You can take a look for yourself here: http://dcmsoftware.net/andonuts.

And I am now currently using the design. I’ll be updating it over the next few days, so it’ll be a little wonky until then.

(Note that those sample photos are not by me, they’re from interfacelift. I just needed some test photos.)

I. Get a Tileset!
I will be demonstrating with this tileset from Mother 3, ripped/edited by Ranger. It’s rather large, but that’s no problem!

II. Loading it into Game Maker
This is pretty simple, actually. Add a new background by clicking the picture icon in the toolbar. Click load background in the window that pops up, and browse for your tileset. When you’ve done that, your screen will look similar to this:

As you can see, I’ve done a few things already. To enable a background to function as a tileset, you’ll need to do the following:

• Check “Use as tile set”: This is an import step; if you don’t do this, you won’t have a tileset!
• Enter the values on the right: These define how the tileset is set up. Each of my tiles are 32×32 pixels, you can see where I filled that in. The offset values indicate how far from the left or top your tileset begins. If there were, say, 12 pixels of empty space from the top of the image to the top of my first tile, and 8 pixels from the left of the image to the left of my first tile, I would use a horizontal offset of 8 and a vertical offset of 12. The seperation (horizontal/vertical sep) values indicate how many pixels of empty space are between each tile.
• Transparency: When using transparency in Game Maker, you must make sure that the bottom-left pixel is the color you want to represent transparency. In my case, I made the bottom-left pixel pink, this means that any pink in the tileset image will not be shown. Sometimes it’s a good idea to just add an entire row of transparent color on the bottom of your image by increasing the image’s height by one. (Useful for when the bottom-left pixel must be a different color than the transparent color.)

III. Using the Tiles
Once you’ve finished setting up the tileset, it’s time to go into the room and make a map with the tiles you just made.
In the room editor, click the “Tiles” tab. Your screen will then look similar to this:

Simply select a tile from the left and click in the room to add it. Using different layers, you can place tiles over one another, or enable the player object to move under them. Tiles on layers with positive numbers will be below those with smaller, or negative numbers, basically the layer order goes from largest to smallest, with largest on the bottom. Unlike in RPG Maker, you cannot specify whether or not a specific tile is solid, you must use invisible wall objects for that which I’ll explain in the next section.

IV. Solid “Tiles”
To make solid tiles, you’re going to need two things – an object and a sprite. Just make a non-transparent sprite the size of one tile (Mine would be 32×32) and fill it with some color. (Black shows up the best.) You can call it spr_block or something similar. Then you’ll simply create a new object and assign it the sprite you just made. You can name it obj_block or something similar. Uncheck visible, you don’t want blocks all over your room. Then check solid so other solid objects can’t go through it. You’ll have to do checks with your player to ensure that the place you’re moving to is free, otherwise you’ll move over the blocks. (place_free(), or the drag & drop “If a position is collision free”) You can change the shape of your wall sprite if you need to, like for odd shaped tiles.

Once you’ve added your tiles and objects to the room, go test it out! Have fun making maps.

If you have any questions or comments, post them in the topic mentioned above.

The first one is here: Loading Sprite Sheets

I. Get a Sprite Sheet
Find a sprite sheet before you start this tutorial! What is a sprite sheet you ask? A sprite sheet is usually a set of animations inside one non animated image. RPG Maker uses this type of setup and sprite rips are usually in this format as well. For this tutorial, I’ll be using the sprite sheet shown below.

Each frame in that animation is 16×24. The dimensions of a frame are good things to know when using sprite sheets – otherwise you’ll have to guess and check.

II. Loading the Sheet
Now we step into Game Maker. I’ll be using version 6.1 for my tutorials, so what your screen looks like may be different, but the steps should be the same. What we’ll do first is add a new sprite by clicking the red pacman icon in the toolbar. You’ll be presented with this screen:

Now click the Edit Sprite button under the name input box. When the next window appears, click File > Create from Strip. Select your sprite sheet from the dialog box that appears. When you select your image, you will be presented with this screen:

III. Setup
As you can see, I’ve already filled out the information on the left. I’ll run through each one and give a description.

• Number of images: This is how many frames or images you want to take from the sheet. I typed 8 because there are 8 frames in this animation.
• Images per row: In a larger sprite sheet, there may be multiple rows of images. This number tells Game Maker how many are in a row so it can loop down to the next one if it needs to. There are 8 images per row in my sheet.
• Image width & height: These numbers represent the dimensions of each frame or image that you’re selecting. Each frame of the animation in my sprite sheet is 16×24 pixels.
• Horizontal cell offset: You would use this if you wanted to select some images or frames, but the ones you wanted were a few frames over from the left. I left this zero because I my frames started on the left, so I didn’t need it.
• Vertical cell offset: This is the same as the above, only it works vertically from the top.
• Horizontal & vertical pixel offset: These are used if your images are offset from the top-left of your sprite sheet. Say the top-left of the first image in the sprite sheet was 10 pixels from the left and 23 from the top. Your values would be 10 and 23 respectively.
• Horizontal & vertical seperation: These are used if there is space between each frame of your animation. I didn’t use these because each frame of my animation put together takes up the entire sprite sheet. Had I changed the dimensions around to fit just the stickman then I would have used these settings, as well as the others I didn’t.

You’ll need to fill in these values yourself. The values will be different with each sprite sheet.

IV. Finishing Up
After you finish setting things up, click okay. You will then be taken back to the sprite animation window, and it should look something like this:

And there you have it! An animation from a single file. Beats copying an pasting, huh?

Comments and questions can go below~
Keep in mind that I wrote this probably a year ago too. It’s written using Game Maker 6.