Early Update

Hey everybody, here's an early update cause I know you're all anxious to hear if I got my act together this week or not. The short answer to that is yes and no. I'm definitely working a lot harder this week than I have been, I delved into using tiles to create backgrounds, I am looking at GML and I went through some of the assets I will need (I'm always forgetting some section in the GDD).
To be a little more specific Game Maker has several tutorials that I used to get acquainted with the drag and drop system. However drag 'n drop will only get me so far so I am trying to find as many hands on tutorials of the GML (that's Game Maker Language) that I can. The language is very similar to C which I've never used but it seems pretty easy. I am going to mostly stick with the drag and drop system for basic commands like walking, and the like. More complex things like enemy AI will be done in GML. That being said I've also looked into the tile system Game Maker uses. It is a lot more straight forward than I originally thought.

Monday is the start of the new semester and I am going to be working hard on getting a prototype set up using place holder art from the other tutorials and quickly composed sprites using the GM editor. By the end of the weekend I hope to have the player able to walk and shoot. Monday I will work on the melee attack. Once the player is taken care of I will work on the enemies for the rest of the week. By next week I will have a rough prototype of an ordinary arcade shooter/beat 'em up game.

I am extremely apprehensive about this semester. I took on a lot, but I don't think it's more than I can handle. I just can't be caught up giving myself time to just relax mostly because if I do getting back into work mode is harder for me. I am waiting to hear about my internship, I'm excited about that as well. Corona and Lua look like they are very user friendly so hopefully I can quickly pick it up so it seems like I know what I'm doing. Overall I think the only thing that will be a real distraction this week is myself. Like I said I cannot come home from work and just relax or come home from school and just relax. Even when I hang out with Michele I will probably have to be doing work, luckily she knows what it's like to be in college and have a lot to do so she'll understand.