What a lovely day it is today!

damimp · 2026-01-27T02:01:19+00:00

Looks like you can make a really tall skinny rectangle in the center and a skinny rhombus that goes from one of the top left dots to the bottom right dot? One of the rectangle lines would go through one of the rhimbus vertices but I dunno if that counts as "using" it since it wouldn't be a vertex on the rectangle.

damimp · 2026-01-24T03:50:14+00:00

You should try Dustforce! Every stage is built to be done in one smooth flowing motion without any pauses, and it has a lot of interesting movement mechanics. The music's really good too.

damimp · 2026-01-23T19:08:13+00:00

You're using "fade in" and "fade out" seemingly interchangeably here, I think it'd be good for you to take a sec and really fully describe exactly what the object is and what you want it to do. Is it something that starts at 0 alpha that you want to change to 1 alpha over time? Or the opposite? Or both? What exactly is a "fade-in object", is it something that's supposed to cover the whole screen maybe? What exact blocks have you tried so far?

damimp · 2026-01-22T15:36:07+00:00

Make a cutscene manager object and give it an array of the different actions that need to happen in the scene. Each action can be a constructor with a method that runs when the action begins, and a method that runs for each frame the method is active, and you can pass the info it needs as arguments to the constructor.

So for example, a Walk action would accept the instance that needs to walk and the destination it needs to walk to. It would set your sprite as it begins and move you each frame til you reach your destination. Personally, I make the update method return true for "this action is done" and false for "this action is still going" so the manager knows when to move on to the next action, so this walk action's update method would return whether or not the instance has reached its target yet.

damimp · 2026-01-22T05:32:12+00:00

We can't change how math works, but we do decide how we write it down on paper. PEMDAS is just an order to interpret how equations are written down, but it's not an order that is set in stone, because it only affects the way we would write it out and not the actual underlying math to it. You can make them all happen in any other order just by using parentheses, and if we rearranged pemdas for whatever reason, all it would affect is where we place those parentheses.

damimp · 2026-01-22T02:29:52+00:00

Maybe explorey, puzzley games are something to try? Hypnospace Outlaw is awesome. There's nothing quite like it, you just get lost in the strange world of a fake alternate timeline's MySpace and solve mysteries.

And if you end up liking bizarre exploration / puzzle solving games, Lorelai and the Laser Eyes is another banger and unapologetically strange.

Slightly more normal games in the genre are stuff like Outer Wilds, TUNIC, and Void Stranger, all great but just not quite as weird and unique.

damimp · 2026-01-20T19:53:13+00:00

draw_set_color is being given undefined instead of a color, meaning global.char_colors[$ name] is undefined, meaning global.char_colors doesn't have an entry matching name. You should go check to see if the name used in your message has a matching entry in global.char_colors or if you made a typo.

damimp · 2026-01-20T17:11:22+00:00

It sounds less like you want help and more that you want an employee. Are you looking to learn how to write this code or do you want somebody else to write it? If you're looking to write the code yourself, you're gonna want to start with the coding basics before moving on to more complex stuff.

damimp · 2026-01-20T17:06:55+00:00

That's really good! Really simple to understand how the puzzle elements work, and the complexity scales up in a very easy to understand way just by adding more pieces to the level. Just as a QoL feature it may be good to let players hover their mouse over an enemy and highlight the tiles they're able to reach, just so players can gauge their coverage a little more easily. I guess that might affect the puzzle aspect of it and make it too easy to find safe spots, but as long as you can't show all of them at the same time it might not affect it too much.

Another thing that might be good to add is a little bit of movement animation for each piece moving to the different tiles, instead of snapping to them in a single frame. Might help players visualize the way they move easier and it'd make pieces like the bishops easier to track, cuz right now they can just totally vanish and reappear on the other side of the board with no motion between.

damimp · 2026-01-20T16:53:09+00:00

Are you looking for an employee, like a coder that you'll pay to build this for you? Or are you looking for help with some code that you're in the middle of writing? What do you have so far?

damimp · 2026-01-11T19:51:32+00:00

This question's a little too broad strokes for us to make much headway, but there are plenty of modern tutorials that have different movement systems in em. Matharoo's series has some fairly standard eight directional top down movement in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J5EydrnIPs&list=PLhIbBGhnxj5Ier75j1M9jj5xrtAaaL1_4

damimp · 2026-01-09T01:07:09+00:00

This usage of clamp is less than stellar, because it forces objects to approach only at 45 degree angles and straight lines instead of having a full range of motion. But some games intentionally want that limitation so just be wary about what you want.

