I’ve unfortunately been unable to make any actual amount of progress since the last post. However we are getting back into the swing of things, so let us keep going. First things first, I upgraded to Game Maker Studio 2 in order to keep at least slightly up to date, and so that the sources I am looking at are up to date as well. Since this is my first actual game being made, I have to look through tutorials, and there are some menus and options that are available in v.2 that are not in the same location, if available at all, in v.1. However, this also means that I had to import and copy all of the progress made in v.1 into v.2 since the file types for projects are incompatible. I also updated the code that was already there.

I know I stated that I shall be taking certain steps whilst moving through the game to keep everything organized and keep the ability of one person working on this project while still being able to scrutinize each individual detail without getting lost. While I do intend on keeping to that, there are cases whereby that is not optimal. So, while I am currently still focusing on the visual aspects of the game, there is some coding necessary, which means code fixing.
Added to the character sprite is an idle animation (simple enough, just bobbing up and down as per tradition), and a jump animation (also simple enough, just a curve in of the front leg). The original transition between the two had been rather sloppy, the jump animation would only end once you moved on the ground, the bobbing would either be too fast or too slow, etc.
So I cleaned those up a bit with some extra lines of code, making the transition more smooth, the idle animation is at a decent speed, and the timing was modified for the jump that way the correct sprite hits the ground and jumps. However, for some reason the sprite jumps the proper distance, and corrects itself, but it starts at the mid-left of the previous object being used as the floor. I’ll be working on that more tomorrow, and will hopefully be able to fix it relatively fast so I can work on the next part.