Throughout the first year of my degree I covered a module titled Game Architecture, Design & Development. This lightly touched on game design, system/software development methodologies and also a piece of software called Game Maker. GM is a small but surprisingly powerful engine for non-programmers to create games with. Due to our limited C++ skills at the time it was a great way for us to begin to learn how to structure our games and to get us thinking about possible elements of games such as collisions and object management without having to do any coding.
Planet wars is our final piece of work using Game Maker. Unlike my other examples no tutorials were followed; the game is entirely of my own design. Incorporating a hybrid of Space Invaders and a scrolling shooter, the game presents varying challenges to the player.
All artwork (except the background for levels) and sounds were extracted from copyright-free sites. This game earned me a respectable 83% (First).
