SIDE SCROLLER PRACTICE
	by Matt Baros

CONTROLS

Left/Right	- Move left/right
Down		- Duck
Double Tap Down	- Go into Shell
Space		- Jump
Backspace	- Respawn


INTRODUCTION

After trying my hand with various DirectX projects, I came across a great program called Game Maker, a game engine with both a drag and drop interface for those new to programming, and a scripting language for those more familiar with coding.  I immediately switched to this program as it takes care of most of the tedium such as sprite loading and display initialization, but still gives plenty of control with its comprehensive scripting language, GML.


DESIGN

This is a little project I put together to try my hand at a side scroller.  Not happy with the "If Right arrow is pressed, move sprite over 5 pixels" style of control found in most introductory programs of this nature, I attempted to add a better feel by implementing simplified physics such as gravity, friction, acceleration, and momentum.  When in his shell, Tama acts as a hard ball, and will bounce off of walls and floors, and roll to a stop if moving.  I also had fun creating animations, of course using my simple Tama character.  While I did create a preliminary collision detection system, it's far from perfect, quickly prompting me to add the respawn function for when he fell through the board.

That being said, I am pretty pleased with the input handling, animation, and physics of the "game" which was my main focus for this project.


ART

Meet, Tama, the very easy to draw turtle.  I created him for a comic I made for a Japanese assignment, but find myself revisiting him time and time again for my side projects.  His name is japanese for ball, since he is basically a ball with a head and appendages.  I sketched out the different states he would be in, then drew various transition frames on graph paper.  Then, using Graphics Gale, a very handy sprite editing tool, I put them all together and tweaked them.  In my first version I also had wall jumps, and transitions for switching directions.  But in this more concentrated version (hence the TamaLite name) those funtions were removed.