Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Congratulations
Congratulations! You have now completed your first platform game using Game Maker. Even a
simple platform game like Fishpod brings together a huge range of knowledge and programming
skills, so you can rightly be proud of yourself. You have already learned about the importance of
using box-based collision, seen the orderly power of state machines, and overcome the perils of
discrete time-sampling. Imagine saying all that at the start of the chapter! All this should also
have brought you back up-to-speed with drag-and-drop programming in Game Maker. Try to
make sure you are comfortable with everything we've done in this chapter before continuing, as
we will have to take much of it for granted as we look at more advanced platform games.
Now that you can play the finished game, its worth reflecting on the game play for a moment.
Fishpod is a simple, enjoyable game that provides a decent challenge, but it can sometimes be
quite frustrating as the player doesn't have full control when maneuvering around the hazards.
This is something that arises as a result of the kind of animations we have chosen for Fishpod. We
deliberately gave him a floppy hopping animation that would emphasize the clumsy movement
of a “fish out of water.” However, you can't easily stop a hop in mid-air without strange-looking
results, so Fishpod moves around a kind of artificial grid where he hops from one grid square to
the next. This control system is part of the game's challenge, but it can also leave the player
feeling unfairly punished and unmotivated. This is certainly something that we would need to
address if we were to take the Fishpod idea further. Unfortunately, only the fittest survive in the
competitive world of platform game characters, so we shall be leaving Fishpod behind in his own
prehistoric niche. Don't worry, though; there are plenty of other interesting characters out there,
including ninjas from at least N different dimensions….
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