Tuesday 10 April 2012

Getting creation event coordinates for Game Maker

I am currently getting into using Game Maker for games development, and am beginning to use 'timelines' to initiate the creation of 'enemy' object instances.

Two of the parameters needed in the object instance creation event are the X and Y coordinates for the object's creation. This is very easy to input, but only if you know the intended pixel coordinates off the top of your head, which is less easy to simply guess at, and for some games may need something more precise than a guess.

One way to find out these coordinates is to keep reverting back to the 'room' and hovering your mouse over the grid. As you do this some digits in the bottom left of the screen will tell you the nearest grid point X and Y to where your mouse is hovering. You could make a mental note, then revert back to the timeline and input the digits.

Personally, I find this annoying and fiddly.

So, to save me some annoyance, and speed up my development, I have produced a couple of game screen coordinate reference grids that help me. All you do is print them out and keep them handy.

My guess is that if they help me, they might help you, in which case you can download the game screen coordinate reference grids in PDF format here.

Please note these are released under a creative commons license.

Happy game developing.

1 comment:

  1. I gotta say, stumbled onto this blog in my research and its pretty amazing. TONS of helpful info and it is all very much appreciated!

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete