All posts from category Game Maker

The New GM8 Logo Stinks

 Martin · 14 years

I'm really disappointed with the new Game Maker 8 logo.

Let me preface this entire post by saying up front that I am not mad that I lost, since I had a logo in the running. I'm really just dismayed over the logo that did win, which I felt was one of the worst of the four runners up.

I also want to say that as a runner-up, I will be receiving a free copy of Game Maker 8, and I am grateful for that. I am glad that since YoYo Games has taken over the Game Maker project, they have kept the community involved as much as possible. I think that hearkens back to the days when it was still only Mark Overmars working on the project, and if you'll pardon the pun, it keeps a friendly face on the company.

Since YYG's inception, I've been a supporter of theirs. When questionable decisions have been made, I've tried to see things from their side of the aisle, and most of the time, I've ended up agreeing with what they have done. I've defended them many, many times on the GMC, in some cases above and beyond what I would consider what is "required" of the forum staff.

But this time, for the new Game Maker 8 logo, I strongly disagree with their choice. As both a professional graphic designer and a Game Maker user.

When I was brainstorming for my own logo ideas, I considered using a gear or cog in the image. In the beginning, it seemed a fitting and iconic thing to use in a new logo for game construction software, but as I played around with various other ideas, I began to feel that the gear was too cliched. I also felt that too many other users would enter graphics with gears in them, so I was not surprised to see that half of the runners-up had done so.

Not only does the winning logo contain the over-used cog, but it also makes use of a giant smiley face - which is, at best, a rip-off of other iconic images (Yahoo Messenger's logo, the 4chan C&H smiley), and at worst, a childish and shallow attempt to bring in a young crowd of indie game developers.

Also, it looks like it's crying.

The designer in me cringes every time I see it; every part of the logo is covered with gradients. This ensures that reproducing the logo in print will be difficult, and it makes the design look unprofessional. Not that Game Maker is a professional program, but this point doesn't have to be hammered home at every facet.

And that's the other problem I have with this decision - I understand that Game Maker isn't a professional tool by any means, and I know that YYG wants to convey this to potential users. And maybe they want the program to appeal to a younger demographic as well. But the bottom line is that nobody, new and old users alike, wants to feel like they're using a program that is gimpy or for children. And that's the vibe this logo emanates.

I suppose it's oddly appropriate that a tool for amateur game developers employs a logo that looks like it was created by an amateur designer. I just really feel that YYG took this idea and ran a bit too far with it.

Carl the Cog, from Conker's Bad Fur Day.

I've always said the power in a tool lies in the hands of the person who wields it, and not solely in the tool itself. And while I still believe this to be true, I also think it's important that the tool isn't made to look completely stupid by its manufacturer. Perhaps the many people who claim to be leaving the GM scene over this are over-reacting, but when a decision is made that so negatively affects the nature of this tool in the eyes of others, I can't blame people for being upset about it.

Ultimately, this logo was a piss-poor choice, and that's all there is to it. I leave you with this quote from the logo's creator, Albert Zak (courtesy of Game Maker Blog):

I’m however still kind of puzzled why only 8% picked this as their favorite, but I’m glad Sandy and a few others realized what’s really behind this logo.

Is this what's behind the logo? Maybe that's why the big face is laughing so hard.

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The July Hiatus

 Martin · 14 years

Has it really been an entire month since I've posted here? it honestly doesn't seem like it. I've visited the blog frequently (every day), and though I've had a lot of ideas for things I've wanted to post, and have even written a fair amount of half-finished articles, I never got around to posting much of it all.

I guess I've been a bit busy. Not enough to completely excuse me from my absence here, but pretty busy. Since I feel like I owe an explanation to anyone who's been visiting the site and wondering what happened to me, I'll briefly run through everything I've been up to.

To kick things off, I got myself a new bike a little over a month ago. My girlfriend and I have enjoyed going for walks on the roads and trails near our apartment since we moved here, and we both thought it would be fun to have bikes to better take advantage of the bike paths, as well as for a simple form of local transportation. So far, it's been a lot of fun to be able to hop on a bike and jet around the area for a bit, and it's also been a good amount of exercise. So long as the weather stays reasonable, I'm sure we'll be doing this for many months to come this year (if not the entire year).

