Week 4: Game Programming and Good Practices; Game Maker Tutorial 13
“The best way to learn games is to play games. The best way to make games is to work.” – Alan Emrich
Your Homework Game:
When we left class today, Game Maker
Tutorial #13 (Slightly Less Doomed) was near completion. You need to
complete this tutorial lesson and go ahead and do the “Other Stuff”
section on your own where Doors, Floors and Ceilings, and
Saving CPU Cycles are all mini-lessons to be learned.
Your homework this week (worth up to 10 points)
is to:
1) Make this a more complete game by adding two Rooms – a front-end (i.e. “splash” screen) to segue players into the game (by pressing a key as indicated on that screen; be sure to put a front-end controller and have the music and global.score settings take place there) and a closing (i.e., “cheese”) screen with and appropriate graphic element when player completes the game;
2) Instructions, the Victory Conditions, and game Credits on the Help Screen when the F1 key is pressed;
3) At least three levels and no more than five levels (that is, at least 7 minutes) of great gameplay with a special effort being made to perform good programming practices as per this week’s lesson material). Consequently, you must create an exit to the next Room (guarded by monsters, no doubt) and then more Rooms. You can find lots more walls and textures here: http://www.davegh.com/blade/davegh.htm so go nuts building pretty levels for your game;
4) At least two additional monster types (or other weird kinds of Indiana Jones types of traps, treasures, pick-ups, or other maze-game style devices and effects). Here are some animated sprites you can use for now, but I would always prefer to see your own original artwork: http://www.cslab.ece.ntua.gr/~phib/doom1.htm.
5) Some “mods” for the game itself. These might include:
Giving the monsters their own ‘health,’ thus requiring multiple shots to bring them down.
‘Upgrade’ the barrels to damage the player (if within range) and / or to set off a cool looking chain reaction if they’re placed within proximity of each other.
For guaranteed extra credit, figure out how to have the player find better guns and ammunition as ‘upgrades.’
Add a scoring system (points for blowing away barrels and monsters) and put the score on the Heads Up Display (HUD) overlay. That shouldn’t be too tough.
Limit the ammo the player has for their weapon.
Set an ‘oxygen’ time limit to complete each Level. That is, start a timer that kills the player when it expires. Show the timer on the HUD.
Add pick-up items such as: health kits, ammo, oxygen, coins, treasure chests, etc.
You really need to find better sound effects and, possibly, a nice haunting background score.
Some original game art that you’ve created (hey, you’re supposed to be a game artist – so show me)
I expect to see some serious thought an effort on your part when I evaluate this assignment.
You can make your Slightly Less Doomed mod as wild as you desire: this is an intellectual exercise, not a marketing gimmick, so make it as sick, humorous, gory, weird, bizarre, twisted, etc. as you desire.
Your .gm6 save game file is due at the beginning of class next week, either on disk or via email to the instructor (any homework time-stamped more than 30 minutes after the end of class will be marked late – you can always send it in early if you want).
Exam #2 is next week:
Next week features the second exam. It is worth 15 points and covers the material from weeks 1 through 4: including the lectures, lessons from the Game Maker tutorials, the required reading sections for those weeks on the course web site, and Chapter 11 and 12 in The Game Maker’s Apprentice textbook.
