***** ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR GAMEMAKER *****


----- TECH NOTE -----
Spaces in text of ALERT, PRINT, and SETWINDOWTITLE commands.

When using the above commands, extra spaces between words will be erased and only 1 space between each word will be shown. For example, the command:
  PRINT Hello     Al
will print:
  Hello Al
Notice the lack of additional spaces between Hello and Al in the output.

Work Around:
Put the text you want to use in a string variable
  X$ = "Hello     Al"
  PRINT $X$$


----- OPTION KEY FEATURES -----
Holding down the <OPTION> key while using the eraser or the spray paint tools will make those tools smaller.

Holding down the <OPTION> key while using the brush, line, rectangle, roundrect, oval, or region tools will temporarily switch between border and fill colors (border color will become the fill color and the fill color will become the border color).

Holding down the <OPTION> key while the click area tool is selected allows you to move or resize click areas.

Holding down the <OPTION> key while using the eye dropper tool will set the color that you click on as the fill color rather than the border color.

Holding down the <OPTION> key while an area is selected using the selection tool will let you either move the selection by dragging it or scale the selection by dragging the small rectangle in the lower right corner of the selection.


----- OTHER HIDDEN FEATURES -----
In the Card Info dialog box, if you put a -1 in the Go to card field, the game will end. If you put a -2 in the Go to card field, the game will go to the most recent card. These can be used with a time delay to display a message or picture for several seconds before going back to the original card or before ending the game.

If you put a "+" in the "Go to card" field of button or card scripts, the game will go to the next card. If you put a "-" in the "Go to card" field of button or card scripts, the game will go to the previous card.

You can launch another application by putting a ":" (without quotes) as the first character in the "Go to card" field of button scripts followed by the name of the application to be launched. The application must be in the same folder. For example, if you put ":My Other App" in the "Go to card" field, your application will look for an application named "My Other App" in the same folder as your current application.


----- CREATING CUSTOM CURSORS -----
You can create up to 10 new cursors to use in your game. Use ResEdit or other resource editor to create "crsr" resources. Put the resources in your project file. Don't put them in the GameMaker application. Make sure the game is not open in GameMaker while you are adding cursors or they will not be displayed. In ResEdit, use "Get Resource Info" in the "Resource" menu to name and renumber the cursors. The new cursors must have a name for them to show up in GameMaker. The resource ID numbers must start at 1010 and continue with 1011, 1012, and so on for as many cursors as you create.


----- HOW TO USE THE STATUS BAR -----
To use the status bar, you must first enable it by selecting "Game Options" in the "Go" menu and checkmarking "Use status bar". You should also choose some bar options such as a bar name and up to 3 cards that are designated as cards to go to when the bar is empty.

After doing that, the pop-up menu for the status bar in card buttons and click areas will have options to add or subtract points from the bar. It will also display the cards you chose as status bar cards so you can pick one of them to go to if the bar becomes empty when that button or click area is clicked.


----- HOW TO USE THE COUNTER -----
First make sure the counter option is turned on. To turn it on, select "Game Options" in the "Go" menu and make sure the "Use counter" box is checked. There is a built in variable for the counter named "Counter" which GameMaker looks at to keep track of the counter number being displayed. If the variable changes, the counter is updated on the screen. To increase the counter by 1, your script should look like this:

  counter = counter + 1

The number showing in the window will automatically be inreased by 1. You can also set the counter to any number:

  counter = 100

That will set the counter to 100.


----- HOW TO PLAY MIDI AND WAV FILES -----
All sound and music formats besides System sounds are played using QuickTime, so the QuickTime extensions must be installed. Newer sound formats will require newer versions of QuickTime. The sound or music file to be played must be in the same folder as your game. Use the MOVIE command to play the sound. For example, if the file you want to play is named MySound.wav, then the command would look like this:

  MOVIE 0 0 MySound.wav

The "0 0" in the command above are for coordinates to place a movie, but since there's no movie track in sound and music files, you should leave the coordinates at 0.


----- ADDING SOUNDS USING OTHER SOFTWARE -----
You can add or remove "snd " resources using ResEdit, SoundMover or another resource moving utility. If you don't have any of these, you can download ResEdit or SoundMover from an online service.

To add "snd " resources:
1. If you already have a game that you want to add sounds to then skip to #5.
2. Launch GameMaker.
3. Select Save from the File menu to save a new document.
4. Quit GameMaker.
5. Launch ResEdit or a sound mover program.
6. Open a file containing "snd " resources.
7. Using ResEdit or other sound mover program, open the GameMaker document (not the GameMaker application) that you want to add sounds to.
8. Copy the sounds into the GameMaker document.
9. GameMaker plays sounds by name so make sure all sounds have a valid name (don't use an exclamation point, parenthesis, dash line, or slash mark in sound names).
10. Quit the sound mover program.
11. Double-click on the GameMaker document to open it. The sounds you added should now be listed in the pop-up menus in the Card Info and Button Info windows.


----- WHERE TO GET SOUNDS -----
If you have a microphone or a Mac with a built-in microphone, you can record your own sounds by using the Sounds menu in GameMaker.

You can also download System sound files (MacOS sound files) from online services and import them into GameMaker by using the Sounds menu in GameMaker. Make sure any sounds you use are not copyrighted sounds that are not allowed to be distributed.


----- STRING NAME LIMITATIONS -----
String variable names are limited to 31 characters. Card names, buttons names, and sound names are limited to 63 characters. If you attempt to create a button or card name longer than 63 characters, all characters past the limit will be ignored. For sound names, if a sound has a name longer than 63 characters, it will not be able to be played. User Ask questions are limited to 255 characters and the answers are limited to 63 characters.


----- MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SOUNDS -----
GameMaker can list up to 50 sounds in the pop-up menus. If there are more than 50 sounds in the file, it will only list the first 50 that it finds and ignore the rest. They will still be able to be played with the SOUND command though.


----- GAMEMAKER VERSION DIFFERENCES -----
Files created with versions of GameMaker from v0.95 to v1.33 can't be opened with GameMaker v2.x or higher. There is a free Game Converter utility program available on the GameMaker web site that will convert some old files to a newer format. Once you save a file using GameMaker v3.0 or higher, it will not be able to be opened by versions older than 3.0.

***** END README DOCUMENT *****