I also started putting a more serious effort into re-tooling the Reflect system/website, and though I've only been able to dig into a little bit of the core system so far, I'm happy with the way things are turning out on this front as well. Reflect has grown to include a lot of talented members of the Game Maker community, and I want to provide these developers with as much function as possible, as well as make the system more attractive to other developers who might be considering putting in an application to use it. I'll elaborate on all that later though, as I make more progress with it.

In order to help me develop the new Reflect assets, I also decided to get myself a laptop. Up until now, I've not had a laptop, and have used my desktop computer for everything. I'm still partial to my desktop, because I enjoy the power and comfort of the desk/chair, but I am happy to be able to get away from the "computer room" at my apartment, too. One of the biggest hurdles for getting started on new projects lately has been having to spend lots of time cooped up in the back room in my apartment, and now that I am free of this burden, I've been able to do a lot more.

I've also had the chance to see a few movies. My girlfriend and I have watched Public Enemies, Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince, Proposal, and a bunch of random rented flicks. My brother and I saw The Hangover as well. I enjoyed all of them, and in my opinion, it's been a pretty good summer for movies.

Last weekend, I went hiking with my girlfriend and a few members of her family down at the John Muir Woods national park. It was beautiful, and the I had a great time marching up and down the hills with everyone.

As you might have guessed at with my new bike and the hiking, I've been trying to spend a little more time exercising. I've also been trying to get in more time with my girlfriend. And since all of these things take a significant amount of time by themselves, I'm sure you can imagine how its been with it all happening at once.

I will try to update the blog more often than monthly intervals, of course. I've still got to post the editable version of my long-abandoned competition entry, as well as my animated water texture tutorial. I'll get around to those soon!

Thanks for reading and staying faithful enough to come back and find this new post! More to come soon, hopefully!

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Fire With Particles Example/Tutorial, Site Updates

 Martin · 14 years

Well, this isn't nearly as controversial as my recent rant about proprietary Mac hardware or the problems with piracy, but I'd like to announce that I have updated the Examples & Tutorials page and added a new example/tutorial to boot.

The new addition, an example/tutorial (perhaps an 'examporial'? 'tutample'? okay, I'll stop) shows how to create a somewhat realistic fire effect using Game Maker's particle system, and takes you through the entire process, from sprite creation to tweaking the final effect for perfection. You can check out the write-up and download the example files here.

And as mentioned above, I've also re-tooled the Examples/Tutorials page, so all the ugly boxes are gone, and everything is much cleaner and better organized. You'll also find a partially re-written tutorial for 3D model importing/UV mapping in there, though I'd like to completely re-write this in the future, as my methods have changed a bit since I wrote the original. I'll probably be adding my completely unfinished competition project to the open source/abandoned section soon, too.

If you have any suggestions for other examples you'd like me to make, sound off in the comments!

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Apologies for the Absence

 Martin · 15 years

Has it really been over a week since I've posted here? Well, my apologies for the delay – it's been a busy time for me over the last week, and I just haven't been able to find the time to write anything. I've meant to though, so hopefully I'll be getting back on track with this post. In the interest of everyone's time, here's a quick list of everything I've been up to over the last couple of weeks that has contributed, in one way or another, to my lag in blog posts:

