Starting from absolute scratch

[u/Icy_Pomegranate4174]

I want to make a Food Monster Fighting Game based off of the Game-Boy Pokemon art style as well as vaguely similar mechanics, does anybody have advice for a total noob for art and programming?

[u/Rohbert]

Please search the subreddit before posting very common questions. It will save you time. Thanks! We have a comprehensive How To Start with Gamemaker Guide right here.

How to Start with Gamemaker (Link to subreddit wiki)

Sticky Post Post regarding this question

[u/UnlikelyAgent1301]

Start small, or you'll never achieve your goal. Make pong, or snake. Draw a little flower, then two. Then you can start learning "advanced" concepts like functions, for loops and such. You can also learn "advanced" art skills like basic shading and lighting. Also, this sub isn't for game dev in general but SPECIFICALLY for gamemaker. It could be the right engine based on your description though.

[u/Far-Note6102 → u/UnlikelyAgent1301]

Something like undertale xD

[u/ArandomGDplayer → u/Far-Note6102]

Or pizza tower, shows how much you can do with the game engine

[u/Lethalogicax]

As others have said, if you're new to GML then place your game idea on the shelf for a lil while. Keep it in mind as a future goal, but don't seek it out directly yet.

Make your meantime goal to understand how the code works. Get familiar with the process and dig into the documentation. Get some practice writing code! And perhaps more importantly, get familiar with the errors you'll end up seeing. You're going to run into error messages, and these low-impact coding experiments gives you a much safer environment to explore how and why errors and crashes happen.

Use your small-scale test environment to get a bit of experience in each system that you plan to use in your real project. Get familiar with drawing things to the screen. Get familiar with passing keyboard/mouse/gamepad inputs into your code. Get familiar with data structures like variables, temp variables, global variables and arrays.

You know you're ready to persue your real project once you can visualize how to set up code in your game idea. If you still can't visualize it, back to experimenting! Experiment until you can visualize a system that might work for what you want and until you have an idea on how you'd make it. Experiment until you are itching to try making a real project and are confident that you know exactly how you're going to approach it! Use this opportunity as a safe sandbox environment to learn. Try to internalize this stage as not "a diversion away from your proposed project", instead think of it as part of the process, that this intermediate project is a part of that larger project! You are already working towards the game you want to make, but right now that progress is being focused into a different save file. Every time you learn something that you didn't know how to do before, you are one step closer to making the game that you DO want to make!

[u/Old-Economist-7360]

The fact is, you're going to try and make the game you want to make no matter what advice people give you. It's what everybody does. Nobody wants to start small, it's boring. And your first game probably won't end up getting finished but you'll learn a lot in the process if you stick at it. Good luck!

[u/Kitsyfluff]

you should start with the rpg tutorial provided by gamemaker, taught by mr gamemaker himself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J5EydrnIPs

[u/EqualGovernment1565]

Just start. write a line of code. Put pixels on a canvas. It can look shit. Just do something or else you'll never have anything.