“The best way to learn games is to play games. The best way to make games is to work.” – Alan Emrich
Game Maker Tutorials:
When we left class today, Game Maker Tutorial #11 (Tank War) was completed and I even showed you how to ‘upgrade’ your mini-map to give it better contrast against the game’s background. Your homework this week (worth up to 15 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, perhaps, a congratulatory note of famous quotation (e.g., “To the victor go the spoils.”) when players exit the game by pressing the <Esc> that stays on a few seconds before the game restarts (you can put this functionality in obj_controller);
2) Instructions, the Victory Conditions, and game Credits on the Help Screen when the F1 key is pressed;
3) At least 10 minutes of great gameplay with an eye on game balance (see this week’s reading assignment); and
4) Some “mods” for the game itself. These might include:
New Rooms with different types of arenas (of course, you’ll need a triggering device to get you from one room to another or create a simple menu screen allowing players to pick their field of battle) – some wide open, others narrow and tight, etc.
Perhaps some new backgrounds (desert, urban, jungle, etc.)
New types of walls – some that allow bullets but no tanks; perhaps one that allow tanks but no bullets
New terrain, such as mud patches that slow tanks down or slippery areas that are hard to steer through
New power up / secondary weapon types that will “wow” the player such as guns that shoot sideways (or backwards), fire in multiple directions at once, go longer than regular shells, etc.
Perhaps tanks can lay mines
Or even blow a hole in the ground that, when a tank drives into it, destroys it
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 thought an effort on your part when I evaluate this assignment. Make sure that you do the homework reading before handing in this assignment!
You must make your Tank Wars mod a nice, clean game suitable for the mass-market, so make the levels of ever-increasing depth.
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).
The Game Maker’s Apprentice Textbook:
Chapter 11, Balance in Multiplayer Games: Read pages 211 to 221. Be sure to use the CD-ROM included with the book to examine the .gm6 files in the Games / Chapter 11 folder! This Chapter examines this week’s tutorial game (Tank Wars) and provides new versions where different kinds of tanks (Light, Medium, and Heavy) can be designed and tested. Once you’ve tweaked these models to act the way you want them (and remember the Scissors-Rock-Paper technique!), players can select their preferred model of tank before the game begins.
IMPORTANT: You cannot use these files directly from the CD-ROM or you will get an error message; you must use them from a writable location for them to work (so save them to a drive first, including the tankdata.txt file, and then access them).
This chapter goes hand-in-glove with the course lectures and points you to a successful Course Project, so be sure to make a good study of it and take that material to heart.
Quiz #3 is next week:
Next week features the third quiz. It is worth 10 points and covers the material from Week 5, Week 6 (on Interface Design) and what little new material there was taught in class this week (7; including general knowledge of Game Maker), plus the above textbook chapter (Balance in Multiplayer Games) and the required reading sections for this week on the course web site.
