otherwise it would have continued
to move across the screen. I have also put some comments in this script to
show how I usually use comments. They are supposed to increase the
readability of the code and make it easier to understand.
Open the object window for the objBullet object. Find and select the collision
event with objEnemy1. Add an Execute a script action and select the script
we just created (BulletEnemyCollision).
Now we only need to give the enemies a starting energy level. We already
have an initializing script for the enemies, so lets use it. Open up the script
Enemy1Init and add the line:
myEnergy = 100;
That should set the starting energy for the enemies to 100.
Save the game and try it out. Great! Now it is possible to shoot the enemy
craft, but only the slow ones. The ones moving fast are hard to hit.
5.5
Pyrotechnics
Explosions! They are what are missing from our game. Fortunately Game
Maker comes bundled with a nice explosion animation. We will create an
explosion object from it.
First, we need to create the sprite. This time it will be an animating sprite,
meaning it has more than one image. Create a new sprite and call it
sprExplosion. Load into it the image file that is called explode2.gif. It
should be located in the Game Maker directory, in the Sprites \ Various
folder. When you have loaded it, you will notice that the sprite window says
the number of subimages is 17. Click on the Edit Sprite button.
You will now see all 17 subimages of the sprite. They are named image 0 to
image 16. To see them animated, check the little checkbox in the upper left
corner of the Sprite Edit window, the one that is called Show Preview.
If you look at the images, you can see that image 0 displays the explosion
already a bit exploded. It seems that the animation starts somewhere in the
middle of the explosion. This is strange, and I have no idea why it is like this.
We will have to change it in order for the explosion to look correct when used
in the game.
26
By Carl Gustafsson
Select image 0 and click the red arrow pointing to the right in the toolbar.
This moves the image one step to the right. Keep clicking on the right arrow
until the image is moved all the way to the end of the animation. The name of
the selected image should now be image 16. Now, select the new image 0
and move it to the end of the image sequence. You can use the key
combination [CTRL] + [R] instead of clicking on the right arrow all the time.
Keep moving images like this until image 0 is the image with the smallest
bright spot and image 16 is an empty image with just the green background.
It should look like this when you are ready:
If you check the Show Preview box again, you should notice no difference.
But that is just because the animation is looped endlessly when looking at the
preview. When using it in the game, we will only see the sequence once, and
then it is more important where it starts.
Close the sprite edit window and the sprite window. Create a new object,
called objExplosion. Select the sprite sprExplosion for the new object. In
the ANIMATION END event of the objExplosion object, add an Execute a
piece of code action. The ANIMATION END event can be found in the
selection box of the Other events key:
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By Carl Gustafsson
In the code window that pops up, destroy the instance:

instance_destroy();
That will destroy the explosion instance once it has played through its
animation frames.
Now, open the object objEnemy1. In the DESTROY event of objEnemy1,
add an Execute a piece of code event. We use this action instead of the
script action because the code we will execute here is so small that it is
completely unnecessary to have a freestanding script for it. When the enemy
is destroyed we want an explosion to show up, so we want to create an
explosion instance when the enemy is destroyed. In the new script window
that pops up, write:
instance_create(x, y, objExplosion);
That will create an explosion at the same coordinates as the objEnemy1

instance. Remember, for an instance, the variables x and y contains the
coordinates for that instance.
Save the game and start it. Now there is a beautiful explosion showing up
whenever an enemy is shot down.
Better add the explosion to the DESTROY event of the objPlayer too. You
should be able to do that on your own now. I will not tell you how to do ;).
Use the same objExplosion object as for the enemy.
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By Carl Gustafsson
6 Enhancing the game

