Game Maker contains many functions, and you can also create your own which we will refer to later as scripts. You call functions when you want to "do" something. Nearly all of the "Drag & Drop" actions are simple function calls themselves, however the GML equivalents are not so hard to get used to using.

The function name is which function you want to call. In time you'll learn the most common functions, and you can search the help files to find specific functions too.

The arguments are parameters which are passed into the function when you call it.

All functions have parentheses () after them. If they didn't, then they would have the form of a variable instead.

For example, a very common function is instance_create() which is a function that creates an instance of an object. This function has 3 arguments:

• The X coordinate to create the instance at
• The Y coordinate the create the instance at
• The object to create an instance of

The structure of the function looks like this:

instance_create(x,y,obj);

The code to create an instance of say, obj_ball, would look like this:

Using functions, you can create a variety of different effects. Pretty much any part of your game can be manipulated with a function. Some functions are reserved for the pro version of Game Maker.

Variables and functions are pretty basic on their own, though. To make full use of them, you'll need want to learn about conditions.