Computersight -

Lately I have been working a lot with Game Maker 7. It is the latet version of what used to be a program maintained by Mark Overmars, but it is now maintaned by YoYo Games.

The great thing about this program is if you can think it all up, you can make it all work. If you are not good with photoshop or paint or can’t make your own sprites, then you are going to want to pass this one up. You need at least some skill and experince with a little bit of everything to jump in to even the simplist of game making.

There are a lot of websites out there that offer free sprites to the public like videogamesprites.net and the thing that I love about these websites are you can get original super nintendo, sega, atari sprites and graphics and add them to your game. You could even make a clone of a older game, that would take a lot more time, but would be worth it in the end.

Now comes the bad news. Unless they are remakes you can’t sell your game if you use them. Most likely you could get warned by Nintendo, Sony, Atari, Ect. And nothing would ever come out of it, but if you ever did make a game with there materials and made a good profit out of it, you would be in for some trouble, so lets try to not do that.

Game Maker 7 comes with a free version that offers you the basics. If you are new to the program then start with this, don’t even worry about getting the professional version until you at least make a few games first. There are a lot of websites that offer tutorials of GM7, even the YoYo Website offers tutorials and game examples to download and check out yourself.

If you did ever want to upgrade to the professional version then head over to the YoYo Games website, I don’t think it is that expensive and it is a very good investment, especially if you want to make money doing this. GM7 offers capabilities all the way up to make 3d first person shooters.