I have completed my Safe Zone extension for Game Maker, and made it available.
Altogether, here’s what we now have:
SafeZone.gmk – the original proof of concept, which creates a non-wrapping, square safe zone around the protected object.
SafeZone2.gmk – improved proof of concept, which creates a circular safe zone which wraps around the protected object.
SafeZone5.gmk – Further refined, now the function incorporates parameters which control whether the wrap applies in the vertical or horizontal directions, or both, or neither.
SZ5.gml – the raw .gml of the script code written for SafeZone5.gmk
SafeZone_1_0.gex – The Safe Zone extension, v.1.0, based on the SafeZone5 code.
SZ_GEX_demo.gmk – a demo project which incorporates the .gex rather than scripts.
This extension could use further refinement, as it assumes that literally anywhere else in the room is safe to place the new instance. If you have solid objects in your room, or multiple other objects that you do not want to collide with upon spawning the new object, this obviously will not hold true. But for certain types of games, such as single-player free-flight games, this should be quite useful.
I’ve made an improved version of my 2D AI Targeting demo for Game Maker. My original AI Targeting was limited by the fact that an object could not target other instances of the same object type — doing so in effect would cause the seeker object to attempt to target itself.
The original AI Targeting routine used instance_nearest(), which works great if you are targeting an object of a different type. If you need to target the same type of object, however, instance_nearest() won’t help you, since the nearest instance of the same object is always self.
Using instance_nearest_extended by Kyle_Solo, I was able to come up with a routine that allows for “cannibal” AI targeting — that is, targeting an object of the same type as the seeker.
I struggled for a long time to use the instance_xth_nearest() method to accomplish cannibal targeting, which seemed to be suitable as it has a built-in criteria test, but was unable to get the function to work as desired. I’m still not entirely sure why, but I am guessing that it may be due to the “other” keyword being undefined or referencing “noone” when an object is not involved in a collision.
I ended up successfully completing the project using instance_nth_nearest and a bit of extra code which performed the criteria testing that I required. In order to get my testing code to work, I had to introduce a global variable to count the number of instances of the targeted object, so I could construct a loop to iterate over them using instance_xth_nearest(). I’m wondering if there isn’t a faster or more graceful way to accomplish this, but it works well for now.
In the video above, the Arrows target the nearest Arrow that is small enough for them to “beat”. The rule I am using here is that a bigger arrow must be 1.3x the size of a smaller arrow in order to be able to “beat” it, but this could be modified to some other condition by changing the can_beat() function. If a candidate target cannot be “beaten” the arrow considers the next nearest arrow, and so on, until all of the instances of the targeted object type have been checked. If no arrow is small enough to be “beaten”, the arrow flies in a straight direction.
Source .gml and a demo .gmk project is available at the Releases page; a .gex extension build will be released in the near future.
After releasing my AutoFullScreen 1.0 extension for Game Maker, I noticed a minor bug with the way small rooms were being scaled up to fill the window.
When scaling up a small room, in 1.0 the scale factor is calculated by determining whether the room was taller or wider, and used whichever was the longer dimension along with the display’s corresponding dimension to calculate the scale ratio. This was close to correct, but not quite right.
In 1.1, the scale factor is calculated both ways, using the height and the width, and then use the smaller of the two room:display ratios rather than the larger of the two room dimensions. The difference is subtle, but the upshot of this is that if you try to scale up a 4:3 room on a 16:10 display using the 1.0 method, it fills the screen completely, distorting the dimensions of the room. In 1.1 the room does not get distorted, as intended.
I have fixed the bug and added a feature to the function to make the zoom function optional. If you prefer to have the room drawn at actual size, you now have that option.
I’ve now built a Game Maker Extension (.gex) version of my handy AutoFullScreen function. It is available for download on the Releases page.
The extension includes only AutoFullScreen, the version which I called AutoFullScreen2 in the .gmk that I initially released a few weeks ago. I’ll be releasing a separate .gex of the MiniMap functions eventually.
Note: To get the AutoFullScreen.gex to install into Game Maker, you must launch Game Maker using Run As Administrator.
I came up with some handy scripts for Game Maker 8 projects.
AutoFullScreen(Border_W,Border_H,objFollow): This script automatically sets the game window to full screen mode, and sizes View0 to the pixel dimensions of the display. If the room is not as large as the display, the room is scaled up to fit the display, and will stretch to fill the display in both the horizontal and vertical dimension, which can result in distort the room if it has a different height:width ratio than the display.
AutoFullScreen2(Border_W,Border_H,objFollow): This script automatically sets the game window to full screen mode, and sizes View0 to the pixel dimensions of the display. If the room is not as large as the display, the room is scaled up to fit the display, but does not get distorted by a different height:width ratio.
MiniMap(minimap_width,minimap_height,top,left): Sets up View1 as a minimap view of the room. Takes parameters which set the height and width size of the minimap in pixels, and whether the minimap appears in the top/bottom or left/right corner of the window.
MiniMap2(scale_factor,top,left): Like MiniMap, but with a slightly different argument for sizing the minimap. Instead of sizing the height and width using absolute pixel dimensions, you provide a scaling value. The map will be sized to a proportion of the display size divided by the scale factor (e.g., a scale factor of 8 means you’ll get a minimap that is 1/8 the size of the main window.)
The .gmk file is pretty well documented, contains example rooms with reference implementations of the scripts, and can be downloaded from releases.