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Useful Links

Here you'll find links to sites on just about every subject related to this site (except I don't have any RoboCop links...sorry).
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Game Maker Help

Offical Game Maker Tutorials (on Yoyogames.com)
This is a good place to start when you're new to Game Maker, or if you want a general idea of how to make a few specific types of games, such as platformers.

The Tutorials Sub-Forum on the GMC
There are a whole mess of tutorials here, so use the search function. This is good for those hard to find topics that you can't find on anyone's website. Just don't request tutorials here.

The Game Maker Manual - Online
Here the entire Game Maker help file ("The Manual") is reproduced on the web.

Game Maker Resource Index
The GM Resource Index is a site where you can find several examples, tutorials, and scripts. It also has a forum.

Simon's Game Maker Page
This site has articles, tutorials, examples, and scripts for Game Maker. I included this mainly for the "coding efficiency" and "Common flaws within GM games" articles, which state what should be obvious. A lot of people would benefit from them.

PhpInDev (Once "Rithiur Scripts")
While this site now has more php content than Game Maker, it still has some good scripts and libs.

GML Scripts
This is a collaborative resource of Game Maker scripts.

Game Maker Technology Magazine
GMTech is probably the best of the Game Maker online magazines. Of course, I'm a bit biased, as I've been writing pixel art tutorials for them (look for my tutorials starting in issue 12!).

Markup Magazine (and the GMKing Network)
Another popular Game Maker online magazine. Like GMTech, you'll find lots of GM information here.

GMaster's Website
This is another Game Maker site with a whole bunch of examples.

 

Personal Sites of Game Maker Users

Click on the arrow to show or hide the list

This is a list of a few Game Maker users, linking to their websites. These are listed alphabetically (If I have something out of order, feel free to keep it to yourself). Do NOT email me trying to get on this list. I'll link to you if I feel like it. However, if you are one of these people and you DON'T want to be listed (for some odd reason), then email me.

 

Pixelart Tutorials & Etc.

Pixel Joint
This is a great pixelart submission gallery and community. Highly recommended!

Anatomy of a Walk Tutorial
If you have trouble making your favorite character sprite walk, then check this out. It explains how a person moves as they walk. The site, RubberBug.com, also has a few other, less useful tutorials.

Anatomy of a Run Tutorial (on Pixel Forum)
This is a good suppliment to the "Anatomy of a Walk" tutorial. This is very useful for figuring out how to make your character run, be it 16 or 160 pixels tall. In case this forum ever moves or deletes this tutorial, I saved a copy of the page Here.

So you want to be a pixel artist? by Tsugumo
This is the best tutorial I've seen for learning to draw some basic RPG-ish characters. A lot is covered by this tutorial, and there are a few others on the site. (This tutorial used to be on Zoggles.co.uk, but it seems to be down, so I found this site. It seems to be the same tutorial, though).

Mark's Pixel Art Tutorial
Another pixel art tutorial. It's not bad. It talks a little about anti-aliasing and all that.

The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art
It looks complete to me. It starts out by drawing perfect lines, and by the end, you draw a kitchen, with oak cabinets. Now that's progress. I recommend this tutorial for learning to draw isometric sprites. By the way, this tutorial is geared toward MS Paint users, but I'm sure you could use it in other programs too. This isn't the original site for this tutorial, but it seems to be copied intact here. It was originally found at rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial, but this site was down at the time of this writing.

PixelFreak's Isometric Tutorial
An Isometric Sprite Tutorial for Beginners. I never really liked working with isometric stuff, so I don't usually. Therefore, I don't know how helpful this tutorial might be.

Matriax Pixel Art Tutorials
I'm not really sure how I stumbled upon this website, but the tutorials seem to be moderately useful. If you prefer, you can read them in Spanish, too.

Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics by Ari Feldman
This is on the Game Maker website, put I'd thought I'd point it out. Here you can download chapters from Ari Feldman's book about making good game graphics. I suggest reading the planning chapter.

 

Resources

FindSounds
This is a web search engine for, you guessed it, sound files. It doesn't promise the files you find will be copyright-free, so be careful which files to use in your games. Also, a tip: don't search for "bump" or "bang". You have to be more specific, like "gun shot".

The Spriter's Resource
This site is my go-to site for checking out sprites from popular games such as Mario, Final Fantasy, and more. Use them for reference and learning, or (if you must) for your "fan game".

Video Games Sprites.Net
This is a sprite resource site with some old-school sprites from some older games.

The People's Sprites
Another, larger, sprite resource site. This site has submissions from various games submitted many sprite rippers.

SVG to Raster Image Conversion
If you're annoyed that Game Maker can't handle vector graphics, then check out this site. It'll convert your SVG images into PNG, JPEG, or TIFF format. I haven't tried it, since I don't have much experience making vector graphics.

 

Online Communities

YoyoGames.com
Yoyogames is the parent company of Game Maker. This site is a great place to find a lot of great Game Makers games, as well as a lot of crappy Game Maker games. There is also a forum.

