It’s time to start another project i think, it’s been quite a while since Happy Ball Is Happy was released after all… and since it’s just been released (and because i’m hoping to produce a write up of it for Retro Gamer at some point) i’m going to teach myself at least the basics of Game Maker 8, using the free Lite version. To keep things simple i’m aiming for a simple vertical “scrolling” blaster, taking selected hints on how to achieve some things from one of the tutorials on the GM8 website (the 1945 one) and essentially guessing the rest.
As a total GM n00b i have to say that initially it seems somewhat daunting (and i do feel that even some of the simpler events aren’t entirely logical, simple player movement was a bit more fiddly than i’d expected for example) but after the initial hurdle it’s proving reasonably easy to work with. At this point i’ve got a custom-designed player ship moving around over a dots-on-black starfield (i’ll pretty a load of the details up as i go along, it’s just there as test for the moment) which can fire a bullet on command.
Tags: game, Game Maker 8, shmup, shoot 'em up, STG