Why GameMaker for 2D Game Developement?
In the world of game design, there are so many choices for software platforms to use for development. Personally, I was going to focus on 2D and platformer games for my first-year game design class, so that helped me narrow down my choices. GameMaker was often in the top ten options, and unlike many of the platforms used secondary schools teaching video game design, GameMaker is being used by pros for commercially released 2D games.
GML is the coding language of GameMaker. It is rooted in both JavaScript and C languages. This is a another real advantage for the students as learning GML through game development will build foundational skills in JavaScript and C languages that will skill them well in future development jobs. This is why I often say that learning to build video games in the gateway drug to programming.
As I have been teaching video game design, I have been creating step-by-step tutorials in Google Slides that assist my students that need support or missed the lesson. These are the first 4 that I finished
Asteroids, Pong, and Combat are pretty true to the original Atari games. I do start my students off with the Atari games that they think are so “simple” or “primitive” so they can gain the appreciation that I did for their design and achievement for that period. Also, Asteroids and Combat proved much harder to get the mechanic right than I originally figured and they realize the same, particularly with getting Combat to work without glitches.
Hopefully, these tutorials can be adapted to your game design software even if not GameMaker. If you do successfully adapt these tutorials I made to another platform, please consider sharing your adaptation on SharingTree. Also, if any of you have your own tutorials for GameMaker or other platforms, share them on SharingTree, I will continue to add more in the future as well
Thanks and Cheers
Eddie von Neumann
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