Shoot The Core - Now with Game Maker 7 related rambling!

PenguinSeph's picture

I think I've worked out why I've never really finished anything MMF wise. Lack of planning and I hate MMF. Didn't know that I hated it till I got Game Maker 7 Pro however. I like Game Maker 7 Pro. It's like programming for stupid people (in a way). It removes 70-90% of the hard stuff like drawing windows and graphics, and allows you to cut straight to making stuff while being powerful enough to make interesting stuff. It's removed most of the limits MMF imposed on me. I'll probably find some more later, but right now it's cool.

This is a quick and easy arcade top down shmup abstract thing based around time attacking a single boss. Right now it has no music. Was made in about a day. First Game Maker 7 Pro game.

You play a dot, and have to shoot the core. I want people to be able to play the game without much external instructions so I'll not post a wall of text.



I would like to know if anyone had any trouble understanding what was going on, if their are any bugs, if it runs well and if you think that it's too easy or hard. Or ugly. Also, scores would be nice. Be brutal. I'm not going to learn otherwise.

Link here

Comments

SpindleyQ's picture

I am terrible at this game.

I am terrible at this game. Probably it didn't help that I only had my laptop's touchpad with which to aim. I somehow managed to blow up the second ring just before my game ended.

I don't really like that the game kept getting harder even while I hadn't managed to hit anything. I would've preferred the difficulty to go up only as I was actually making progress and killing things. Nothing worse than "I'm terrible at this and it's only getting harder oh god I'll never hit anything."

Also, I understand the need for delaying shots (you don't want the player to be able to just spray bullets at the core (even though the jerkass core can just spray bullets at you)), but I think a fixed delay between them would be better than one-shot-on-the-screen. I found it really difficult to kill the purple enemies, since if I missed, I had to wait much longer to shoot again than if I'd just tried to ignore them and shoot directly at the core. Maybe that's desirable, but then it's REALLY crucial that the purple enemies only spawn in response to actually hitting something.

As an aside, I'm interested in hearing more about your experience with GM. Is the Pro edition really that much better than the free one? Were you using the drag-and-drop mostly, or did you dip into the scripting language?

My main irritant with GM was the apparent requirement that I had to code my own player movement; certainly for this style of game, that's not a big deal.

qrleon's picture

I forgot to comment on this.

I forgot to comment on this. It's kind of hard to be brutal about such a short thing, but like SpindleyQ said, it's easier just to restart when things go wrong and there is no incentive to pull yourself up by the bootstraps halfway through because you will get a smaller score.

There is a quick exploit: at the beginning of the game, move under and around the core so that you are on its right side. a half-second before the walls align to give you an opening, avoid the drone that spawns and shoots at you. Then dash into the main core area and fire rapidly at it before it begins shooting. I once killed it in one attempt (but more often I would just get three or four shots in), getting a score of 284. I suppose you could fix this by making the core hurt the player.

(edit: you can see this exact situation in the second screenshot)