There are some parts of the game that need enhancement to look good. For
example the bullet does not come out at the middle of the objPlayer, and
the enemies sort of pops up on the screen instead of flying into it. Time to
fix that.
6.1
Centered sprites
We will begin to look at why the bullets do not come out from the middle of
the player plane. Open the sprite sprPlayer and click on the Advanced tab.
Here you will find the Origin settings. It consists of an x value and a y value.
These values determine the so-called origin of the sprite. Their default values
are (0, 0). That means that if we place the sprite at location (100, 100), in
the room, it will look like this:
(100, 100)
Then, when a bullet is created at the same location as the plane, it will look
like this:
(100, 100)
That is because the bullet sprite is much smaller than the plane sprite.
We would rather want the ball to start in the middle front of the plane. What
we do is that we center the origins of both sprites. Start with the sprPlayer
sprite.
Click on the Standard tab of the sprPlayer sprite again. Here you can see
the width and height of the sprite. Note that the width of the sprite is 52, and
the height is 78. Now, go back to the Advanced tab again. Enter 26 as the
X origin, and 39 as the Y origin (26 = 52/2 and 39 = 78/2). Do the same
thing with the sprBullet sprite, where you should enter 8 as the origin for
X, and 8 as the origin for Y (this is the middle of the sprite).
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By Carl Gustafsson
Now, if the player sprite and the bullet sprite are placed at the same location,
for example (100, 100), it will look like this:
(100, 100)
The center of the bullet sprite will coincide with the center of the player sprite.
Good. But we would like it to start more like just in front of the plane. This will
be fixed through fiddling a bit with the instance_create function, but first,
save and run the game to see the difference.
Notice that the bullets now appear at the center of the player plane?
Now, open up the windows for the sprExplosion sprite and center it. The
origin coordinates should be (35, 50), since the sprite is 71 x 100 pixels large.
Then, open the sprEnemy1 sprite and enter (32, 32) as the origin of that
sprite. Good. Now all sprites are what I called centered.
Open the objPlayer object and select the <Space> key event. Double-click
on the Execute a piece of code action in the action sequence to open up its
code window. This is where an instance of the objBullet objet is created. We
want the bullet to be created a bit higher up on the screen. Higher up means
lower y-coordinates. So, change the instance_create line so that it reads:
instance_create(x, y 15, objBullet);
Close the code window, save the game and try it out. Hmm. A bit better, but
the bullet should appear even higher up. OK. Let us change the code again.
This time, change it to:
instance_create(x, y 25, objBullet);
Then try out the game again. This looks good to me. Sometimes you just
have to try out different values until things look good.
6.2
Smoother enemy appearance

The enemies still pop up out of nowhere. It would be nicer if they kind of flew
into the screen. That could be fixed through making sure they are created
outside the screen and then fly into it. This will bring up a small problem with
the Outside event, but we will look at that as it comes up.
Open up the script called CreateEnemy1. This is where the enemy instances
are created. The instance_create function is used to create an enemy
instance at a specified x and y coordinate. We want to change this so that the
enemy is created higher up, which means we will have to lower the y
coordinate of the creation point. Change the first line in the script to read:
instance_create(floor(random(screen_width)), -64, objEnemy1)
Save and run the game. You will notice that no enemies appear at all. Why is
this? This is because of the Outside event of the enemy object. Open the
object objEnemy1 and select the Outside event. You will see that this
event executes the script called EnemyDisappear. This script is called every
time the enemy instance is located outside the screen. But we do not want
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By Carl Gustafsson
the enemy to disappear when the instance is above the screen, only when it is
below the screen. OK, so let us do a test in the EnemyDisappear script.
Open the script and change it so that it looks like this:
if (y > screen_height + sprite_yoffset) then
{
instance_destroy();
}
That will check if the enemy is located below the screen, that is, if the y
coordinate of the enemy is larger than the screen height plus the enemy
sprite origin. The y coordinate of the sprite origin is automatically stored in
the variable sprite_yoffset, which we use here. This is needed, because
otherwise the enemy would be destroyed as soon as the origin was outside
the screen, which would mean that half the enemy sprite would still be inside
the screen and visible. Not good. This script will make sure that the entire
enemy sprite is outside the screen before destroying the instance.
If you try out the game now, you should notice that the enemies appear
smoothly flying into the screen, and flying out from the screen. But there is a
part of an explosion showing up as the enemies are destroyed. This must be
corrected. The explosion instance is created in the DESTROY event of the
objEnemy1 object. Open it up and double-click on the action Execute a
piece of code to edit it.
All this code does is to create an instance of the objExplosion object. We
could make it test the y coordinate of the enemy before creating the explosion
so that the explosion is only created if the enemy is still on the screen.
Do to that, we test that the y coordinate is less than the screen height plus
the sprite y origin. Change the script so that it reads:
if (y <= screen_height + sprite_yoffset) then
{
instance_create(x, y, objExplosion);
}
Close the code window and try the game. Now the enemies should disappear
silently, without and explosion. But the explosion should still be created if the
enemies are shot down.
6.3
Going global
One thing that I think is very important to know of is global variables. They
are variables that do not belong to any particular instance, but are accessible
from all instances, all the time. You could think of it as if there was an
instance called global that contained all global variables.
Global variables are good for containing values like score, health, max and
min values and such. The first thing that we are going to use a global variable
for is the speed of the player. I think the speed is a bit too slow. To change
the speed now requires the change of a number at four different places in the
code. It would be better if the speed could be changed by just changing the
code in a single place. This could be done in other ways, but we will use a
global variable.
Create a script that is called GameStart. Add the following line to the script:
global.playerMaxSpeed = 8;
Note the word global and the dot before the variable name. This is how
global variables are used. To read a bit more about global variables, read
section 24.5 of the Game Maker Manual.
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By Carl Gustafsson
Now we need to execute this script from somewhere. The CREATE event of
the objPlayer object seems like a good place. Select that event, add an
Execute a script action, and select the script we just created. Then move the
action up one step so that it is on the top of the list (before the PlayerInit
script). This is done by just dragging the action to the top of the list.
Now, in the <Left> key event of objPlayer, change the code that is executed
there to:
x -= global.playerMaxSpeed;
The code in the <Right> key event should read:

x += global.playerMaxSpeed;
And the code in the <Up> key event should be:

y -= global.playerMaxSpeed;
Finally, open the script MovePlayerDown and change the code to:
y += global.playerMaxSpeed;
Now, save and run the game.

