Activision Gamemaker

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Activion Gamemaker disks for the C64 and C128

Activision Gamemaker (also known as Garry Kitchen's Gamemaker ) was a game development system for the Commodore 64 home computer that was developed by Garry Kitchen and published by Activision in 1985.

The program was divided into six sub-programs, all of which were operated via a graphical interface with the joystick :

  • SceneMaker - for creating the background graphics
  • SpriteMaker - for creating sprites
  • MusicMaker - for composing background music
  • SoundMaker - for developing sound effects
  • Editor - for programming the actual game

The programming language used in Gamemaker is based on early programming languages such as BASIC . The user can, however, fall back on many existing graphic and sound functions, which thus addresses the content developed from the various sub-programs.

restrictions

There were significant limitations with this development system. Some restrictions resulted from the architecture of the Commodore 64, others resulted from restrictions of the program, since the Gamemaker already needed some of the computer's resources.

  • Only 8 sprites could be displayed on the screen at the same time (C64 restriction)
  • Each sprite and background could have a maximum of four colors (from a selection of 16 colors) (C64 restriction)
  • Only two different backgrounds could be used for a game (Gamemaker restriction)
  • Only 3553 bytes were available for creating a game, including songs, sounds, sprites and program code (gamemaker limitation)
  • There was no access to the floppy disk drive of the C64 (Gamemaker restriction)

Despite the restrictions, the Gamemaker showed extensive possibilities for creating your own game at that time. A remake of the game Pitfall! (one of Activision's successful games) created in the Gamemaker and added to the program package as a demo.

See also

Web links