ShapeMan Documentation

ShapeMan Documentation

List of known bugs:

• Sprites occasionally get stuck to wall and not able to move until game has been restarted
• Level switcher not working so can't progress on to the next level

YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17kgl9QD7A

In the video, I show myself playing the game and going through the game explaining how to play the game, how long it took to make the game and why I made the game. 

Also in the video, I had my brother test the game and to give critical feedback, improvements and suggestions. 

Suggestions / Improvements:

• Make level switcher work
• Make the levels more difficult by making the space confined, making it more of a challenge
• Make the pills respawn throughout the level in order to get a high score
• Make the shapes animated 

The game sketch:

This the game sketch for my game, ShapeMan. After making the game, it looks different in ways but has the same concept.


The sprites:
In the ShapeMan game, it uses many different sprites that make the game fully functional. Without these sprites, the game wouldn't function correctly. I created the sprites for the ShapeMan gaming using GameMaker Studio as it has a built in editor for making sprites. 

This image to the right shows the sprite editor in the GameMaker software and this is the wall I made using this part of the software. 

The way I made this was by looking on Google Images for what I needed in order to choose my colour scheme correctly. After many attempts of trying to make the wall, this is the final outcome. 




The objects:

The image to the left shows the main objects that are seen throughout the game. These are created in order to make the sprite do what you need it to do.

This is more or less programming the sprites to do certain things in the game. There are a lot of things you can do with programming the objects. 


game_controller (Object):
Most people call this obj_controller or object_controller, so I decided to call it game_controller which makes it simple for those that want to edit anything in the game.

This object is extremely important in the game and the reason being is because it controls the game. This basically tells the game what to do and from the images below, you can see what you can do by what I have added and the drag and drop options on right from each tab provided.

In the early development of the game, I had this object running from code which complicated something's in the game, so for better functionality, I converted the code back to D&D (drag and drop) so I have a bit more control over the variable in some sense. 

There is a lot of control with the controller if you know how to do things correctly. 

The game_controller sets the score and also draws it on the screen for your chosen position. The most important thing about what I have done in the game_controller is that I have set the score to 0 on Game Start and the reason for this is because it knows what to set score for when either colliding with the wrong object or something else. If I didn't set this and I collided with the wrong object, the score wouldn't reset each time I died in the game. 

Main objects:

The Game Floors and Game Walls both have the same functionality, which practically makes them the same. 

The main purpose of these objects is stop the player getting out of the level or getting bugged.

For each of these objects, I have set collision points up which stop the player going through object. 

These objects don't have any code attached to them, just the drag and drop as standard and the reason for this is because it conflicted with other things in the game. 



The shapes:

In the game, there are five playable characters which are shapes (triangle, square, hexagon, circle and cross)

The image below shows the level layout and in each corner, there are the shapes you have to collect. 

The way I worked around this was to create four lots of individual sprites for the game to work correctly. Each lot of sprites controlled the middle shape changing, the collectables in the corner, the shape you play as and the ones you collect to gain score. 

The image below shows the playable characters and how they are setup to move around the level. 

Each object in this section have their own controls set, the speed they move at, what they can or can't collide with and what happens when they collide with the wrong thing.  

These images show the setup for the triangle playable in the game. Here you can see the collisions with the walls, floors, enemies etc... Also, you can see the keyboard inputs for left, right, up and down at the bottom and they have their speed set. 






The pill:

This image shows the current setup for the pill in the game. The sprite was quite simple to make as it only consists of a circle and some shading of different colours. 

The image to left shows the sprite pill that can be seen in the game. For this to work in the game, I have set it so all shapes you turn into can collect this and this gives a score of 10 per pill you collect. 

There are 35 pills per level and when they are all collected, the score is increased to 350 excluding collecting the shapes. 

After when the player has collided with the pill, the receive a score of 10 and then the instance is destroyed. 



The room:

This is the first level of the game and this is the typical layout of each level for the game. The only thing that is different is that enemies are in different locations and there are more of them. 

Another thing that is different with each level is that the shapes in each corner are in different orders to just to make game more interesting as well as more of a challenge. The backgrounds, walls and floors are also different for each level too.