GameMaker Studio - Basic Tutorial Video Lecture - Game Maker Tutorial Build

alright guys welcome to tutorial number
one for game maker studio what I'm going
to do today I'm going to walk through
very very very simple project basically
going to show you how to make the little
intro little intro game that I made in
the the load the last video with a
little like that scrolling clouds and
the smiley faces
you probably remember from the last
video so the reason I'm starting that
that's super super low level is because
that project will basically take us
through the like the four basic sort of
building blocks of of any given game in
game maker and it will take us through
it'll basically explain to you if you're
coming into the software but the very
very first time how game maker works how
all these elements actually fit together
to create a game so I want to go through
that and make it as sort of as clearly
as possible what all these kind of
elements are and how they interact with
each other so that you you know you have
a starting point and you kind of
understand what the hell is going on
when I'm doing stuff in later tutorials
so you'll have to bear with me if you
already know all this kind of crap um
the yeah I am basically just going to
start super super basic with this so go
ahead start a new project quote whatever
you want on a core tutorial or one I
guess will do and hit create won't save
the changes to my last thing then when
it saves out that it'll create over here
a blank project Explorer for you the
project Explorer is basically where all
the different elements and resources of
your game are kept so all your sprites
and sounds and objects and stuff are all
captain in this area of the screen
better find pretty much everything to do
with your game over here the project
we're going to be starting with today is
basically going to walk us through four
of these sort of major categories and
show you how they kind of work together
so we're going to look at sprites we're
going to look at backgrounds objects and
rooms all together we're going to start
off with rooms so go ahead and
right-click on room and go to create
room our room is rooms are basically the
levels or I suppose a better term is the
screens of your game so like your menu
might be a room your savegame
might be a room and every level of your
game might might be a room they
basically sort of big like containers
for rules like your your objects and
backgrounds so and this is our very
first room over here it's totally blank
at the moment we can click this get rid
of this this grid we've got going on and
yeah it's just big empty grey room by
default 640 by 480 if we go to settings
over here we can set the name of the
room while I set this I'm going to say
something about naming conventions it's
very important to give all the objects
and resources in your game like sensible
names so that when you're referring to
them in code it makes things a lot
easier and just makes everything a lot
more organized and a lot easier to deal
with
you'll probably ignore this advice a
little bit for a while and then you'll
start to see why I gave it in the first
place when your project becomes like a
total mess of different objects that
like you have the same name as each
other and you get naming conflicts and
all that kind of stuff so what I tend to
do for naming conventions is I'll write
like a two or three letter acronym but
sums of the type of objects I'm using
and I'll use that same acronym for every
object of that type and then I'll put an
underscore and then just assign a name
that makes sense to me
with no capitalization throughout so the
everything just so that everything is
consistent so for rooms I use RN which
already typed underscore and say that
this is like level one of our game I
guess we'll just call it little one I
guess or actually you know we're gonna
make that that that this guy thing we'll
call it the sky rule so this is the room
sky room so if we hit tick just to save
that out you can see it's changed the
name of the room then open it up again
we go to settings and we can say it see
over here as well we've got the width
and height sayings these for now you
really basically need to know is this
this is the the number of pixels in your
room so if you change this to say one or
two four you can see like in real time
how that's made made the room a lot
wider than it was before and we'll leave
it at that will have a big white screen
scrolling clouds room and the height
over there is obviously the same
we're not going to change that because
my background clouds don't seem
vertically so they only seem horizontal
they only are only seamless when they
scroll horizontally so we're going to
leave the height at that speed a very
very important value actually sets the
the frame rate or the target frame rate
at the very least of your game which
determines the rate everything runs out
in terms of the number of frames per
second so what that also means later on
when you do some coding and stuff is the
everything most things in your game will
revolve around what's called the step
event which is an event which happens
every single frame of your game so when
something is moving it moves a little
bit every frame or you know and so on so
forth and the reason that means your
frame rate is important is because those
events are going to run that many times
a second then it will give you an idea
of how timing and everything is going to
work in your game so but for the most
part like you know getting ahead of
myself a bit on that all you really need
to know or all you really need to do at
this point is set this to a sensible
figure if you play games you know like
60 FPS is a pre sort of standard
tutorial so if you set sexy to 60
suppose it's all smooth smooth speed
