So… I was wondering if there were any helpful programmers out there willing to help me out?

I'm trying to help a friend with a coding problem in Game Maker.

Here's her message to me:

"I teach 9 to 12 year old autistic boys. The thrust of the class is to create focus and hold attention. We've created comic books and trading card games. We've worked in CAD and StudioMax. We've made steampunk creatures. Then we started working through some Game Maker tutorials. The boys are very dedicated and bright but they don't have the ability to take the skills from one tutorial and apply those skills in a different project/genre.

I'm looking for a tutorial on heads up displays in Game Maker that would help my students learn how to create two different HUDs. The HUDs would display on all interactive game screens but not on cut scenes. Game screens would be single screens, static, with objects that players click for various results. Once all "hidden objects" have been clicked by the player, the game would progress the player to a cut scene where the HUDs would not display. The player would read the text and then click "continue" to be progressed to another game screen with more "hidden objects."

This is what the HUDs on the game screens would need to do:

Righthand HUD: This HUD would appear along the righthand side of the game screen. The students call this the "Objective HUD." It would be a list of objects that the player has to find and click on. When a player clicks on an object, that item would be crossed off the list. When all the items are crossed off the list, the game progresses the player to a cut scene. This HUD will show a different list the next time it appears. Students would like to create a background for this HUD and they know they will need to make graphics of the words both written and crossed off.

Bottom HUD: This HUD would appear along the bottom of every game screen (though not on the bottom of cut scenes). The students call this the "Inventory HUD." When players click on a rare "bonus object" in the game, the object is crossed off the Objective HUD like a normal object (see above) but then an image of the object appears on the Inventory HUD. Only about five objects during the entire game will appear in the Inventory HUD. The Inventory HUD 's inventory needs to stay the same as the game progresses. Meaning, if a player picks up a rare flashlight in game screen #4, the flashlight stays on the Inventory HUD from then on.

The second function of the Inventory HUD, is that players need to be able to click an object on the Inventory HUD and that object then displays with a glow around it to signify that the object is selected and active. The player can then try to click on hidden areas in the game screen to activate special events. Example: The player adds a skeleton key to their Inventory HUD in game screen #6. In game scene #9 there is a locked door and a locked treasure chest. The player clicks the skeleton key on the Inventory HUD, and the key glows on the Inventory HUD. The player then clicks on the treasure chest and nothing happens. The player next clicks on the door, and the player is rewarded by being progressed to a screen with the locked door now opened.

Once a player selects an object in their inventory it should stay selected until the player clicks the object again to deselect it.

The students know that they will have to create different graphics for all of this – glowing objects, normal objects, etc etc. They are very excited about each of them being able to create different background textures for their HUDs to customize the look and feel of their game.

I created a very basic template of what a game screen might look like. Just to orient helpers to what I'm talking about."

Can anyone help?

The class starts at the beginning of April, so she'll need the tutorial by then. I am willing to pay for your time if necessary!

Thank you all so much,

Launa