Monday 13 January 2014

Small Changes

After messing around and changing a few things like the speed of the acceleration and deceleration i could tell that the road didn't look endless. This was because of the texture of the grass. So i quickly got rid of that and left it white for the mean time.. using this image here.

I then also managed to implement a braking system for the car by messing around with the max speed variable. I was alright with this but might have another look before the project is finished.

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T
S

Sunday 5 January 2014

Already got the Basics

After spending time on the project today I've managed to get a surprisingly large amount done. 

Firstly i made these two images so i could test the game -


 

So theres the car model and the road.

After a bit of messing around i got the car moving forwards using a button. I realise that i actually needed the background to move and for the car to stay in the same place on the Y axis.

So doing that was pretty simple i just swapped the code from the car to the background and tweaked it. The harder part for me was getting the background to repeat itself to make an endless road. For this i used trial and error which took a while but in the end i got to a setup i was happy with.

Next i did a quick google for acceleration in gamemaker that took me to this and part of that is what i tweaked and made it work nicely in the game.

While things were going well i thought i would have a look at how the tilt function on the device worked so that i could have the car moving left and right. A look around on google didn't find me anything i exactly wanted but on youtube an excellent video fitted perfectly, this is it.

I was extremely happy with it today and look forward to adding more detail next time, speak to you soon!

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T
S

Game Idea

After plenty of sleep and a lot of time thinking about the type of game i want to design i finally had the idea.

The plan is to build a driving game where the challenge is to weave through traffic and the further you get the more coins you win and the more upgrades you are able to buy.

I want to be able to tilt to turn the car and then a brake and accelerator on either side of the screen

Thinking about it, i should be able to make it look like its driving using a moving/scrolling background.

So to start i shall make a car model and a background that could endlessly scroll.

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T
S

Saturday 4 January 2014

Screen Resolutions

During the testing i realised not every phone has the same screen resolution, so heres my first task.

So another google got me to this page. Now i obviously don't want to use the whole tutorial here i just want to know how to get the resolution. 

I used the first bit of code on that tutorial to give me variables for both the width and the height and i put it into the rooms creation code. To test it had worked i made an object that would draw the variable and sure enough it all worked to my surprise.

Now i went back to the creation code of the room and made it so that it set the room size the same as the variable when it launched. That was my first task, sorted as simple as that.

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T
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Testing

So to test the game i'm going to use my Nexus 4 running android version 4.4.2 (KitKat). It can sometimes take a bit of messing around getting the ADB (Android Debugging Bridge) set up so you are able to use your device to test your game. I had already had this set up a while so literally all i did was plug it in.

To test it was working i made a room and gave it the resolution of my phone and then set it to a green colour so i could tell that it displayed the room, I hit the run button and it worked perfectly.

Getting Started

So a boil of the kettle later i'm back with a 'cuppa' and i'm ready to get going. First thing i know i need to do is set up the IDE (GameMaker) so that it has everything it wants. 

A quick google of 'GameMaker android setup' gave me the official page to setup for android development, find that here.

So that's setting up out of the way, now just starting a new project, called it "Android Game" because i'm not 100% on the name or even type of game yet. Now were ready to jump in.

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T
S

Hello & Welcome

First of all thanks for taking a look at the blog, think i better start this by explaining what this blog is for, so here we go...

As you can judge from the title i have the idea of developing an android game using GameMaker. If you've never heard of GameMaker take a look here but as a quick explanation its a piece of software used to develop games that can be exported to a variety of devices. These types of software are usually known as IDE's standing for Integrated Development Environment.

I have used GameMaker before making a small platform game for PC, nothing special. I am no expert coder or anything like that, i wish. With this project i plan to follow it till the end and include all the advertising and publishing ideas in this blog.

The main idea for the blog is just so you can help and contribute any ideas you have or so you can start making an android game yourself.

So there's the plan, i hope you're all interested in following the blog. Look forward to the journey! 

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T
S