Dev Log Entry 1: more an aspiration for 2022

After the several posts for my project to choose a game making solution by trying a different a day for 8 days, I think for now I’m going to stay on GameMaker Studio 2. This is partially because of the large community and asset store, partially because of all the video and written tutorials, and partially because I already got the $99 “indie developer” edition from humble bundle for only $25. No need to waste my year worth of value while I have it, right? By some kind of weird happen stance this $99 plan is set to expire December 31st 2022. So yes, I literally have a year. Unless Humble sells this plan again for that same price.

I don’t actually know if it’s that much better than any other solution, I just know it will probably be a lot easier to get up and running with it than it would with a “real” engine like Unity that requires a detailed setup process and knowledge of C#, which I don’t have.

As I write this I’m almost done with the easiest of easy drag-and-drop walk throughs (GM has both a visual drag-and-drop UI as well as a scripting language) for a simple little game called Fire Jump. I have both the written version up alongside the video version: I try to follow the video version (here’s the playlist) and the document is right there to fall back on when things don’t work quite right.

The first of four videos in the series is about an hour, but that’s because the guide stops and explains things out and goes into some explanations of different concepts like IF statements as well as some of the basics of GM2 itself like how to import sprites or hide one of the side bars.

I probably spent close to two hours trying to make it through that video/written guide, and the second time I couldn’t get something to work I just went to bed for the night.

My tentative plan at this exact moment is to make my version of the project work correctly then create a fresh project and try and apply what I learned to something new using just what is taught in that first lesson. It’s actually fairly basic stuff about assigning keys for controls, collision masks, setting the dimensions of the game window and few other things.

I’m finding this simple Fire Jump walk through actually really educational as it walks through creating a “parent object” which are then later assigned new objects as a “parent”. In other words it’s introducing object inheritance without actually using the specific terms. This will come up later when I’m typing out code and will be a transferable skill in learning other languages like Python or C#. This speaks as much to the quality of the tutorial as it does to the software itself.