Yummy GameMaker Goodness…

Good technical documentation is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Almost as good as bug-free code.

Ultimate DdD to GML Converter

It occurred to me recently that my Actions could be easier to understand and debug if I refactored to convert as much of it from Drag-and-Drop actions into GML scripts. It’s a LOT easier to understand a script call to “Player_Eats_Fish” than it is to read a dozen or more DnD actions that do “Player Eats Fish” and figure out what they’re doing. Plus, you can call the scripts elsewhere if you need to.

So I started doing this, and realized that there were certain things that I didn’t know how to do. Reading the language reference in the GameMaker Help helped, but at times I still got confused… Then I googled and found this. UDnD2GML does a nice job of converting Drag and Drop actions into valid and correct GML. It’s actually written in GameMaker, too; that’s right, it’s a GameMaker project that converts GameMaker drag-n-drop actions into GML. Very slick! When you need to work out a bit of tricky syntax, or are dealing with some function you don’t use a whole lot, it’s indespensible.

Drag and Drop Icons and Their GML Equivalents for Version 7.0

Basically the same thing, only a big hypertext reference document. I liked it so much, I printed it to PDF format and am keeping it with my other GameMaker docs. Although this is for GML7, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that has changed in GML8. Could be a bit clearer in places, and incomplete in some regards (I had to use UDND2GML to figure out how to apply instance_destroy() to other; this document was silent on that point.)

Official GameMaker 8 Help File as a PDF

Not hard to find by any means, but if you don’t have it, it’s the best place to start. A lot nicer than searching through the Help Menu index.

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