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THE MAKING OF BUTTERFIELD BURN

Butterfield Burn was made with Game Maker 5.0, an amateur application development program. Game Maker is free at it's website. The basic program has an icon based "programming" system letting you set up objects, paths, time lines, and rooms. There is also a separate integrated programming language involving common features like If statements and variables. The down side is the program's limitations in speed and efficiency.
    When starting a game it is important to be familiar with how the different parts of the program interact. Setting up parent objects, scripts, and room templates should be an early step. When making butterfield burn many things had to be redone on a wide scale due to improper planning. Unconventional methods had to be used to make some game features work properly.
    Weapons and some other actions use time lines to carry out their functions, this allowed the weapon effects to be separated into different groups. For example, he Kusarigama is part of the chain attack but uses a 12 frame animation to "spin". In many cases the step event needed to be used in an object to get it to adjust something at all times, but it is avoided as much as possible.
    The graphics of the game have no shading, this is intentional to cut down the time needed to make a wide variety of things. The downside of Game Maker is that there are no pallets, every sprite is in high color. This makes the game slower even when using "simpler" graphics. The characters were based generally on a variety of cartoon characters. They are all based on a few original pictures. There is also some influence from the original nintendo Zelda character. The backgrounds also are partly inspired by very old console games.
    The main character is practically homeless, broke, and probably has some social problems. Originally the entire game was intended to have more "simulation" aspects. The character would develop skills in more challenging and complex ways in order to make items or money. Some inspiration was taken from low budget MMORPG games. Many of the planned sim aspects were discarded as unentertaining The side view room was once intended to fill much of the game but was downsized because other ideas required the top view mode. It was almost removed. See the engine on the DNLD page.

    Game Maker main website -A freeware program by Mark Overmars and others

THANK YOUS

    I want to give thanks to all the works that inspired this game. First thanks goes to those who created and made documentation and examples for Game Maker 5. Other examples and help came from the friendly people on the Game Maker community board on ezboard.com. Many games have been influences on Butterfield Burn. There is influence from old console games like Zelda, Metroid, GI Joe, Ironsword, several RPGs like Final Fantasy, and some whose names I don't remember. There is also the MMORPG First Star Online which was an inspiration. Some things in the game also remind one of Grand Theft Auto so I should thank it's creators. All content in the game was made by Bookeater and remains his, that is my, intellectual property. This game is freeware and may be distributed to friends but I request that it not be uploaded or used for your own profit without permission.

Game Maker Community on ezboard