For this game, my intention was to create a game that would simulate falling into depression through gameplay and visuals. The game would be a top-down shooter and the gameplay would change through progress. It would start out fast paced, with vibrant colors, fast movement speed, fast fire-rate, and lots of lively animation. It would use gameplay elements that are FUN! Slowly, the game would change. the pacing would be slower, the colors would be duller, and there would be new gameplay restrictions like slower fire-rate.
I used Gamemaker:Studio to make this game. It is a program that is used to create small games in its own engine. I have been learning to program in it from watching tutorials by Shaun Spalding on YouTube. While the programming language in Gamemaker is not used outside of the program, it is similar to other languages, so when I do start learning others, the transition between them shouldn’t be too difficult.
I let a couple of my friends play-test the game and had a little feedback and changed a few minor things afterwards. For example: At first, the viewport size was rectangular like the shape of the screen, however, when faster enemies came from the top of the view, the player had very little time to react. I adjusted the viewport size to be square and zoomed the view out. This way, no matter where the enemy came from, you had a reasonable amount of time to react.
There are a lot of things I did sloppily in making this game. There are a couple glitches like lag, and sprites that won’t animate. My code is sloppy enough that if I wanted to continue on this game, I would probably want to remake it completely. I found a site that has some tips on making my games more organized. The next game I make, I will try to be more organized with my code. I will use proper naming conventions, and add frequent comments into the code.
(NOTE THAT THIS GAME SHOWS ANIMATED BLOOD AND GUN! I don’t want to get in trouble for this game in school!)
Comments by Alex