The Game Maker Community
The Official Game Maker forum.

Game Maker Games
Another collect of games, also with a forum.

64 Digits Community
This is a Game Maker community in which users can submit games, examples, and works in progress. One can also create a blog on the site. This is a large community with many users and many games.

EO Community
This is an exclusive community of game makers who put out some useful tutorials and some nice games.

Pixel Forum
Another Pixelart forum that's called "Pixel" (Trendy name, I guess). This forum has several good pixelart tutorials posted including a running sprite tutorial.

 

Quality Games

Seiklus
The homepage for a great game maker game, Seiklus. Can you say Non-linear platform adventure? Also be sure to check out the rest of the site.

Return to Sector 9
This is the best arcade style space shooter I've seen. It has many different games to be unlocked within the game.

Legend of Shadow
This action platformer is great for those who love ninjas.

The Hanrahan Game: Final Mix
Another action platformer that is great for those who love ninjas (and pirates. and vikings).

Garden Gnome Carnage
If you have a spare few minutes, play this great, amusing game. Swing a Garden Gnome around on a rope to repel the invading Cristmas elves!

Pixel War
The yoyogames page for another great GameMaker game, Pixel War. I love the concept of this game, and it's highly addictive.

Hard Hat Series
Hard Hat 1, 2, and 3 are a series of great Mega-Man style games by Damaged. I dowloaded Hard Hat 1 and 2, and they are pretty cool. The graphics in these games are excellent.

Ark 22
This is a Zelda style game, with action and puzzles built in. I've played through the first "dungeon", and I find this game to be rather good. Apparently there is over six hours of game play. This website is currently a work in progress.

Alphasix
This is a great one or two player arcade game in which you battle one other player (either against a computer or a friend) in a series of deathmatches. The game has a whole story behind it; it's rather impressive.

 

Tools & Programs

Charas Online Character Generator
This is a great resource for those who are too lazy to learn to draw their own character sprites. Just select a face, hair, clothes, etc. and suddenly you have a character set ready for using in your next great role playing game.

Paint.NET
Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software, and appears to be quite a program. It would be a great program to have for, well, image and photo manipulation. What else? And, of course, it's free.

Graphics Gale
Graphics Gale is another image editing program that produces very loyal users. Never tell a Graphics Gale user that MS Paint is better (and its not). Graphics Gale can be downloaded here as the freeware version, or for a little money, a shareware version with a few more features.

The GIMP Image Manipulation Program
"GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages." --That's straight from the source. This site only has source code downloads, but it links to sites with it pre-compiled.

Fx Sound and Magic: Free Downloads
This site has free downloads of several useful programs, including their own Icon Maker and Microsoft GIF Animator.

Anim8or
This is a free program for 3D modelling. Maybe it's not the best, but it's free! It is currently at version 0.9, and more versions are promised.

ADRIFT: Adventure Development & Runner - Interactive Fiction Toolkit
This is a program that allows you to create "text-based adventures". No coding is needed, ADRIFT sports a graphical user interface. This program uses objects and rooms similarly to Game Maker, except no sprites are used. (This was not made using Game Maker).

 

File Hosting

Host-a.net File Hosting
This is a great file hosting site that gives you 10MB of storage and 510MB of bandwidth to start out with. Referals and other methods can increase your space or bandwidth (this would be my referal link. Thanks for signing up...hint, hint)

ImageShack Image Hosting
This site is great because you don't have to create an account, you just start uploading. Then it gives you your secure image URL, and you're all set. You can upload an unlimited number of images. Max file size is 1 MB.

Easy-Sharing Image Hosting
This is like ImageShack in that you don't have to register. Max file size is 75 MB, and files are automatically deleted after one month of no downloads. You also are given a URL for deleting the file.

 

Web Design

Web Design from Scratch
This site really know's its stuff. It tells how to make an "effective" website.

WebMonkey
It's called "The Web Developer's Resource." It's got reference for all things web-building related. I warn you, some of the articles are outdated. Its part of the Lycos Network.

Javascript Kit
This site has tutorials on javascript, HTML, CSS, and more. It offers free javascripts for use on websites, and there are links to Coding Forums.

Php.Net
This is the official PHP website, where you can learn anything php. It is a great reference for PHP coding.

Cooltext
This site is an online graphics generator, which is mainly good for text logos in a lot of different styles. The button generator is pretty bad, though.

Open Source Web Design
This a site with free web design templates made by experienced designers. You can download and/or submit designs on OSWD.

What is a Copyright?
This webpage is very informative about what a copyright is. I suggest reading this, as it is important to realize what the deal is with copyrights of images, games, and websites.

World Wide Web Consortium
This is the site for making sure your website is up to scratch. Here you will find html, xml, and css validators, along with articles and reference for web standards.

CSS Zen Garden
This site shows off the flexibility and usefulness of Cascading Style Sheets. You can see many different styles sheets applied to the same page, each make the page look entirely different with the same content.

Design and Content Copyright © 2007 Scott D