Level 3 Games Design: self evalution

Project 1 Data Hero Self-Evaluation.
“Creating a state of the art commercial computer game is an incredibly difficult task that typically requires a multi million-dollar budget and a development team that includes 40 or more people. But simpler alternatives –ones within the reach of students and hobbyists- exist. Great games do not necessarily need fancy 3D graphics or huge game WORLDS. Budding game developers can have fun creating variations on Pac-Man, Space invaders, or simple platform games. And with some creativity they might even develop new game concept.”
“Writing a game like Pac-Man from scratch in a modern programming language is still difficult. Many gifted developers have embarked on such projects only to have their attempts end in frustration.”

Introduction
In this paper I’ll be writing about game maker and how I used it to make a game. I will also be talking about object-orientated design.
Object-orientated design or O-OD for short are an easier alternative to ‘hard-coded’ which are used for games like Pac-man, or space invaders. While it has been seen as a great leap forward, not everything about it is good.
Pros
⦁ It is simpler and has opened up development to many people
⦁ Bug reports and testing or much easier to do because it identify the bugs for the developers.
⦁ You can share it with other developers who share the same language.

Cons
⦁ It is susceptible to generic game play games also known as the ‘Call of Duty’ effect.
⦁ It’s so simple everyone thinks they can make a game, and some of them shouldn’t.
⦁ People are less original they think they’re making a new game but in all actuality about 5 other people have made a game similar to it.

Events and Actions.
“In a computer game, everything is an object: the monsters, wall segments, coins, bonuses, power-ups, and the guns and bullets. Thinking about creating games means thinking about objects and how they react to one another and to the player’s input. So the game creators naturally thinks in an object-oriented way.”

The first main event and action was a Key press of the left, right, and up key which allowed me to walk left, right and jump in that order. To Move I would have to make the event a key press and select a key for example one of my key presses is when left key is pressed an event happens where the character walk left.

(When left key is pressed walks left and shows left walking sprite.)

“Some object have a visual representation, such as an animated sprite. Others, like those that control game flow or maintain the score, might lack this feature. Multiple instances of the same object can appear in the game at the same moment.”

The second main event and action where collisions. The collision was used multiple times, like if the character was to collide with a platform it would stop it instead of letting phase through it. Another collision event was the points, when the player collided with a point it would destroy the object and add the value to the score.

(Just before the character collides with the point)

“Instances have properties. Some are built-in, like the speed with which the instance moves and the sprite used to represent it. Others can be defined, manipulated, and checked using actions or code. The user must define each object’s behavior. While some objects, like wall segments, will have no behavior, others, like the avatar representing the player, will most likely have complicated behavior.

The third main event and action was for the score, to get the score you would need to make a draw or step event and the make an action called Draw the value of score which you would put the x and y coronets of where it would be located for example my coordinates where x: Character.x-100, and y: Character.y-150 , and you can change the caption to what you want.

(Showing the score)

My performance.
"Game Maker defines behavior in event-driven terms. Events occur for objects, and the designer specifics action that the game must execute when these events occur. Typical events include object creation or destruction, user input, collisions between instances, alarm clocks, and events that happen at each step. To achieve this, the game designer can simply drag and drop actions into events. Game maker has more than 100 built-in actions, ranging from moving the object in a particular direction to playing a sound or displaying a high-score list."
In a way I completed my game I got some of what I wanted done and the game was functional and could be played, but I didn't get everything that I wanted to be done. I ad to remove a lot from my game, like the final boss, the enemies for level 1 and 3, and I couldn't make the hub world like I wanted to, there where other things as well, I had to remove these because of time constraints.
I am pleased with quite a bit of the game. I really like the backgrounds, character design, and the layout of the platforms. I like these the most because they are what I spent quite a bit of time working on, I put a lot of detail in it and I'm really proud of it.
What I'm not pleased with about my game is that I could do more of it I really wanted to make it a fun playable game but couldn't because of time constraints. I really wish I could of at least put the enemies in and part of the hub world as well.

Conclusion.

In conclusion using game maker isn't hard and most people could use it. showing how easy it is to use like the points I said with the coding of how to walk and and jump, and the collision events and how they work and how easy it was to get to the point of a functioning game

This a video capture of all of my game play for my game Data Hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6LnzwCtfwA
Screen shots.