Designing Games with Game Maker - YoYo Games

When you make a game you normally start by collecting a set of nice sprites for the objects in
your game. Many collections of interesting sprites can be found on the Game Maker website.
Other sprites can be found on the web, normally in the form of animated gif files.
To create a sprite, choose the item Create Sprite from the Resources menu, or use the
corresponding button on the toolbar. The following form will pop up.
At the top you can indicate the name of the sprite. All sprites (and all other resources) have a
name. it's best to give each sprite a descriptive name. Make sure all resources get different
names. Even though this is not strictly required, you are strongly advised to use only letters
and digits and the underscore symbol (_) in a name of a sprite (and any other resource) and
to let it start with a letter. In particular don't use the space character. This will become
important once you start using code.
To load a sprite, click on the button Load Sprite. A standard file dialog opens in which you
can choose the sprite. Game Maker can load many different graphics files. When you load an
animated gif, the different subimages form the sprite images. Once the sprite is loaded the
first subimage is shown on the right. When there are multiple sub- images, you can cycle
through them using the arrow buttons.
The checkbox labeled Transparent indicates whether the rectangular background of the
sprite image should be considered as being transparent. Most sprites are transparent. The
background is determined by the color of the leftmost bottommost pixel of the image. So
make sure that no pixel of the actual image has this color. (Note that gif files often define their
own transparency color. This color is not used in Game Maker.)
With the button Edit Sprite you can edit the sprite, or even create a completely new sprite.