GameMaker, GameSalad "no programming" shmup creator tools?

[schnoo]

Basically doing some shmup design research here. Can anyone point me to some creator tools like GM or GS that require no or little programming?

Thanks so much!

[Atomhead]

I would recommend GM if you're a beginner. If you manage to grasp the 2 tutorials you're already well on your way of creating a shmup (in the 2nd tutorial you learn how to make part of the game "1942").
Don't kid yourself though, while the drag and drop interface is a great way to avoid code and to understand it, you'll find it has limits that can only be overcome by... that dreaded thing called code.
The good thing about GM though is that there are commands for everything that you can do with the Drag n drop interface, so when you're comfortable with that, it'll be a good idea to start implementing bits of GML (Game Maker Language, like an easy, more forgiving form of object oriented C++)... and after a good while you'll be using only code.

[schnoo]

Thanks. I should say this is for an advanced programmer, but wanting to basically "feel" things out as we've never tried making a shmup before.

[Udderdude]

There's also GMOSSE which is on this forum. It uses GameMaker.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=35075

[schnoo]

There's also GMOSSE which is on this forum. It uses GameMaker.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=35075

thanks, i showed my boss that too.

I THINK we're hoping to combine a space harrier perspective somehow with bullet hell or at least more bullet density. I haven't really seen many games do that... maybe it just doesnt work out well?

[Udderdude]

It's extremely difficult to avoid bullets coming at you like that unless they are very patterned and non-random (large bullet sprays will get your ass murdered very quickly)

I think it's possible to make a game like that, but you have to be really careful with what you fire at the player. A small hitbox would also help a lot.

[BPzeBanshee]

It's extremely difficult to avoid bullets coming at you like that unless they are very patterned and non-random (large bullet sprays will get your ass murdered very quickly)

I think it's possible to make a game like that, but you have to be really careful with what you fire at the player. A small hitbox would also help a lot.

This very much, and thanks for the plug too Udderdude.

GMOSSE serves to show people how to go about making a shmup in Game Maker. I've predominantly taken the Vertically-scrolling route but I do eventually want to have other forms in there providing they don't kill performance. For your design idea, schnoo, it's been done and generally hasn't succeeded - there was a thread posted at Shmups Chat some time ago featuring an attempt at putting Touhou into 3D in this sort of style and going from memory here people had issues with running the program itself but it was also very hard to judge the positions of bullets approaching you. Beyond that it sort of approaches the first-person style with games such as Wing Commander IV and the Starfox 2 prototype (which by the way I think would be awesome to make a shmup in a similar format).

I'm just throwing ideas out here, but perhaps Gyruss might be a better idea to base a "3D" shmup perspective? If you plan on using real 3D though Game Maker might not be the best thing for it though it's certainly capable of such if you're willing to spend a fair bit of time into learning to handle the 3D GML code.

[Rozyrg]

Gotta admit, though... it WOULD be cool to see someone try to emulate that classic Sega SuperScaler style (Space Harrier, Afterburner) in GM. I do have to question how comparably smooth it might run; but it'd be a good challenge nonetheless.

Back OT, GM does ease you into coding surprisingly well.

[Udderdude]

I had prototyped something like that in Java, using a voxel field for the background. It was cool, but I never did anything with it.

Maybe I could play around with it some more :3

[BPzeBanshee]

Manipulation of 1-pixel width colored sprites using something like draw_sprite_general (or whichever one covers xscale, yscale, width and each corner) followed with a for-loop for placement could work doing it in a 2D fashion. Rendering it in 3D with scrolling over a floor with fog coloring to make it look the same might be easier and give a better result though.

[renardqueenston]

i use multimedia fusion 2 and i rather love it. i'd say give it and scirra construct a try. game maker never really clicked with me.

[null1024]

Gotta admit, though... it WOULD be cool to see someone try to emulate that classic Sega SuperScaler style (Space Harrier, Afterburner) in GM. I do have to question how comparably smooth it might run; but it'd be a good challenge nonetheless.

I did do an attempt [and then stopped working on it for no apparent reason] at doing a sprite scaling based 3D engine in GM5.3, did all the testing on my netbook, and it'd probably be even faster if I used GM6/7/8, because GM5 does all this in software IIRC, and GM5 is also unoptimized as hell compared to GM6 and up...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443934/3dtest-nrl.gmd [take note, it probably won't work out-of-the-box in any recent version of GM, sorry]
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443934/3dtest-nrl.exe [arrowkeys/A/Z move camera, joystick moves the player, also works flawlessly in Wine, which was another reason I used GM5.3]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443934/nrl.gmd [not a real 3D engine, just an attempt at doing Sega Y Board-like roads]
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443934/nrl.exe [no interaction]

Also, on-topic: GM is really bloody easy. Starting out, you can drag and drop and for the most part, get stuff done very quickly and easily, and then you can move most of your game logic to code as you get better.

Eventually though, for more complex projects, 95-100% of your stuff would be code, like in that GMD, as doing it in drag-and-drop fashion is either impossible or would just take more effort [which is true of all drag-and-drop based systems, so look for something that lets you actually code eventually!].

Also, I hate MMF, Construct, etc, so take my ultra-support for GM with a grain of salt, especially since I've been using GM since 2003 [I downloaded it a week after it was featured on TechTV [RIP ;-;] because the servers were tied up with all the people trying to download it ]. Although, that doesn't mean I'm particularly good at using it, hehe.

[BPzeBanshee]

I wouldn't downplay yourself null1024, some of the patterns in your games were pretty whack in a good way.

Great stuff on the scaling stuff too, I'll give these a look when I get some spare time for GM.