like for your eyes to look at and all
that kind of stuff so 60 FPS um so
that's rooms next thing we're going to
do is look at backgrounds so if we go to
backgrounds right click and hit create
background will create a new background
again we want to give this a sensible
name just as we did with our room so
we're going to call it V G underscore
sky or beat you understood clouds I
guess because that's basically what they
are what background is actually before I
loaded is basically a static image for
your game that doesn't have sort of any
interaction or sort of mobility for so
well you know sprites and stuff are used
for objects that like animate and move
around it can be controlled and stuff
backgrounds are for things like like
clouds for example or anything in the
game that well they can be manipulated
or moved around and sort of limited
sense by the code they're mostly for
things that the staff
and don't root don't have any real sort
of interactivity so if we go to load
background we can use an image I made
earlier which is this seamless clouds
you've seen it before if you've seen the
last video just a seamless image seams
horizontally like so we can scroll
horizontally I'm going to show you how
to do that right now actually so if we
hit OK and we'll come back to our room
now we've got BG clouds and our project
Explorer we've got two things now got
I'll just go back in backgrounds we've
got eg clouds rooms that got room Skyrim
so you can see how the project is
starting to sort of take to take some
shape and that's how so the project is
structured all your stuff is over here
so to set that background we go to our
room we go to backgrounds and we're on
background 0 you want to take visible
rain room starts that just you know
exactly what it says on the tin it just
means so you don't have to turn the
background on through code which you
might want to in some situations but for
now you know you you just want this
background on all the time so click
visible when room starts and then just
pick the image do you want to use BG
clouds
you can also set foreground images that
means they will basically show on top of
objects and things in your game so you
know for whatever reason you might want
like a UI element or something to be a
foreground image instead of a background
image but either way you can see how
it's already set linker by default to
tile like horizontally and vertically I
can show you a tiling vertically as
Wi-Fi sir like this is 700 you can see
how it's tiling down but you can see
it's it's not exactly seamless when it
tiles with equally so I'll leave that
480 for now so it looks nice and pretty
go to backgrounds again and the other
setting down here we want to set is
horizontal speed which is basically just
an automated way of making the
background scroll super useful you can
make it scroll diagonally by saying like
vertical speed if we set horizontal
speed to 1 and we just save actually
real quick and run our game and finally
there we go we have our scrolling clouds
so as you can see here they are
scrolling at a nice 60fps they're
scrolling and what I like I was saying
before with 60fps is that's basically
it's running one
this horizontal speed is moving your
clouds at one pixel every frame of your
game so this is why it's very important
to know what your your room fps and your
target fps so that is because it's
basically running that code to move that
one pixel every single frame so
basically you're going to be moving
sixty pixels every second when you're
running a 60 FPS this isn't quite a 60
FPS I don't think because I'm recording
this video at 30 fps so that might be
having an impact as well and it might be
moving faster than this otherwise but I
think this is still still looks kind of
right to me so I think it's okay so as
we see we have our scrolling clouds
there if we wanted to move it in the
other direction well we can do that
horizontal speed by default you know it
sets the value to how much it moves to
the right so if you set this to a
negative value like say negative 2 for
example and then run the game again you
can see it's scrolling left at a much
faster twice the speed that it was
scrolling right because it's at minus 2
and yeah that's pretty much all there is
to it you can make it move diagonally I
mean this will look terrible because it
doesn't seem properly by just saying
like a horizontal speed and a vertical
speed you can see it's going rolling
vertically and so we suggest set set
that back to a sensible by maybe just
just grow one to the to the right so
that's backgrounds pretty much um the
most basic level will cover like placing
tiles and stuff another time um the
basically that's all you need to know
about how to make the scrolling
background so I'm going to move on to
sprites so a sprite is basically a
visual element of your game for anything
that's like animated or like is
controllable or interactive we'll
probably be using a sprite so right
click on sprites and go to create sprite
give it a sensible name as we do
everything else this is just going to be
those little smiley smiley do it's from
before so I'm just going to call it s BR
underscore smile go to edit sprite and
this is the sprite editor where all the
frames of like a given animation will be
shown or sprite contains basically one
animation
like a South frames basically that's
probably the best way to think of sprite
is a set of frames and you know the
there what you need to create objects
and stuff with like for your characters
and things like that so if we go ahead
and make a new sprite in here I'm going
to edit and we're just going to very
quickly throw together as quickly as I
can
in this tool the little smiley face from
before make those eyes a bit bigger make
them super happy let me go and we track
