Game Programming A to Z: Space Rocks

Use the free and powerful GIMP image editor to create a deep-space background for your Space Rocks game.

Use the free and powerful Inkscape vector illustration program to make the player spaceship game art for your Space Rocks game.

Use Inkscape vector illustration program to create a missile sprite for your player's missile.

Use the Inkscape vector graphics program to create 3 different asteroid images for use in your Space Rocks game.

Use Inkscape to create a retro-looking enemy UFO graphic that will knock your player's socks off if they aren't careful!

Use Inkscape to create 3 different powerup artifact tokens your player can pursue and capture for extra abilities in Space Rocks.

Use Audacity sound effects editor to create the player's weapon fire sound effect from scratch.

Use Audacity to create a rewarding sound effect to use when players capture a powerup artifact.

Use Audacity to create asteroid explosion sound effects from scratch.

Use Audacity to create an explosion sound effect to use when the player ship unfortunately is destroyed.

Use Audacity to create sound effects heard when the enemy UFO is flying.

Use Audacity to create sound effects for enemy UFO weapons fire.

Set up your initial game project file in GameMaker.

Add your first objects to the Space Rocks game project in GameMaker.

Add the player ship to the game project, enable player controls, and allow the ship to fly.

Add more player controls and object events to enable the player ship to change directions.

Learn to use debugging tools in GameMaker to spot and fix object rotation problems before they cause a problem.

Airborne objects can point in a direction different from their direction of travel. Fix your player ship's direction of motion versus direction of acceleration.

You created some awesome asteroid artwork earlier. Now, add those asteroids to the gameplay area, make them hurl through space, spinning towards your puny player's ship.

All the right images and objects are in place, but so far the player cannot shoot any missiles from their ship. In this lesson, add new player controls and events enabling the player to fire ship weapons.

What fun we've had so far! With all these objects flying around the gameplay area, though, we need them to smash and crash into one another to really make anything happen. Learn to handle collisions -- the core of almost any game -- and let's get to wrapping up Space Rocks.

We're getting near the end of the Space Rocks project, with a completed game. There's still some fine tuning to do, though. In this lesson, we'll:

1. Adjust player thrusting for more precise control.
2. Pause and check for danger before respawning the player ship.
3. Add the concept of "lives" (ships in this game) and limit the player to 5 per game.
4. Add a high score board.
5. Restart the game upon running out of lives.

Most objects set in motion move relative to the platform they were set in motion from. Currently, our player's missile, fired from the ship, does not move with this relative motion.

Learn to use simple GameMaker Language (GML) functions to easily perform the proper vector addition between the player ship motion and player missile motion, resulting in more realistic movement of player shots.