How To Make A Health Bar In Game Maker

Game Dev: How to Make Health Bars in Unity From Beginner to Advanced

Game Dev: How to Make a Health Bar in Game Maker

Creating a health bar for your games in Game Maker doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Whether you’re an advanced programmer or trying out basic coding for the first time, here’s an easy step-by-step guide to creating a customizable health bar.

1. Create the Health Bar design

The health bar can be whatever shape or size you’d like, but it’s best to keep it simple at first. You can create a rectangle shape with a contrasting color to the background to indicate the bar. Another option is to use an image to represent the health bar, such as a colored heart, a skull, or a bunny. Leave room for extra coding in your design so the bar can show both the initial health and decreasing health with a variable.

2. Design the Health Bar Logic

Next, you’ll need to establish the logical foundations for the health bar. This will determine how the player’s health is tracked—from the initial health of the character to the health the character has when the bar decreases. You may want to use a variable for the health bar so that it decreases when taking damage.

Once you’ve established the logic of the bar, you should also determine how much damage the bar can take before resetting. Although you may want the health bar to decrease individually, you may actually want the bar to reset and start from the beginning once it reaches zero. This way, the character retains its original health once the game resets.

3. Map out the Reset Points

If the health bar needs to reset, it’s important to map out the reset points. This will determine when the bar resets or starts taking damage again from the initial health. These reset points will also help continue the game without any glitches.

4. Set the Health Bar Game Maker Parameters

Once the design and logic behind the health bar are laid out, it’s time to begin setting the parameters for the bar in Game Maker. You’ll have to decide if you want the bar to track damage, produce sound effects, or change colors when taking damage. You’ll also need to decide how you want to display the initial health and how the health bar decreases when taking damage. Some of these parameters are especially helpful if you want to customize your health bar, such as setting a health cap for the bar or incorporating sound effects.

5. Test and Troubleshoot

Testing and troubleshooting is a vital part of designing a health bar. Once you’ve got the health bar set up in Game Maker, you’ll need to test it out to make sure that all of the parameters are working correctly. If something isn’t right, you may need to return to the design logic and adjust certain parameters before testing again.

6. Customize the Health Bar

If you’re looking for a more elaborate health bar, then customizing is the way to go. Customizing the health bar can include adding more functionalities, such as adjusting the sound, color, or shape of the health bar. You can also integrate various features into the health bar, like a difficulty setting, health peaks and drops, or a warning for low health.

7. Publish the Health Bar

You’ve created the health bar and are now ready to publish your game! Once you’ve tested out the bar and adjusted any final settings, you can compress and export your game as a .exe file. Then you can distribute your game and show off your new health bar!

Creating a health bar in Game Maker can be an enjoyable but challenging task for a designer. But with a little design and coding, you can build a custom health bar to display in your games. Hopefully, this guide has provided you with some insight into how to make a health bar in Game Maker!