If we later decide to change the player speed, we only need to change the
code in one place, in the script GameStart.
It is a good programming practice to use numbers as little as possible in your
games. The numbers should instead be defined in an initialization script, like
GameStart, to global variables or something like that, and then those
variables should be used instead. This greatly simplifies any changes that
need to be done to the game later.
We will add some other things to the GameStart script. First, we add the
maximum energy level of the player. Like this:
global.playerMaxEnergy = 100;
Then we change the myEnergy line in the script PlayerInit to read:

myEnergy = global.playerMaxEnergy;
It is a good thing to have all those value definitions in a single place.

We continue adding values to the GameStart script until it looks like this:
global.playerMaxSpeed = 8;
global.playerMaxEnergy = 100;
global.enemy1MaxEnergy = 100;
global.enemy1Damage = 30;
global.bulletToEnemy1Damage = 50;
There may be more values that can be changed like this, but I will stop here.
To use these global variables, we need to change some scripts a bit. Open the
script Enemy1Init and change the setting of the myEnergy variable so that
it reads:
myEnergy = global.enemy1MaxEnergy;
Then open the script PlayerEnemy1Collision and change the decrease of the
myEnergy variable to:
myEnergy -= global.enemy1Damage;
Finally, open the BulletEnemyCollision and change the energy decrease

statement to:
myEnergy -= global.bulletToEnemy1Damage;
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By Carl Gustafsson
Now it is much easier to change those parameters of the game. Save the
game. There should be no need to run it, other than to see that no errors
appear. Nothing should have changed regarding the gameplay.
6.4
Wheres my energy?
We have been talking a bit about the energy of the player and that if the
energy goes down to 0 the player is destroyed. However, so far we have not
seen any indication of that energy. Time to make an energy meter.
The energy meter will be created without using any kind of sprite. Instead we
will have a first look at some of the other drawing possibilities of Game Maker.
In order to draw anything on the screen, an object is needed. We will create
another controller object to do this. There will not be any sprite drawn, but we
need a sprite anyway, just to represent the instance of the controller object in
the room. So, create a new sprite, call it sprPlayerController and load the
image Dish.bmp from the Sprites \ Space folder of the Game Maker
directory.
Then create a new object, objPlayerController and select the
sprPlayerController sprite for it. Do NOT make the new object invisible. I
mean this! I have received a huge amount of emails from people who claim
that the energy bar does not show up even though they have followed this
tutorial by the letter. Then, when I look at their file, I see that they have
made the object objPlayerController invisible. I agree that most controllers
should be invisible, but this one is used to draw an energy bar and therefore
needs to be visible, otherwise the DRAW event of the object will not be
executed. You will understand what I mean later on. I wish I had been clearer
on this when I first released this Guide, but I was not, and, as you
understand, this text you are currently reading was added in the revision
(2002-08-15).
Add an instance of the new object to the room. This object will be used to
create the objPlayer instance. Therefore this instance should be removed
from the room. Remove the instance of objPlayer (the SR71 plane) from the
room through right-clicking on it.
Now the player will not exist when first starting the game, we will have to
create the player from the controller. The reason for doing this is that it is not
always clear in which order Game Maker creates the instances, at least I do
not know in which order they are created. So we must make sure that first
the controller instance is created, and then the player instance. Another
reason is that the controller needs to know the instance ID of the player
instance, and that is easiest to retrieve through creating the player instance
from the controller object.
The script GameStart should be run by the objPlayerController instead of
the objPlayer. Drag the Execute a script action that executes the
GameStart script from the CREATE event of objPlayer to the CREATE
event of the objPlayerController object.
Now we need a script to create the player. Create a new script and call it
CreatePlayer. Add this line:
myPlayer = instance_create(screen_width / 2, 400, objPlayer);
That will create an instance of the objPlayer object. The x coordinate will be
the center of the screen (screen_width / 2), and the y coordinate is
somewhere along the bottom of the screen (80 pixels from the bottom).
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By Carl Gustafsson
Notice that I have written myPlayer = in front of the instance_create