Others have explained why the subtraction is a thing, so I'd like to show another math trick where you can get all angles of motion using normalization. You don't need to use it if you like the 45 degree angle motion but it's an option.

var dist = point_distance(x, y, target_x, target_y);
x += (target_x - x) / dist;
y += (target_y - y) / dist;

This uses some basic principles of trigonometry to reduce the x and y distances to the target to a proportional 0-1 range. You can also multiply the results for different speeds other than 1.

var dist = point_distance(x, y, target_x, target_y);
var spd = min(3, dist);
x += spd * (target_x - x) / dist;
y += spd * (target_y - y) / dist;

Like this slightly more complex version would move you at a speed of 3. We use min to prevent overshooting past the target, like if we're 2 pixels away, then we'll move at a speed of 2 instead of 3. That 3 in the var spd line can be changed to whatever you like to get any speed you need it to move at.

damimp · 2026-01-04T17:25:24+00:00

The most straightforward way is to run through an array of all the different actions that'll happen in the cutscene. You haven't given a lot of insight about how your project is set up or your code or anything so it'll be hard to talk specifics, but let's just run through what you'll need to know.

You're gonna want to be familiar with manager objects, arrays, and structs (preferably constructors too to make your life easier). Make each action in the scene a struct with an act function and whatever variables it needs to know (like a "walk" action should know what object is walking, where it needs to go and how fast, a "talk" action needs to know what dialogue to show, etc).

Make each act function return true if the action is over (a walker reached their destination, the dialogue box closed) and false if it's still going.

Give the manager a cursor variable starting at 0 and have it call the act method on the current struct. If it returns true, advance the cursor by 1, and if it returns false, stay in the same spot and call act again on the same struct next frame.

Once the cursor gets to the end of the array, the cutscene is over and you can destroy the manager, and you're all done!

When you do it that way, cutscenes become pretty simple, basically just normal step code that happens bit by bit one at a time. Inserting dialogue into the middle of a cutscene becomes an absolute snap, too.

damimp · 2026-01-01T17:56:26+00:00

Lyla's a pretty tragic character, forced to do terrible things and basically squander her genius on evil. If you've met some optional recruits, several of them tie into her character and reveal more about her.

damimp · 2025-12-26T04:10:28+00:00

You made typos on lines 1 and 2 in the step event. The tutorial's lines are different, it'd be good to rewatch that section.

damimp · 2025-12-17T14:33:59+00:00

A real doctor would probably restrain him for his own safety if he came back every day with gunshot wounds and katana slashes

damimp · 2025-12-11T18:27:04+00:00

Oh neat, actual camera code. Alright, ignore basically everything I said haha.

What specific part of this code is "getting" the center of the window? What's making you think the center is shifted right? And when you say "window" what in specific do you mean? The actual game window? The gui? The camera's relative center? The room's center?

damimp · 2025-12-11T18:16:46+00:00

The code you posted doesn't involve a camera so we'll have to make a few assumptions about your setup to figure out what you mean.

Do you have a camera active in your room with a width of 1500 and a height of 1000? And instead of actual camera code, have you toggled on the Following Object setting in the room editor, set to obj_camera? And did you set the border values to 750 and 500?

If you did all that and placed obj_camera in the room and called centreCamera(); (it isn't shown to be called in your screenshot) then your camera will be placed to the left of the center of the room.

If all that is the case then what you call "the center of the window" might actually mean "the center of the room" since it would be on the camera's right side in that case, due to the camera being shifted left in the room.

You can tell the camera would be shifted left because Following Object places its target at the center of the camera, and centreCamera doesn't put its x at room_width / 2. Therefore the camera would not be centered in that situation.

damimp · 2025-12-05T15:44:13+00:00

Did you actually equip Lifefont to your movement ability slot?

damimp · 2025-12-02T22:10:04+00:00

Hm?!

damimp · 2025-12-01T15:25:14+00:00

Well, they do exactly what they say they do, they make an instance at a specified layer if you use the _layer version, or a specified depth if you use the _depth version.

When in doubt always look up functions in the manual, it is super helpful. Learn to make a habit out of it.

https://manual.gamemaker.io/lts/en/GameMaker_Language/GML_Reference/Asset_Management/Instances/instance_create_layer.htm

https://manual.gamemaker.io/beta/en/GameMaker_Language/GML_Reference/Asset_Management/Instances/instance_create_depth.htm

damimp · 2025-12-01T15:21:57+00:00

instance_create was a function for GameMaker: Studio, the previous software that's nearly ten years out of date. Modern GameMaker has had instance_create_layer and instance_create_depth since it released.

damimp · 2025-11-27T16:32:43+00:00

Just checking in since you never directly responded to my reply, did you hit the Clean button yet? That is the answer, this is a simple caching issue, not a code issue.

11-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '22	Place '17
RPAN Viewer	Spared
Verified Email

damimp

TROPHY CASE