I have played around with Gamemaker for sometime and heres few tips for top down shooter.
1. Movement
I like to movement towards cursor and with WASD keys so here is how i did it.
W
move_towards_point(mouse_x,mouse_y,speed);
speed should be positive because you should move towards mouse cursor
S
move_towards_point(mouse_x,mouse_y,speed);
and here speed should be negative example -20 so char would walk away from cursor
A,D keys should not be done with this and i think they should just be strafe, so postive and negative speed on x-axis
2. Weapons, shooting and switching
I like to do this with scripts and just switch the shooting script
On your hero,char,shooter you would have
Equipped variable and to that you can store script
example
Equipped=pistol;
on mouseleft or your shooting key you just execute Equipped
script_execute(Equipped);
on a pistol script you create bullets and shoot
3. Switching weapons
So if do switching with 1,2,3.... keys, you can just make that key to switch
the Equipped script
example when 2 is pressed
Equipped=Shotgun
example when 1 is pressed
Equipped=Pistol
Now when 1,2,3... is pressed it changes the script what mouseleft then executes.
4. Gun with kick
So at shooting script (Pistol,Shotgun)script i have the shooting and movement... yes movement so the gun will have a littlebit of kick
example in shotgun
move_towards_point(mouse_x,mouse_y,speed);and speed should be negative in this one so it moves away from cursor
