Making Your First Game: GameMaker Studio 2

Learn how actions move instances by changing x and y with arrow keys and Jump to Point, using relative values to move five pixels.

Learn how to use variables to control game behavior in GameMaker Studio 2, create and assign move_speed, draw values, and update a and b in step events to affect movement.

Learn to implement player movement, background elements, and shooting in an arcade shooter. Build enemies, health mechanics, scoring, power-ups, menus, high-score, and audio using provided resources.

Create a space-shooter player ship in GameMaker Studio 2 by importing a sprite, centering the origin, and setting faster horizontal left-right than vertical up-down movement.

Implement a room boundary by using the Intersect Boundary event and Jump to Point with xprevious and yprevious to return the player to the prior position when touching the edge.

Create a scrolling water background by tiling a water texture with vertical speed, and spawn islands with random frames that move downward and destroy on exit.

Set up a manager object (oManager) and alarms to spawn island instances every second, using alarm 0, random x positions, and temporary variables to create islands above the room.

Create a bullet object that moves upward and is destroyed when it leaves the room, fired by pressing space from the player, using create instance at the player's position.

Learn how to control actions in GameMaker Studio 2 using conditions, including if variable checks, equal and not equal tests, else branches, and drawing text based on a variable.

Add enemy ships that spawn above the room with 120px margins, move downward at speed 2, and destroy after crossing below the room boundary, using random x positions and alarms.

Implement enemy shooting by reducing HP initialized to 2 on bullet collision and destroying the enemy when HP reaches zero; then spawn an explosion at its position that plays once.

Implement AI shooting in GameMaker Studio 2 by using absolute x-distance to determine when enemies fire, looping via alarms, and spawning enemy bullets that damage the player.

Implement a player cooldown that makes the player transparent for one second after a hit; the cooldown variable is 60, preventing further hits and hp loss until it counts down.

Explore if variable conditions, while loops, and for loops in game maker studio 2, with hands-on examples that increment a to 200 and use i to draw multiple values.

Display the player's health by drawing heart sprites in a for loop on the GUI layer using the Draw GUI event, running hp times and spacing hearts horizontally.

Implement a losing sequence that restarts the game after the player dies, triggers an explosion via alarm, and guards against missing players with an existence check to prevent errors.

Display player points in the top right corner. Earn 100 points for enemy kills and lose 50 points when enemies go by, using the fntScore font.

Create and use scripts in GameMaker Studio 2 to centralize actions for multiple objects, then run them with arguments to adjust scale and alpha.

Implement core score indicators in GameMaker Studio 2 by displaying added or removed points with green or red text that fades and moves upward, using a Create Indicator script.

Create a health power-up using GameMaker Studio 2 and the parenting system, with a parent object spawning health items every 8–20 seconds and granting the player one extra heart.

Implement a speed power-up in GameMaker Studio 2 by introducing a spd variable that doubles player speed when collected, with random power-up selection, timed reset, and a fading trail effect.

Create a game over screen in GameMaker Studio 2 that fades in, displays the score, and offers play again or return to the menu using a GUI layer.

Learn to create and use ini files to save and load a game's variable, using open, write, read, and close actions in save.ini under the main section.

Develop a high score system in GameMaker Studio 2 by loading and saving high scores from an ini file, tracking highs with a boolean, and displaying it at game over.

Add music and sound effects in GameMaker Studio 2, including looping background music, shooting and explosion sounds, power-ups, and interactive menu hover and click cues.

Build a game executable in GameMaker Studio 2 by configuring the window title, exe name, version, icon, company, product, copyright info, and description, then export a zip for itch.io.

Implement difficulty scaling in a GameMaker Studio 2 infinite scroller by introducing a growing difficulty variable that speeds up the background, islands, enemies, and power-ups over time.

implement horizontal enemy movement toward the player in game maker studio 2 by checking the player exists, computing the x distance, and moving the enemy by the sign of distance.

Create a ship selector in GameMaker Studio 2 to switch between multiple ships via a global image_index, highlight selection, and apply it to the player and trail.

Wrap up the course by reflecting on progress and planning ongoing practice in game making. Create a new game each week or month to embrace experimentation and learn from mistakes.

Master GameMaker language (GML) as the next step after drag-and-drop, saving time and unlocking advanced features like states, NPCs, tiles, and a day-night cycle.