function. That is because when the instance_create function has created the
instance of the player, it returns a value. That is how a function works,
remember? Usually we do not care about that value, and that is OK. But this
time we want to store the returned value in a local variable, myPlayer. The
value that is returned is the instance ID of the newly created player
instance. We will use it later to retrieve some local variables from the player
instance.
In the object window for objPlayerController, select the CREATE event,
add an Execute a script action and select the CreatePlayer for that action.
Now it is time to draw the energy bar. Add a new script (dont you love them
already? ) and call it DrawEnergyBar.
In the DRAWING event of the objPlayerController object, add an Execute
a script action. Select the DrawEnergyBar script.
Then, go back to the script. I intend to draw an energy bar that looks
something like this:
First we draw the gray background rectangle, and then we draw the blue
energy rectangle on top of it. The green frame around the rectangle above is
just the background from the room showing. Dont bother with that.
To draw shapes in Game Maker we first need to set a pen and brush color.
Enter these lines into the script:
pen_color = make_color(150, 150, 150);
brush_color = make_color(150, 150, 150);
The make_color function creates a color out of three color values. The
values inside the parentheses are the red, green and blue levels of the color.
The numbers range from 0 to 255, which means that make_color(255, 0, 0)
would create a very red color, and make_color(255, 0, 255) would create a
very violet color (red and blue). The values used in the script (150, 150, 150)
will create a medium gray color.
The pen color is used to outline the rectangle, and the brush color is used to
fill it with a color.
When the color setting is done, we could draw the rectangle. To do that we
need two pairs of coordinates, (x1, y1) and (x2, y2). See the image below:
(x1, y1)
(x2, y2)
We want to put the energy bar in the lower left corner of the screen, so we
could do like this:
x1 = 5;
y1 = screen_height 15;
x2 = 110;
draw_rectangle(x1, y1, x2, y2);
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By Carl Gustafsson
Now we have created four variables and used them as coordinates in the
draw_rectangle function. We could just have entered the coordinate
calculations directly into the draw_rectangle function, but the line would
have been so long, so I chose this way to represent them.
Finally we want to draw the blue bar that represents the energy itself. Change
the color to some green color and draw the new rectangle:
x1 = 7;
x2 = 7 + myPlayer.myEnergy;
Here we see what the myPlayer variable should be used for. It is used for
getting the myEnergy variable from the objPlayer instance that was
created in an earlier script. To get a local variable from another instance, you
use the instance ID of that instance, followed by a dot and the name of the
local variable that you want. Voil! (Means there you go in French. Honest!)
There is one thing about this that is dangerous though! If the player instance,
with instance ID myPlayer is destroyed, it is no longer possible to access the
local variable myEnergy through myPlayer.myEnergy. This results in a
fatal error and Windows may freeze completely. The best thing to do is to test
it the myPlayer instance exists before using its local variables. This is done
using the function instance_exists like this:
if (instance_exists(myPlayer))
Now, this is the complete code of the DrawEnergyBar script:

x1 = 5;
x2 = 110;
if (instance_exists(myPlayer))
{
x1 = 7;
x2 = 7 + myPlayer.myEnergy;
}
Make sure that the script contains the code above, save the game and test it.
A blue energy bar with a gray background will now be visible in the lower left
corner of the screen.
If the energy bar does not show up on the screen, double-check to see that
the object objPlayerController really is set to be visible (see the beginning
of this section).
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By Carl Gustafsson
7 Life, the Universe and Everything

I dont know about you, but I am getting really tired of the green background.
Time to do something about that.
This will be the last chapter, since if I do not stop now, the guide may never
be finished. Hopefully, if I receive a good enough response, I will continue to
make a follow-up with some more advanced programming, but that is for the
future to see.
7.1
A galaxy far, far away

