Move around with the arrow keys. An experiment with surfaces. The world is broken up into tiles which are rendered to surfaces so that we only have to re-draw the tiles when something changes. No real gameplay but surfaces are a powerful tool so well worth starting to learn them.
An Evening of Code: Fishing
A simple fishing game. Graphics are just taken from a Google Image Search. Learned a little about collision detection (and particularly how to specify different collision areas). Also, matching the movement of one sprite to that of another. And moving on a sin curve as well, I guess.
An Evening of Code: Flocking
Simple flocking algorithm in Game Maker. Learned a little more about inheritance and functions within GameMaker (and some improved collision detection). The blue boids evade, the red ones move together (and convert blues into reds) and the player is green and can move and shoot freely. The reds and blues interact with each other and the player.
GameMaker Tutorials
The more code I write, the more comfortable I am letting someone else write the engine. I'd looked at Game Maker before but not really got into it. Tom Francis has been posting a series of tutorials on YouTube and they were approachable enough to get me to take another look. The above screenshot is based on those videos. I don't know that I'll take this particular project any further but I can see spending a little more time with Game Maker.