Designing Games with Game Maker - YoYo Games

To create a background resource in your game, use the item Create Background in the
Resources menu or use the corresponding button on the toolbar. The following form will pop
up.
Press the button Load Background to load a background image. Game Maker supports many
image formats. Background images cannot be animated! The checkbox Transparent indicates
whether or not the background is partially transparent. Most backgrounds are not transparent
so the default is not. As transparency color the color of the leftmost bottommost pixel is used.
You can change the background or create a new one using the button Edit Background.
Be careful with large backgrounds. A number of graphics cards cannot handle images that are
larger than the screen. So preferably keep your background images smaller than 1024x1024.
Defining objects
With the resources you have seen so far you can add some nice images and sounds to the
game, but they don't do anything. We now come to the most important resource of Game
Maker, the objects. Objects are entities in the game that do things. Most of the time they have
a sprite as a graphical representation so that you see them. They have behavior because they
can react to certain events. All things you see in the game (except for the background) are
objects. (Or to be more precise, they are instances of objects.) The characters, the monsters,
the balls, the walls, etc. are all objects. There might also be certain objects that you don't see
but which control certain aspects of the game play.
Please realize the difference between sprites and objects. Sprites are just (animated) images
that don't have any behavior. Objects normally have a sprite to represent them but objects
have behavior. Without objects there is no game!