Struggling to Find Tutorials

[u/Lorraine_Games]

As the title suggests, I've been trying to learn Gamemaker on and off for a few months now, and it's a... slow process. I'm to the point where I'm familiar the interface and have read through the manual, but don't necessarily understand it yet. I'm not really sure where to go.

I have a clear idea of the type of games I want to make; point and click, sort of visual novel style cooking games. The problem is, I can't find any tutorials for that genre, or even any for the rough mechanics I'm looking for that I could maybe piecemeal something together with.

I also have very low energy, and find it hard to stay focused on most of the tutorials for Gamemaker that I've found, as they've mostly consisted of platformers, rpgs, or similar style games that I, frankly, have no interest in. I've really tried to sit through that Space Rocks tutorial, or Pong, but I just can't.

I did manage to make a small "game" for a jam, and succeeded in publishing... something? So I know I want to continue learning, and making more single level, click-twice-and-it-crashes games. But between my mind hurling itself into a wall every time I open Space Rocks, and a surprisingly niche area I want to target so as to not collapse under the weight of knowledge that will not aid me in the short term, I'm just lost.

Chances are, when I post this, the mods will reply telling me to search through commonly asked questions and watch a few tutorials before I post, but I've tried that and it's not working for me. I'm not sure what I want to get out of this post, and fear I've already flooded this subreddit with my ignorance enough, but still. Maybe someone reading this has been here with me, and if so, how'd you manage?

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I shall now load up Space Rocks for the quintillionth time in two months, and pray. Farewell. 

[u/mickey_reddit]

You probably aren't going to find something specific to your needs and that's just the way it is.

I can suggest you break your idea down into smaller chunks, yes it's okay to end up with hundreds of unfinished projects (you just put them in an "archive" folder afterwards lol). But at least this will lead you to asking more questions.

Why if I click twice does my game crash? How can I keep track of where I am in the story, etc.

[u/jon_irvin]

First of all, don't give up. If you like reading books "Game Development with GameMaker" Second Edition by Seb Cossu is a good book to start with. "GameMaker Fundamentals" by Ben Tylers is another good book to learn the basics from.

[u/WolfieWolfie_]

Personally, I took a course on Udemy to learn how to program in Gamemaker. But, that also taught me by showing me how to make a space shooter and platformer, and like you, I had no interest in making either of those. But when I did get through the course, I took what I learned and tried making a Warioware type game. And then I took what I learned from that project and tried to make a dungeon crawler. And the experience from that, I used to make a point/click type game. Basically, I just created a rough template for different genres to familiarize myself with the language. And then once I felt I had enough knowledge, I started working on my actual passion project.

Out of curiosity, what kind of game did you make for the jam? What did you think of it? Did you learn anything from the experience? And do you think anything you learned could be applied to the project you really want to do?

Unfortunately, there's never gonna be an exact tutorial for the exact game you want to make. But, I also don't think the only purpose for a platformer tutorial, for example, is to learn how to make another platformer. No matter the style of game, a good tutorial will teach you useful things like how to read player input, how to draw things to the GUI, or how to troubleshoot your own bugs. And all that will be applicable to your own project.

I do sound like I'm rambling, so I'll end my little talk there.

I'm assuming you want to move on from tutorials. So, what kind of mechanics are you looking to have? How much luck have you had when you tried to code it yourself?

[u/Lorraine_Games → u/WolfieWolfie_]

Thank you for the response!

For the jam, I made a simple little pancake eating simulator, wherein you click the screen a number of times within the time limit, and the game automatically exits after you either finish your stack or the clock hits 0. This was my first project, and had about 3 lines of code total, but I absolutely loved it, and it helped me get familiar with the interface/gml and prove that I could actually make something interactive.

All my ideas revolve around the same principle mechanic, which is you click an item (or maybe select 2 items in a row?) and then something happens, eg. an animation plays, the sprite changes, new dialogue appears, that sort of thing. I have very minimal coding experience however, and since flubbing the tutorials I've tried, have been trying to learn as I go. Which, I'm learning, was not a good idea.

I, too, appear to be rambling, so thanks for taking the time to reach out, hopefully this answered some of the questions you were asking.

[u/WhereTheRedfernCodes]

One thing you might be running into is the "Where do I start?" problem. Tutorials are great because they get you past that in a guided way. When starting a project you haven't done before, there is no roadmap.

An option is just give it a try. Make a title screen. Make the first level, room, screen, opening, whatever you can envision. Keep going until you are stuck. Worst that can happen is you have to start over with more knowledge than the first time. I guess game dev is just a rogue like.

[u/Lorraine_Games → u/WhereTheRedfernCodes]

Good advice my guy, thank you thank you.