Ferlin's Gamemaker Pages


	Home Page \| About Page \| My Games \| What's New \| Contact Us \| Favorite Links \| Tutorials \| Magazines

This Website is dedicated to the game creation package created by Mark Overmars and known as Gamemaker

Gamemaker

Did you always want to design computer games? And you don't want to spend a lot of time learning to become a programmer? Then you came to the right place. Game Maker is a program that allows you to make exciting computer games without the need to write a single line of code. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions you can make professional looking games in little time. Games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects. And once you get more experienced there is a built-in programming language that gives you full flexibility. What is best, Game Maker can be used completely free of charge. And you can use the games you produced in any way you like. You can even sell them! Game Maker comes with a collection of freeware images and sounds to get you started. Also there are a number of example games. These are mainly provided as examples and not as full-blown games. Here you see a picture of the interface.

About The Program

Game Maker is written in Delphi (version 5 at the moment because of some compatibility issues with more recent versions). Almost all the code was written by Mark Overmars except for a few freeware components to read different image formats and to compress the data. The Game Maker source code is over 25,000 lines of code. The source code for the runner part is similar in size. The maker part is heavily based on the Windows API. This makes it rather difficult to port it to a different platform. The runner part is based on DirectX (version 5 at the moment to keep it compatible with most older computers). Again, this makes it difficult to port it to other platforms. Don't expect versions that can make games for e.g. hand-held devices. These are currently not powerful enough.

Screen Shots Of Games Created With The Program

Doomed (4.3 MB) written by Brent Cowan
A doom-like 3-dimensional first person shooting. Shows that Game Maker can actually make 3D games.

Goomba's Revenge (0.1 MB) written by Dorfsquest and Neo Gamer
A platform game in which the roles are reversed. Rather difficult. Nice graphics, but the window is a bit small.

Gradius (1.4 MB) written by Jedi Questmaster
Editable scrolling shooter with many powerups. Rather difficult.

Harrier Strike (8.0 MB!!!) written by Tristan Whitmarsh
Isometric game in which you fly a Harrier plane and must destroy enemies.

Megabot (4.5 MB) written by Sandor Fekete
This is a wonderful side scrolling platform game with the atmosphere of the great games of the past. It is a full length "near commercial quality" game that takes days to play.

Super Mario: Kamek the Magikoopa's Revenge(1.2 MB) written by Mike Parnell
Clearly Game Maker can create platform games. Here is one based on the well-known Mario character.

Where To Find The Program

The program is available for free for the Windows platform (98, NT, 2000, ME, XP), although registration is encouraged. Simply download it HERE, and execute gmaker.exe. This will install the Game Maker on your machine.