GMTuts #1: Debug Logger

For my first tutorial, I wanted to start with a utility that I wrote a couple of weeks ago and has proved to be incredibly useful so far while developing HackyZack. It is always useful to have some sort of text drawing while debugging your game so that you can check the values of variables at runtime and figure out if something is working properly, or why it is not. Before, I just used to write some code within the object’s draw event and that worked, but I found myself writing very repetitive code over and over again, which I later had to go in and delete after it was working as intended. As a programmer, I knew there had to be a better solution to automate this process, which is why I decided to write what I call my Debug Logger.

GMTuts #0: Introduction

I’ve been meaning to write tutorials for a long time, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cover specifically. At first, I was going to start with random C++ utilities tutorials, then moved onto shaders, but realized that even though I’m very competent in those areas, there are people out there more knowledgeable and with better tutorials already. However, I did notice there is a lack of good tutorials for GameMaker on specific topics, such as shaders and useful utilities for game development. I would like to share the things I’ve learned and useful systems I’ve written while working on projects such as INK, HackyZack, and soon, Fara & The Eye of Darkness.

Kickstarter Tool – Rewards Planner

As a follow up to my previous post (Kickstarter Tool – Goal Calculator), this is the second tool I created and used while planning my Kickstarter campaign. I wanted a quick and easy way of organizing my rewards and plan my tiers while assessing costs and actual value of the items in each tier. The idea is to have costs that are within the project’s budget while also giving people items that have a higher value than the actual pledge. Here’s an example of what the tool looks like:

Kickstarter Tool – Goal Calculator

While planning my Kickstarter campaign, I have been creating “Tools”, mostly on spreadsheets, to do some necessary number-crunching. I will be posting all these tools as I make a prettier, more generalized version, of them. The first one I decided to clean up a bit was the one I used to calculate what my project’s goal should be, taking into account Kickstarter and Amazon payment fees, taxes, etc. Here’s what the tool looks like:

Alejandro Hitti

Producer / Programmer

Tools

GMTuts #1: Debug Logger

GMTuts #0: Introduction

Kickstarter Tool – Rewards Planner

Kickstarter Tool – Goal Calculator