The most common background for space games would be some stars
whooshing by. I know that the SR71 and the MIG41 do not fly in space, but I,
being the supreme ruler of this document, have decided to let them into the
great void.
I did not find any good enough space background in the Game Maker
directory, at least not a scrollable one, so we will have to create our own. But
I will keep it simple.
First we will create a background image that looks like simple stars. Create a
new background. Call it bgrStars1. Click the Edit Background button. This
will open up the Game Maker background editor. It is not the best 2D
graphics application in the world, but it knows a few tricks and is quite good
for a starter. The first thing we will do is to set the size of the background
image. The background image will be copied over the entire room if it is not
as big as the room. This is called tiling. To not make the background look
too regular we will have to increase the size of this background image a bit.
Select the menu choice Transform -> Resize Canvas. In the window that
appears, look for the two textboxes just before the two pixels words. Enter
the number 200 in both of these. If the checkbox Keep aspect ratio is
checked, you will only need to change one of them, and the other will follow.
Clock OK. Now our background image should be 200 x 200 pixels large.
Select the black color in the color selection box on the right hand of the
window. Now select the bucket icon that is called Fill an area. Then click in
the image. The entire image should now be black.
Next, select the white color and click on the pencil icon that is called Draw on
the image. Use it to click a few stars scattered randomly around the image.
Do not draw too many. I drew only 3, and the result looked OK in the game.
This is how my image looked:
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By Carl Gustafsson
Click OK to close the image editor. Now, open the room window through
double-clicking on Room1. Then click the Backgrounds tab in the room
window. Here it is possible to select which background images should be
visible in the room. Select Background 0. Then, in the selection box a bit
further down, select the background image we just created, bgrStars1. Also
make sure that the checkbox Visible when room starts is checked. The
checkboxes Tile Hor. and Tile Vert. should also be checked.
Another thing to do here is to uncheck the checkbox marked Draw
background color. This will turn of the green color that has been used as
background so far. It is no longer needed since the new background image
will cover the entire room.
OK. We are done here for now. Click OK, save the game and test it.
If everything is as it should, there should now be some stars as a background
to the game. It looks rather boring though. Lets add some movement to the
stars.
Open the Room1 window and click on the Background tab again. Far down
in the tab you will find a textbox marked Vert. speed. It is currently set to 0.
Set it to 3. Click OK, save and test the game again.
But we are not done with the background yet.
7.2
Cool word: Parallax

Time to add some depth to the background. We will use an illusion called
Parallax. It is based on the fact that when you are moving and looking
sideways, like out of the side window of your car, objects that are far away,
like trees at the horizon, looks like they move past slowly, while objects that
are close to the car, like rails and road markings, swish by really fast. This can
be used to create an illusion too. The human eye is tricked and the brain
thinks that what the eyes see has 3-dimensional depth.
Create a new background image, call it bgrStars2, and resize it to 200 x 200
pixels, just like above. Paint it black and add some stars to it. But this time
the color of the stars should be light gray, and not completely white. You can
add a few more stars to this background. Five, maybe.
Then open the room window again and click the Background tab. Select
Background 1 and select the background image bgStars2 for that
background. Make sure the Visible when room starts checkbox is checked.
Give the new background a Vert. speed of 2.
Close the window and try the game. It still looks like a flat starfield. That is
because we have forgotten to make the new starfield transparent. OK. Open
the background bgtStars2, and check the little box called Transparent.
Then save and try the game again. Alright! Now there are two starfields
moving at different speeds, creating a small illusion of depth.
To make it even better, we will add a third starfield layer. Do just like the
second background, but call this one bgrStars3, and use a darker gray color
for the stars in it. You can add a bit more stars too, maybe 10 or so. Then
check the Transparent checkbox and open up the room. Add the new
starfield background as "Background 2 and set the Vert. speed to 1.
For the third time, test the game. That looks quite OK, does it not? With just a
little bit imagination you will see a deep space moving past beneath the
plane.
37
7.3
By Carl Gustafsson
Enemy fire
It is now time to make the enemies shoot back at you. That will not be so
difficult, now that you know a bit about GML. The plan is that with random
intervals, the enemy planes should fire a bullet at you. Whenever a bullet hits
you, your energy would decrease by 10 units.
First we need a new bullet object. We should not use the one that is fired
from the player plane, even if we are going to reuse its sprite.
Create a new object, call it objEnemy1Bullet and select the sprite sprBullet
for it. Now we need the enemy plane to shoot this bullet at the player. Create
a new script for this and call it Enemy1Fire. The script should create a bullet
instance and set the alarm timer of the enemy so that another bullet can be
created.
Write this in the script:
instance_create(x, y, objEnemy1Bullet);
That will create an instance of the objEnemy1Bullet object in the same

