"This is our new member. Say hi."

"Hiii."

Which is in just about every film that involves a club of some sort.

So hey, how you doing. I'm William, call me Will for short. I'm a Christian, a console gamer (according to the "how to be a respected member" I shouldn't actually mention which console), and a huge GameMaker fanatic. I've got a Game Maker course at school which…hasn't really helped me so far, seeing as I've been using the program since late 2004 and know everything he's taught us so far. But it gives me an extra period to flesh out my non-existant skill and learn some new techniques.

After some lame example-ripped games that I started doing because I had the passion for game making but not the ingenuity, I finally decided to make my own original game.

Which failed because I wasn't familiar enough with Game Maker. (Funny thing is, the reasons for which my old attempts failed is now glaringly obvious.)

So now that I've gathered enough knowledge to make a decent amateur game, I'm going to combine that with A) the help that the GMC and the Documentation provide, and B) the experience I get over the course of working on more intermediate games, to make a top-down team based strategic shooter.

I have to start somewhere. I have a fair idea of what I'm doing, at least. Once you understand Game Maker and GML it's incredibly easy.

So far I'm up to build 3. I've got running forward and backward, and strafing, working. I still need to work on dive-rolling and context sensetive maneouvres. This, of course, requires finished sprites which I haven't dedicated any time to. I'm using Lightwave to create the sprites, so far I'm just working with temporaries.

Aiming is all fixed and finished, the view(s) are all set up, I've fixed up an aiming problem with the "Cross-Com" interface. I've only just started on actual combat, which is running on global.health_enemy1 codes…I need to figure out a better way.

I've got some extremely simplistic AI running (though, getting a character to stop following a path and chase you, but then go follow the path again, wasn't so simple). I'm going to get all the player's movements done, then work on team controls, then the enemy AI.

So far, all good. All the glitches have been fixed up for build 3.2.

More coming as it happens.