Step by step

1. Terence Byrne
Firstly I created a sprite. This sprite
would be the player in the game.
After giving the sprite properties, I
then went on to the “edit sprite”
option.
After this I then entered the
“modify mask” option in
order to manipulate the
collision mask.
I found that the diamond
Collison mask seemed more
reliable as it seemed to fit
the sprite better than the
other shapes.

2. Terence Byrne
After this I went on to creating the player object. I chose the sprite we wanted to add objects to and
then added events. From adding the event I could then add a step.
I then added coding to the event object in order for my sprite to be able to move, left, right, up,
down.

3. Terence Byrne
Then I created a room known as a level to the game. Then I added the player object to the room.
This was so the player could be tested e.g. if the coding was wrong I would know as the object
(sprite) would do things differently. What I found was that the player was going off the screen in
gameplay.
To sort out the problem of the player going off the page I went back on my coding and added more
to it in order to fix the problem.

4. Terence Byrne
After this I then went on to create a background. I then created another background so my game
could have 2 different backgrounds. I then decided to add the 2 backgrounds and slow one
background movement down to give a flying through space effect

5. Terence Byrne
Now my backgrounds were created, I went on to give my game sound. I decided to give sound to
bullet fired from the spaceship. So I created a player projectile (the bullet) and then gave the
projectile sound after adding the projectile to the game. I coded the bul let so that it would shoot
when I press enter.
I uploaded an already created sound onto gamemaker, for the gun shot effect.

6. Terence Byrne
After this I decided to add a particle system for my engines on the spaceship. To create the particle
system I used coding and then added it to the game
I then run the game and noticed the particle system working.

7. Terence Byrne
Now I needed to create an enemy sprite. So firstly I created the sprite.
I decided to copy and paste the sprite so I could add an animation. The aim was to make this piece
flash
I then went on to creating a collision mask for the enemy sprite.

8. Terence Byrne
I then coded the enemy sprite to come in packs of 3 towards the player.
I then ran the game to test the enemy’s, and they came in packs of three.

9. Terence Byrne
However, my bullets would not destroy the enemy and so I needed to fix the problem and code the
bullet to cause damage when it hits the enemy.
In order to do this I needed to create an explosion effect and code this object.

10. Terence Byrne
After then coding the player bullets to destroy the enemies I run the game the test if the enemies
would explode, In addition I added sound to the enemy explosion.

11. Terence Byrne

12. Terence Byrne
Then I created the enemy bullet. After this I
modified the mask to rectangle e.g. the shape of
the bullet.

13. Terence Byrne
The next step was to make my enemies fire back at me. I had to make sure as with the player spr
that the enemy bullets would not cause problems later after they had been fired so I used the
destroy instance option to destroy the bullet when it reaches the edge of the map.
I then made sure the enemy 1object movement code had had the “shoot alarm” varies written
inside.

14. Terence Byrne
I then run the game to test it and the enemy’s had begun shooting at the player.
Then I went on to adding a shield to the player. I created a code for the shield and then used the
“draw” event so a rectangle bar of health (shield) will be shown when the game is running.

15. Terence Byrne
When I run the game the shield bar was there and so after this I added a collision event to player 1
using the enemy laser and this meant the bar would decrease in health to whatever I coded it to do.
The next thing I needed to do was make the player be destroyed and give the player an explosion
effect. To do this I made an explosion 2 sprite

16. Terence Byrne
I the added a step event and coded the particle system in order for my player to explode with
explosion effects.
Then I added an alarm event and a create event in order to make this explosion work.

17. Terence Byrne
I then added a new step event for the player 1 object and then did some coding to make sure the
shield would reach zero and therefore the player to explode.
After this I run the game to make sure the player would die and explode as it should.

18. Terence Byrne
I then decided to create another enemy (enemy2_spr), I centred the sprite after creating it and then
created an enemy 2 laser. After creating that I gave the laser 2 a rectangle collision mask and
cantered it as well. Also I added an animation for both the enemy 2 and the enemy 2 laser.
I then added a sound in which would be used for the firing effect of enemy 2
I then needed to go to the system object and create another alarm in order for my enemy 2 to
spawn into the game.

19. Terence Byrne
I then had to create an enemy 2 object and add things such as collsions alarms and steps like I did
with enemy 1
After this I run the game to see if the enemy 2 enemies are working and firing.

20. Terence Byrne
At this point, I decided to tweak with my game to try and improve it. First of all I changed the
background from a apace environment to a city environment in which is under attack by aliens. In
order to make this background look more realistic I got an image of a silhouette of a city, and then
traced over it on Adobe Illustrator. After this I added it to my game background and set it as
persistent so the background would repeat. Then I added more affects to the background with the
game maker design options e.g. I added hills.
During the same time as creating a background I also
changed my Player Sprite.
After that, I then added a title screen and coded it to come
into the game at the very start; I also added a code so that
when I press enter, the game will begin.
I then decided to give the game a death (end) screen and
coded it so that when I press (R) the game will restart; whilst
on the death screen
After that, I

21. Terence Byrne
decided that I would need soundtracks. I went to a website called audionautix, From this site I
gathered 3 soundtracks. I coded one soundtrack for my starting screen, another for the playing
screen, and the last one for the death screen. After coding the sounds in on a creation code; I run
the game and tested the music. The music played ok with no issues meaning that the soundtracks
were now complete.
I decided to modify other aspects such as the enemy and player laser, and after this I run the game
to check everything was working all together with no issues. There were some issues such as my
player sprite spawning in numerous times as well as enemy sprites; but with some tweaking the
problem was fixed and the game was running just as it should. I found making this game interesting
as I learnt many new techniques and tools on game maker, and I finally produced my own game in
which I believe is at a good standard.