Gridmaker is an easy and fast way to make a grid data structure with many individual values in Game Maker. It allows you to save and load grid data to a text file, to see the grid data while you work on it, and to manipulate individual cells as if you were in a spreadsheet program.

WHY I MADE IT:

I was making a shooter called, appropriately, "Shoot First", where there are over 20 different enemy types and 75 levels. I wanted an easy way to trigger which enemy objects were to be released, the rate at which they would be released, and on what level each enemy would appear in. I started with an array, and realized that would be too cumbersome and complicated, so the 'ds_grid' functions seemed the best way to go. After making some loops to input large sections with what I knew I wanted, I realized that I needed a way to change individual x,y locations to specific values. The function 'ds_grid_add' worked, and I started adding lines in, then play testing to see what combinations of enemies and spawn rates was right. This worked at first, but soon became very complicated. Since there's no easy way to actually see the grid data, I made Grid Maker as a quick way to make my own grid in an interactive way.

Tags: grid, data, structure, maker

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