coordinates as the enemy plane is. But it is not going anywhere. We need to
give it a speed and aim it towards the player. Fortunately there is a Game
Maker function that makes this very easy. It is called move_towards_point,
and then you tell the function to which coordinates the instance should move,
and how fast.
Now you think that it is as easy as to just write the function. But no, if we just
wrote this function, the enemy plane would move towards the player, and not
the bullet. To do that we need to get the Instance ID of the created bullet
instance. So, change the line you just wrote to this:
myBullet = instance_create(x, y, objEnemy1Bullet);
Now we have got the instance ID of the new bullet and can use it in a with
statement. Like this:
with (myBullet) move_towards_point(objPlayer.x, objPlayer.y, 5);
That will start the bullet in the direction where the player is and with the
speed 5. Good. Time to set the alarm to go off after some time again, to
create another bullet. Add this line to the code:
alarm[0] = 60 + random(60);
That may seem a bit strange, but what we have done here is to add the value
60 and a random value between 0 and 59.99999. Thus the time for the next
bullet to be created will be somewhere between 2 and 4 seconds (60 and
119.99999 frames). Here I do not care so much about the decimals and such,
because we will not be able to notice them in the game.
The code in the script Enemy1Fire should now look like this:
What is left to do now is to add the script to the alarm 0 event of the object
objEnemy1. Do that now. You should know how by now. We also need to
make sure that the script is run the first time. This is done by setting the
alarm in the script that is run at the creation of the enemy instance. That
script is called Enemy1Init. Open up the script and add the following line to
it:
alarm[0] = random(60);
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By Carl Gustafsson
Here we do not care to add the 60 in front of the random function. I just did
not feel like it. Do it if you want, but then no enemy plane will fire until they
have existed for 2 seconds. Now they fire the first time between 0 and 2
seconds after their creation.
The bullet should, just like the players bullets, disappear once it has moved
outside the screen. In the objEnemy1Bullet object, open the Outside event
and add a Destroy the instance from the Object tab of the action panel.
Accept the default settings and click OK.
Finally, the bullet should do some damage to the player. Create a new script
and call it PlayerBullet1Collision. Here we should destroy the bullet instance
as well as lower the energy of the player. We also need to check if the player
energy is 0 or less, and then destroy the player. This means that the code
should look about the same as in the PlayerEnemy1Collision script. Write
down this code in the new script:
// Destroy the bullet
// Lower the players energy
myEnergy -= global.bullet1Damage;
// Check if the energy is zero or less.
if (myEnergy <= 0)
{
instance_destroy();
}
Notice that I have use the global variable global.bullet1Damage to lower the
energy of the player. This variable must be defined. That is done through
adding it to the GameStart script. Add this line to that script:
global.bullet1Damage = 10;
This means that when the enemy bullet hits the player, the energy will be
lowered by 10 units.
Add the PlayerBullet1Collision script to the objPlayer object, in the collision
event with the objEnemy1Bullet object.
Compare the two scripts PlayerBullet1Collision and PlayerEnemy1Collision.
The last if statement and the statement it contains look the same on the
two scripts. The first line, too, look the same, but we will ignore it for now.
Since we use the same block of code in more than one place, it is a good idea
to put it in its own script. So, create a new script and call it
CheckPlayerEnergy. Copy the entire if statement from the
PlayerBullet1Collision script to the new script, so it looks like this:
// Check if the energy is zero or less.
if (myEnergy <= 0)
{
instance_destroy();
}
Then we delete the if statements from the other two scripts, and instead call
on this new script. Just to show how a script can be called from another
script. Instead of the if statements in those two scripts, it should look like
this:
CheckPlayerEnergy();
There. That is how easy it is to use a script from another script.
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By Carl Gustafsson
To be on the safe side, here is a list of how the entire PlayerBullet1Collision

script should look like:
// Destroy the bullet
// Lower the players energy
myEnergy = global.bullet1Damage;
// Check the player energy.
And the PlayerEnemy1Collision script:

myEnergy -= global.enemy1Damage;
Save the game and try it. When the enemy planes shoot at you, and you are
hit, the energy will decrease until the plane is destroyed. Good. But wait!
Once the player plane is destroyed you get an error message saying
Unknown variable or function and referring to the move_towards_point
function when the enemy bullet is created.
The reason for this is that we made the bullets go for the player plane, and
once the plane is destroyed, the bullets no longer know where to go. Or, more
programmatically speaking, we are referring to an instance that no longer
exists. So, we will have to check if it exists before firing the bullet.
Open up the script Enemy1Fire. This is where the enemy bullet is created.
Now we need to test if an instance of the objPlayer is available. That can be
done with the instance_exists function. Here is its definition:
instance_exists(obj) Returns whether an instance of type obj exists. obj can
be an object, an instance id, or the keyword all.
So, we need to use the if statement and the instance_exists function in
the script. Make the script look like this:
if (instance_exists(objPlayer)) then
{
}
Note that the alarm[0] setting is not included inside the if statement. That
is because we want the script to activate a new alarm event even if the player
plane does not exist at the moment.
Nice. This will only create the bullet and move it if the player plane exists in
the game.
7.4
Meaning of life
To round up this programming guide, I think it would be a good idea to add
some life to the game, as well as some scoring.
Open up the script CreatePlayer. This is where the player instance is created
by the objPlayerController. Add the line:
playerLives = 3;
This means that the number of lives that the player has is stored in the
instance of the objPlayerController object.
Now we need to decrease the number of lives every time the player explodes.
That is done in the CheckPlayerEnergy script. Open it up.
40
By Carl Gustafsson
Inside the if statement here, we want to lower the number of lives of the
objPlayerController. We also want to make sure that the player is created
again after some time. For that, we will use the alarm function of the
objPlayerController. So, inside the if statement, before the
instance_destroy function, add these lines:
objPlayerController.playerLives -= 1;
objPlayerController.alarm[0] = 60;
That will decrease the number of lives with 1, and set the alarm 0 event of
the objPlayerController to trigger after 60 frames (2 seconds).
So, now the entire CheckPlayerEnergy script should look like this:
if (myEnergy <= 0)
{
objPlayerController.playerLives -= 1;
objPlayerController.alarm[0] = 60;
instance_destroy();
}
Time to create a new script that takes care of the creation of the new player,
if there are any lives left. Call the script LivesCheck. Here we should check if
the player has any lives left, and if so, create a new instance of the player
object. Enter this code:
if (playerLives > 0)
{
myPlayer = instance_create(screen_width / 2, 400, objPlayer);
}
else
{
game_end();
}
Here I have introduced the else statement. It can be used after an if

