Hi! I checked out your test, and the movement feels pretty much just like Mother, so nice on! Also, the idea of turning Mother into something rougelike sounds really exciting!
As a fellow maker of RPGs in GameMaker, I instantly thought of a few tips that might help you out:
In the project graphics settings, you should be able to change the settings to “allow the user to resize the window” and uncheck “borderless window” so users can make the screen bigger and manage it just like any other window.
If you choose the “Export as ZIP” option, it’ll compile your project as a zipped folder instead, which will rarely ever give virus flags. Later GameMaker formats have even removed the standalone EXE option.
The overworld NPC sprites are looking nice, by the way. They’re quite tricky to pull of sometimes. Lucas looks fantastic!
Now, you may resist this at first, but I wouldn’t have given this advice years ago, but you should probably switch to GameMaker Studio 2 (now just called GameMaker).
Despite some questionable UI choices and depreciation of a few very specific niche features, GMS2 offers a number of advanatages that will make your life easier farther down the road:
- GMS2 uses a new tilemap system, which is about 10x faster than GMS1’s old tile editor in rooms. This thing’s been a lifesaver! There’s even now support for tilemap collision checking. This means you can just draw tiles on the map for collision, and they can be checked with place_meeting() just like anything else. Also, in the editor, you can grab several tiles at once, or copy a whole region of the map, as the brush for drawing.
- Unless you add a special .dll or plugin to your project, GMS1 compiled games run slower on Windows 10 and 11.
- GMS2 projects seem to compile faster on GMS2.
- If you didn’t purchase the super-professional edition of GMS1 back in the day, that means a few features of the IDE are locked, like the ability to manage texture pages or rename the program’s window title. GMS2 has no restrictions. In fact, GMS2 comes with all non-console export options free out of the box for non-commercial use. And if you keep using Mother assets, you’re definitely non-commercial! :)
As a last note, I’ve programed lots of stuff from Mother-like games, including menus, NPC’s, allies that follow the player, warp transitions, and more. If there’s something you’re having trouble trying to program, feel free to reach out! :D
new fangame is on the oven! problem: Programmer/s wanted!
