Creating a Game - Moving Forward [Alpha]

 

Moving Forward is a collaboration between my partner Sandy and myself. My roles for Moving Forward were programmer and designer.

As a programmer, learning how to use Game Maker was tedious. There were options for drag and drop, but there were options for writing small scripts. I had the opportunity to do both, but it was difficult to tell where bugs where besides trial and error.

As a designer, I decided to do the following for the alpha version of the game:
Player

• ESDF to move
• S to move left
• F to move right 
• E as temporary fix for wall glitch
• D to move down while in air
• Space to jump
• Left click 
• Has three lives
• Has 10 ammo
• Player goes back to start after in contact with robot or robot bullet

Robot

• is worth 10, 20 or 30 points
• can drop lives and/or ammo
• randomly shoots left and right

Ammo Drops

• +5 ammo

Life Drops

• +1 life

Game

• Start with score 0
• Game ends when
• player loses all lives
• player destroys all robots
• Prompt to play again when game ends
• Yes -> game starts over
• No -> game closes 
• Current maximum score = 270 points because 7 enemies * 30 maximum points possible per robot

My question for players is what additions would you think should be added to the game? Should there be a double jump? Is the way ammo is given to a player sufficient?

While going through the process of improving the game, I always was trying to figure out where were the bugs in the game. Due to the lack of time, I found it difficult to debug under a program I was not familiar with. I was able to figure out camera focusing on a player in a large room, collisions (most of it) and keeping track of lives, score and ammo.

If you want to try out the game yourself, you can get it here: Download Link