Game Maker Educational Games (STORY BOARD)

The games to be built in this project will be in a progressive way which will help with the development of senses and impartation of knowledge from a lower level and progressively up till a high level.

The game (project) will be a bundle of different game genres with different functions to help with the playing of the game.

The motion movement of the games will also increase progressively from a simple two way movement up to four way movements with different variations at different stages.

Game one:

the first game will be moving object game which will require the player to get some amount of points to move over to the next game. The game will include sprites that can take points when clicked on and sprites that can give more points when clicked on. On successful completion of this first game, the player will be able to play the nest game.

Game two:

Car racing game - the second game will be a two direction car racing game, the user will be restricted to the movement of only in the right or left direction. There will be bonuses to boost the life of the racing sprites and harmful sprites to dodge on the way.

The next level of this game will include a full directional movement while racing starting with a few harmful sprites and the difficulty increases progressively.

Game three:

the third game will be a game from the maze genre and just like the first game it will have sprites (stationary or mobile) that can give more points and also sprites that will take more points. The game will start with a little amount of dangerous sprite and as the time proceeds the number of dangerous sprites increase.

An optional intermediary game may be a short game of moving sprites some dangerous and some helpful. When the player clicks on the fast moving sprites, there is a chance to gain or loose points. the sprites will be in a very fast moving motion, and if the player does not want to take the gamble, the game may be left with out input and the marks remain the same for the next stage of game.

Another optional intermediary game will be a "spot the difference" game, this game may not be dynamic but it will involve the player spotting the differences in a pair of two very similar pictures.

I had pondered on what type of game to build and came up with an idea, although it is not refined to the specifics, here are the basic.

A game with Questions and option answers from different subjects,

the first screen shows three different age brackets (5-8; 8-11; 11-15),

each of the age brackets have different topics to choose from (Mathematics; English; Colors; General Computer Knowledge; General History)

Each Subject will be in different stages, based on the difficulty and example of difficulty in stages could be:

-the first stage: click the right answer and earn points, pick the wrong option and it moves to the next stage without losing points;

-further stages have the answers moving faster and or if the wrong answer is picked points are deducted (the option motion help kids with using the mouse)

The game can start with slower moving options and can then proceed with point deductions with wrong option chosen, then faster moving options, then reduced timed duration to pick an answer [for different subjects].

In addition to what was done, i improved the game and added a back ground to the game, added music background and sounds that play when a fruit is clicked.

I could play with the functions and add my own sounds, my own customized speeds and points awarded.

To complete the game i added a help file for a brief description on how to play the game when the F1 button is pressed.

First Tutorial in Game Maker

I downloaded the game first of all and examined the platform for Game maker lite. Game maker lite is free to download so before i go ahead with the pro edition i want to understand the lite edition to an extent.

Went through the tutorial 1 that came with the game and understood the components used in the Game maker Lite platform.

The sprites: Sprites are just images that do not do anything.

The Objects: Objects are like activations for sprites to gain motion, move around and react to mouse actions. After creating and object, a sprite is tagged to the object and the objects reactions and movements are defined. The sprite tagged with the Object now assumes the full characters of what is defined for the Object.

An Object can be made solid so that other activated sprites cannot move through it, instead they bounce from it in a random direction.

Room: A room is created as an environment for the objects in the game to assume their characteristics. The room in this tutorial is bordered by a wall object made solid so that sprites do not go through them.

I am now looking at games created with game maker by other users.