this out for space um got that yellow
again go like a small black and do this
there we go super happy sprite looks
super happy and basically that shows you
image zero there
well that means is that's like the very
first frame of the frame of the sprite
so I mean if we add more in here you can
see how it's creating like an animation
and showing you like the result of that
animation over here you can play that
back as specifically make sure to set
that link to the speed that your room is
at so you can see exactly how it will
look when it's actually in your room we
don't actually need any animation for
this this dude at the moment though so
we're just going to leave it at that and
hit tick and some other very very
important options in here which I will
cover probably I'll cover collision
stuff in a later tutorial origin is very
important and I'll basically cover that
you know after we've gone through
objects and I show you how to put this
put these some smiley faces into your
room I'll show you what the origin
doesn't lie that's important
but for now go ahead and click OK and we
have our sprite smiley face now we need
to basically assign that smiley face
to an object that can actually place in
the room because at the moment that's
just a just an image it doesn't mean
anything by itself it's not placeable
it's just an image resource that other
objects can use to display themselves so
we're going to look at objects now so go
ahead right-click on objects and go to
create objects on one object is objects
I suppose are pretty much the most
important element of your game they're
basically the containers for all
interactivity and leg controls and like
characters and stuff in your game all
come from objects so we're going to just
make an object to represent our little
smiley guy we're going to call this obj
underscore smile you can see now whether
I the naming convention becomes handy
because we have the sprite for smiley
face and we have the object and we need
to be able to tell them apart so you
know putting the the type on the
beginning helps you learn that this is
the sprite and this is the object which
is very important when you're in code
and like you say you want to move like
if you had these names the same thing
for example you wouldn't be able to do
something like move smile by 5 or
something like that because they
wouldn't know what you were referring to
the sprite or the object so it just it
helps you out and it's very important to
have it's good naming convention so we
call this obj underscore smile we've
said it sprite to SBR underscore smile
and so now we have basically we have the
basics of an object actually we're going
to click OK and save that our objects
underscore smile go back to our room go
to objects and we click object to add
with the left Mouse as our object editor
and click object smile so not the editor
it's object placement even we can use
this to place these smiley guys or
around our room what's cool and
GameMaker studio now is that you can set
a lot of like base properties of this
price within the object places so I can
set this to be a particularly huge
version of this sprite for example and
set it to have like a predefined offset
like this and move it around a bit like
that just with the left mouse button
there you can see all the different
controls the like moving and adding
objects removing them and linked moving
around your room are all listed here so
just take a take a few minutes to get
used to those whenever you want so right
now we have the objects in the game we
can actually run that let me show you
that in turn it into turn there we go
and there's a smiley face that's not
really doing anything but there in the
game those are our objects at the moment
so go ahead and close that what we want
to do now is add the
the interactivity to the game the well
I'll just add not really interactivity
since you're not really interacting with
those smiley faces but make them rotate
around and do that little fantasy effect
I had before so first of all I'm just
going to talk a little bit about how
objects do things in your game they
basically run off of these two big
columns here events and actions what an
event is is something that happens in
your game so like the object just got
created the room just got created the
the player hit the left mouse button the
player hit like a on this keyboard a
certain amount of time has passed you
know basically any sort of condition or
event that the computer can pick up and
say oh this thing has happened now I
need to do this thing which will be all
of that anything that you put into here
which is actions so stuff that happens
when events happen and that's more or
less the structure of how everything in
your game works so for example I'm going
to add an event and I'm going to say
actually instead of a rotation I'm gonna
just just so lit it slightly interactive
I'm going to add some keyboard stuff I'm
gonna say every time we hit the right
arrow key so now we have an event of the
keyboard event for the right arrow key
so every time we press the right arrow
key everything that's in here will
happen so I mean we can place various
different actions so I mean we could set
it to like scale to sprite or move the
sprite around when we when we place the
right mouse button so if I set like
every time you press right move freely
in Direction I can remember now exactly
how the directions what I think
directions zero think that might be
right a car member has some sort of
arbitrary system of degrees for
direction where lay is it's 360 degrees
and once you work out where it starts is
easy to work out what direction is but
we'll say 0 for now whatever direction
that happens to be and say move - every
time you press the right mouse button so
let's just see what that does
