Ship
7: Particles & Scripts! I wrote my first standalone script in GameMaker, separate from any object event. I used it to handle particle effects for the player’s engine trail, which trails behind the ship as you move. Writing reusable scripts is a big step up from putting everything in object events, and it took some figuring out to get the particle system set up correctly. Really happy with how the engine trail turned out!
6: Transitions & Textures! Small but satisfying session today. I added smooth fade transitions between rooms, giving Meteor Dance a much more polished feel when moving between the title screen, game and game over screen. I also went back and tweaked some textures. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a game feel finished. I’m so happy that I’m almost done with my first game!
Ship
5: Polish & Sounds! LAST DEVLOG BEFORE SHIP I added a theme song that loops throughout the game, giving Meteor Dance a proper atmosphere. I also went back and polished all the sprites, the player and stars all look a lot cleaner now.
On the sound side I added sound effects to bring the game to life, every meteor and star interaction now has audio feedback which makes the whole thing feel much more satisfying to play.
Finally I added a bunch of quality of life improvements to smooth out the experience.
4: Game & Over! This session I tried giving Meteor Dance a proper game loop. I started with a title screen to give the game a real entry point, then tackled difficulty scaling, the plan was to spawn more meteor spawners as the score increases, hitting thresholds at 10, 30, 50 and beyond. It took a while to get working, and after a lot of head scratching I realised I’d simply forgotten to add the difficulty object to the room. Classic.
I also built out a full game over screen that shows your final score and tracks your all time high score using a save file, so there’s now a real reason to keep playing and push for a better run.
3: Textures and Fonts! This session was all about making Meteor Dance feel alive. I added sprites for the player, meteors and stars, giving everything a proper look instead of a placeholder. The player got an animation too, which makes movement feel a lot more dynamic.
I also added a score system that ticks up every time a meteor passes, simple but it works. On the visual side, all the background stars now pulse gently in and out, which not only looks great but adds a subtle challenge: it’s harder to spot which stars are lighting up to warn you of incoming meteors. A small detail that makes the core mechanic more interesting.
Finally I brought in a proper font to make the UI feel polished. Starting to look like a real game
2: Stars and Bugs! Fixed a bug where a spawner spawned a meteor and a detector (I forgot to remove old code). There are now stars that spawn randomly! There’s 5 different sprites for the stars and every one has a bright and a base mode. The textures are placeholders. Added randomly sized meteors and increased their speed. And I had to choose between making the detectors the sames size as the meteors (more stars light up) or keeping them all the same size. Chose the latter because it adds a litle suprise when a big meteor falls. Stars light up when they collide with a detector and the meteors follow the path of the detectors.
1: Movement and Meteors! This is the first devlog of my project “Meteor Dance”! The concept is that you are a spaceship traveling through a meteor storm. To know what space to avoid in order to not get hit by a meteor, the stars will twinkle where they will pass. I added objects that spawn meteors and warnings, the warnings will tell the stars when to light up and the meteors are obstacles you have to avoid. I also made player movement, but I accidentally deleted that timelapse… For now there are no stars, but I added little circles that show where a meteor will fall.