GameMaker Game - EZRoids
Rob A's (Im)personal Blog.
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Friday, November 24. 2006

For a while now, I've been looking for a game engine/software that would be easy enough for my kid to use. I tried a few, including the Scrolling Game Development Kit but just couldn't find something both simple and powerful. Then I found Game Maker by Mark Overmars.
From the Game Maker website:
Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions, you can create professional looking games within very little time. You can make games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects, and even 3d games! And when you've become more experienced, there is a built-in programming language, which gives you the full flexibility of creating games with Game Maker. What is best, is the fact that Game Maker can be used free of charge.
After working through the tutorials I wanted to use a game I knew and model it in GM. I chose asteroids, as this style of game wasn't detailed in any of the tutorials I could find. This was done in the unregistered 6.1 version of GameMaker. It uses somewhat crude placeholder graphics I had thrown together, much like the original vector game...
Here is what that first version looked like (click for full size):
Now I'm up to version 2. I've left the motion engine the same but replaced all the graphics. All images were rendered in POVRay. The download file is a bit large, as there are several versions of the different sized asteroids to have different rotations and looks. Here is a shot of the new version (click for full size):
File Size: 4.22 Mb
GM Version: GM6.1 unregistered
Screen Resolution: 800 x 600
Changes Screen Resolution: no
Currently, it had a splash screen, and you only get three lives. Controls are left, right and up (thrust). ctrl key is fire and down is shield (shield remaining is on the lower tight of the screen). While the shield is active you pass wight through the asteroids, so it is more of a trans-dimensional phasic distortion field than a shield... F1 is help
All graphics were drawn by yours truly. Sound was edited or created in Audacity. When a screen is cleared, a new set of rocks are created (starting with one more than the last one).
Download the executable (no installer, everything is in one file) here: EZRoids
Comments always welcome.
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