when we run our code now so we have all
these objects here if I press the right
arrow key tada they're all moving to the
right I only had to tap it once and they
will move like that forever because
that's that's pretty much all I told it
to do is when I press right started
moving towards the right we can make it
move like strictly like one space to the
right like with different actions but
I'm also going to just show you how to
basically do that through code if we go
to control over here and go to code and
this little little bit of script here is
just execute a piece of code and this is
pretty much the most powerful form of
functionality you can have in game maker
allows you to do pretty much any of the
actions over here if you know how to
write them in the coding language in
game maker along with a bunch of things
that you just frankly can't do with
these these drag and drop actions over
here these will get you quite far for a
while but I honestly recommend honestly
just start diet straight into code and
leg I mean there's hundreds of resources
out there I'm planning to teach a lot of
this sort of coding stuff as well but
yeah I honestly recommend getting into
the coding as quickly as you can because
it's just honestly I find it easier to
work with like it's it's so annoying
when you can't find the exact right
thing that you want to do through these
actions over here when you know you can
just write a couple of lines of code
that will will do it all for you so for
example um I mean this might just like
blow your mind entirely and you have no
idea what I'm doing here but I'm just
going to write a piece of code that
moves you to the right by like two
pixels every time well whenever you're
you're holding the right the right arrow
key so you know we already know that
you're holding the right arrow key
because that's our event so you don't
need to write like an if statement
written like that so what we're going to
do is take our x coordinate which is X
and type a plus equals which means to
add 2 X 2 um pretty much that's all
there is to it that will move those two
pixels to the right whenever we're
holding right there's different ways you
could write that you could
a X equals itself plus two but the
easiest way to do it is to do what I
just did which is plus equals British
adds two I mean you can do things like
minus equals to take away my kind of
stuff all that code is will be covered
later and it's covered by like help
menus in game maker and all that kind of
stuff so basically that's what that line
of code does so if we hit tick now we've
replaced our our action earlier with
this this little bit of code and we've
run that now and we press write whenever
we're by pressing this button it's it's
moving us to two pixels to the right
every frame while holding the button
while we're not holding the bone it's
not doing anything creating if T so you
can set up events like that for left or
down and you can pretty much imagine
from that how you get for directional
movement um obviously to move in the Y
direction you would just pick Y X on
what you want us you know to move up and
down to move left instead of right you
would obviously just subtract two which
is going to be a bit weird me pressing
right to move left but yeah that's how
that happens and so yeah that's the very
basics of how interactivity and stuffs
works just to finish off just to create
what we had in the intro video is I'm
going to delete this event well you're
going to add what's called the stepper
then a very important event for me to
actually cover what this does is this
event will run regardless every single
frame of your game as long as as long as
the object exists while the object is in
your game and frames are happening so 60
frames a second you know frames frames
are pre processed by the game every
single one of these frames the events in
here the events are the actions in here
will be carried out so if we go to code
now for example if we do the same code X
plus equal to hit the tick and hit f5
you'll see that they're just moving to
the right by themselves now because
they're every single frame of the game
they're moving right to pixels so if we
want the object to do
what it did in my intro game was to do
image underscore angle you actually
probably if you watch the video you see
me writing this code right at the start
of the frame style video but if we type
image angle plus equal add one for now
plus equals along well that does is very
similar to what we just did before where
we wrote X plus equals one we change the
the X property of the object to be
enhanced by one every time and now we're
just changing the angle of the object to
be added one if we put minus one it
would rotate it in the other direction
you know so image angle is equal one so
what that should do now hopefully is yet
we see our object rotating we even see
our massive one rotating so that's
pretty much it really that's that's
covered all the plot basic elements of
playing very simple games together in
game maker obviously doesn't show you
how to do a complete game but it does
show you pretty much all of the basic
elements of a project in game maker and
how sprites interact with objects and
how objects execute functions and how
they get their interactivity how to make
a room how to set up backgrounds and all
that kind of stuff so now that you know
all the basics I can go into actually
doing like add some like game projects
and that kind of stuff in my future
videos but for now I just really wanted
to cover all this basic stuff and
basically get everyone on the same page
in terms of how so it's going on so no
one is totally left in the dark when it
comes to you know why I'm doing the
things I'm doing later on so yeah thank
you for watching guys and I'll see you
on the next episode