New Media Art - Blog

The Game I created is called Parliament House Shootout. I used the free version of Game Maker to make this game which can be downloaded here http://game-maker.en.softonic.com/ The objective of my game is to shoot the politicians as they fall from the sky in front of the parliament house in Canberra.  The cowboy shooter is controlled by tapping the left and right arrow keys to go left and right and the space bar shoots his gun.  As the game progresses more and more politicians fall from the sky and each moves slightly quicker than the last with each one giving the player a higher score when they are shot. Eventually even civilian’s begin to fall from the sky and the games ends if you either shoot a civilian or if a politician runs into the cowboy shooter.

I designed the cowboy shooter cartoon dude in Photoshop and gave him a cut out image of my face. I also gave him a gun and placed him as a sprite and object in Game Maker. I also cut out images of many well know politicians faces in photo shop including Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, Campbell Newman,  Bob Katter, and Tony Abbott and loaded them as sprites and objects into Game Maker. I then created an object in Game Maker called controller_enemy which allowed me to designate when and where the politicians fell out of the sky. I also added a photograph I had taken a few years ago of the parliament house in Canberra as the backdrop for my game. I also added some background music called Yakety Sax which I felt suited the game well.

I also downloaded You-Tube clips of each politician and cut out a small wav. sound file of them using Audacity.  I loaded this sound file into Game Maker and designed it so the sound played whenever the politician ran into the cowboy shooter. This took a bit of time and effort however it added some realism to the game as each politician’s real voice plays when the aforementioned action happens. 
Furthermore in order for me to make this game work successfully I had to learn what variables were and how they operated within the game. For example if y is larger than room_height jump to position random(room_width)-65. Sounds confusing but this basically means that once each politicians face disappears below the screen it then reappears above in a random location allowing for the player to shoot it again, Simple right?