statement. It works so that if the expression in the if statement (playerLives
> 0 in out case) is not true, the statements inside the else statement are
executed. In this example this would mean that if playerLives is not greater
than 0, the game will end. That is what the game_end() function is for.
Now we need to add this new script to the Alarm 0 event of the
objPlayerController object. Do that.
Save and test the game. You should now have three lives to use before the
game ends.
It would be nice if the lives could be displayed for the user in some way.
To do that, open up the script DrawEnergyBar. This is where the energy bar
is drawn. How about drawing a small version of the players plane sprite next
to the energy bar for each life?
Select the sprite called sprPlayer and right-click on its name in the tree
structure on the left of Game Makers main window. Select Duplicate from
the pop-up menu. This will create a duplicate of the player sprite. Open up the
new sprite and call it sprLife. Click the Edit Sprite button. Select the menu
Transform -> Stretch. Enter 50% in the Width and Height boxes.
Select Excellent in the Quality selector. Click OK. Click OK again. Now we
have a small version of the player sprite that can be good to use as a life
sprite. We need to change the origin of the sprite though, so that it is
centered. Go to the Advanced tab of the sprite window and set the Origin to
X: 13 and Y: 19. Then click OK to close this window.
Go back to the DrawEnergyBar script. To draw a sprite in the screen, we will
use the function draw_sprite. Here is its definition:
41
By Carl Gustafsson
draw_sprite(n, img, x, y) Draws subimage img (-1 = current) of the sprite

with index n with its origin at position (x, y).
We will use the sprite sprLife and its first subimage, which has number 0.
So the function will be used as (the coordinates are not decided yet):
draw_sprite(sprLife, 0, someXCoordinate, someYCoordinate);
We will also use a new language statement, the for statement in order to
draw the correct number of life sprites. Please have a look at the definition of
the for statement in section 24.11, page 74 of the Game Maker Manual.
For loops are used to repeat a bunch of statements. In programming lingo
this is called iterating. An example of a for statement could be this:
number = 8;
for (i = 0; i < 5; i += 1)
{
number += 1;
}
What this program will do is first to set the variable number to 8. Then it will
enter the for loop, which adds the value 1 to the variable number a
couple of times. But how many? The result is that the variable number will be
13 when this is done. That means that the for loop has been run 5 times.
The first time the for loop is run, the variable i is set to 0. Then the
expression in the middle of the for statement parenthesis is checked (i < 5).
If this is true, the statement inside the for loop is executed (number += 1).
Then, finally the last statement of the for loop parenthesis (i += 1) is
executed, which will make the variable i now hold the value 1. Once again
the middle expression is checked (i < 5). It is still true, and the two following
statements are executed again. This happens again until the variable i
becomes 5. Then the expression i < 5 is not true anymore, and the for
loop exits. Good.
What we want to do is to draw the same number of sprites as the value of the
playerLives variable. This could be done through adding the following code
to the end of the DrawEnergyBar script:
for (i = 0; i < playerLives; i += 1)
{
draw_sprite(sprLife, 0, 140 + 30 * i, screen_height 25);
}
Wow, that was a lot at the same time. First, the for loop will be executed as
many times as the value of the playerLives variable, right? The first time the
for loop is executed, the variable i will be 0. That means that the x
coordinate of the first sprite that is drawn will be 140 + 30 * 0, which is 140.
The next time the for loop is executed, i will be 1. Thus, the x coordinate
for the second sprite will be 140 + 30 * 1, which is 170. Finally, the last time
the for loop is executed, i will be 2, which makes the x coordinate of the
last sprite 140 + 30 * 2 = 200. After that, i will be 3, and the for loop is
exited. The y coordinate is the same all the time, 25 pixels from the bottom of
the screen.
This means that there will be three sprites drawn next to each other down the
bottom left of the screen, next to the energy bar. When the player loses one
life, the variable playerLives becomes 2, and the for loop will only be run
through 2 times, thus only drawing 2 sprites. Great, huh?
42
7.5
By Carl Gustafsson
Scoring
I first intended to include the scoring part in the last section, but decided to
put it here, in its own section. Of course we need to add some scores to the
game. Otherwise it would be uninteresting to shoot down the enemies.
There is a built-in variable called score that we will use for this. That makes
the score automatically show up in the Windows caption.
First, we need to set the score to 0 when the game starts. Open the script
called GameStart. Add the line
score = 0;
to that script.
We also need to decide how many scores the player should get for destroying
one enemy. I think we should give the player 100 scores for it. Add the
following line to the GameStart script:
global.enemy1Score = 100;
Good. Now we need to add that score to the score variable whenever the
player has destroyed an enemy. This happens in two scripts. First, open up
the script called PlayerEnemy1Collision. Add the following line to the end of
that script:
score += global.enemy1Score;
Then, open the script called BulletEnemyCollision. Here it is a little bit

trickier, since we have to add the score addition inside the if statement
here. Just to make sure no mistakes are made, I will print the entire script
here as it will look after the addition of the score += global.enemy1Score:
with (other)
{
// Lower enemy energy
myEnergy -= global.bulletToEnemy1Damage;
// Check if enemy energy is 0 or less
if (myEnergy <= 0)
{
// If so, destroy enemy.
instance_destroy();
// NEW!!! Add score to the player
score += global.enemy1Score;
}
}
// Destroy this bullet
instance_destroy();
That would be it. Save the game and try it out.
43
By Carl Gustafsson
8 Final words
8.1
End of this guide

This represents the end of this guide on programming Game Maker 4.3. I
hope you have enjoyed reading it and following the instructions, but mostly I
hope that you have learned something from it. It is possible to make really
great games with Game Maker, and I am looking forward to see the games
you create.
If I find the time and inspiration I will make a follow-up to this guide where I
will delve into a little bit more advanced programming. Hopefully I will also be
able to express a few topics that were requested for this guide, for example a
good explanation of variable arrays. This, I hope, will at least serve as a good
entrance to the wonderful world of programming.
8.2
Communication
If you have any questions at all, or just feel the need to read what other
Game Maker users write you are always welcome to the official Game Maker
Community. The web address is:
http://gmcommunity.com/forums/
My current homepage, which does not look too beautiful but contains a few
goodies, can be found at:
http://hem.passagen.se/birchdale/carl
Please send me an email if you find any error or such in this document and I
will try to correct it. My mail address can be found below.
8.3
Useless statistics
WOW! According to Word, I have spent 897 minutes on this document, writing
96859 characters and 17523 words. That is 107.98 characters per minute.
And I have saved it 189 times.
8.4
Bye
Finally I want to, again, thank all of you who have helped me with this
document and other Game Maker questions.
Remember this supposedly Norwegian proverb when making games:
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE EXCEPT SKIING THROUGH A REVOLVING DOOR
Regards
Carl Gustafsson
Karlskrona, Sweden
carl.gustafsson@home.se
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Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.

Beginners Guide to Game

This is a tutorial in how to start programming using Game Maker 4.0. It is

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

FIRST VARIABLE .................................... 10

ENHANCING THE GAME ...................... 29

CENTERED SPRITES ................................ 29

THE CODING BEGINS ............................ 10

ENEMIES SIGHTED! ............................... 20

CREATING A GAME ................................. 5

A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY ................... 36

FINAL WORDS ......................................... 44

END OF THIS GUIDE................................ 44

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Game Maker information

Purpose of this document

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Room for improvement

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Save, save, save!

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Refining the actions

So, 90 would be straight up.

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

4 The coding begins

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Essentially a variable is a place in the computer memory that can hold a

Back to the game.

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

The direction does not matter when the speed is 0, right?

Getting rid of the <No key> event

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

This is the same as writing

only this is shorter.

Bullet loading time

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

to initialize a variable. If it is not set to a value before it is checked, the game

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

That was easy!

Because that is the same as checking if gunReady contains ANY positive

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

Have the craft appear at random time intervals.

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

That code is a call to the function instance_destroy, which destroys the

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

The above line will return values from 0 to 2.9999999999999999999. If I am

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

will produce values from 0 to 639.999999. Adding the floor function,

That will result in alarm times from 10 to 60 frames.

Ouch! That hurt!

Beginners Guide to Game Maker 4.3 Programming

We also need to check if the energy is 0. If it is, the instance of objPlayer