  • Met my brother at a bar and watched my dad play music for a few hours; I also saw a woman drop a cake straight onto the floor of a bar
  • Took a trip to San Francisco for my work, got halfway there, and then realized my boss had texted me the night before to tell me the trip was off
  • Worked on a game that you might just see on TV someday (hopefully!)
  • Took another trip to San Francisco for my work, and was nearly late to the meeting because I followed my own directions wrong
  • Worked on a redesign for my blog, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Fixed a long-standing server bug in the Reflect system (thanks for the help, Matt!)
  • Worked on a redesign for Reflect Games, scrapped it, then started working on it again
  • Watched the two-hour long season premiere for Lost, and the hour-long preview before it
  • Finished Fallout 3 (goody-two-shoes style)
  • Went home to see my dad before he had to have a minor procedure done at the hospital (he's doing fine now, thankfully)
  • Played some quality Team Fortress 2 with Yourself (alltalk servers are basically Skype on steroids, eh?)
  • Finished Prince of Persia (need to play it again for achievements)
  • Got my previous landlord to drop a bogus move-out bill after catching their cheating, and exposing it to them
  • Released a Windows Vista/Windows 7 compatible version of Linked
  • Began learning Visual Basic all over again
  • Watched a few classic episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with my mom
  • Rediscovered my love for Joe Frank (an awesome radio show)
  • Bought World of Goo on Steam
  • Almost finished reading Lord of the Rings (I'm on page 947 now!)
  • And probably a lot more stuff that I can't remember right now, due to the ever-growing fatigue I'm feeling from writing such a long list!

Anyway, you probably get the idea - I've been a bit busy. I'll try to get back on the blog a bit more this week though... I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about, but which I just haven't had the time to organize into coherent sentences yet.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read my sparse posts - I appreciate it!

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Quick Reflect Competition & WordPress 2.7

 Martin · 15 years

I just wanted to post a quick note to tell everyone about two things, the currently on-going Reflect Games Competition and WordPress 2.7.

First, the Reflect Games Competition - it began last night, and is ending at midnight PST on December 21. The challenge is to make a cut scene in Game Maker, pretty much however you want. The rules are lax and the time is short, so read more about that at the Reflect Games forum, and consider throwing something together - you could win a little holiday fun in the form of Steam games, Amazon goods, or iTunes music!

Second, I installed WordPress 2.7 RC1 a few days ago, and all went smoothly... I'm not even sure that I had more than about 30 seconds of downtime. Today, the official release of WordPress 2.7 was released, and I got my first chance to try out the automatic upgrade function. So far, I love it! Instead of having to download, unzip, and upload a bunch of files, I can now upgrade the entire blog at the push of a button. The WordPress team deserves a resounding "good job" from everyone who uses and supports their software for this - they really did an excellent job.

Anyway, I'd better get back to work for now, but thanks for stopping in to see what's going on, and good luck with the contest if you decide to enter it! The raffle for Marty Blog is still being planned, so don't miss these two opportunities to win some stuff!

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Back From Thanksgiving

 Martin · 15 years

I'm finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents' house, and I can hardly believe it's already December! Where has this year gone?

Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today.

A recent episode of The Simpsons took Apple down a peg, as Springfield mall got its first "Mapple" store. It was quite enjoyable. Of course, all the YouTube links are gone now, so you'll have to find the episode yourself.

The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve's original port of the game. Normally I don't get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa. You can view the trailer below and find out more about the mod at the official site.

I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I'm a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.

I'm glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight. Sorry about the slow rain example, I'll play with it and see if I can get something up that's a little easier on the older machines soon as well!

That's all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you're not from the U.S.)!

Update: I've made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6. The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.

You can download the new example at the link above!

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Marty Moved

 Martin · 15 years

Over the last week I was busy boxing up all my stuff and trying to coordinate all my services (cable, internet, electricity, etc.) to have things ready for my move, and this weekend I got everything moved over - I am now officially moved out of my old apartment, and living with my girlfriend at the new one. There are still a lot of boxes to sort through, but the computer is set up, the Xbox is up and running, and... I've got no internet yet!

You see, me being the master planner that I am, only called up AT&T to transfer my existing phone and internet service on friday of last week. This translates into my landline being moved today and my internet being reconnected on Wednesday. Not an entirely raw deal, as I can go about most of my business without it - I've got plenty of games that need playing, and the aforementioned boxes to unpack. Still, it has been an inconvenience when I've needed to get phone numbers and other information which I normally collect from the internet in about 5 seconds, but now have to obtain either by searching the phone book or calling up 411, both of which are expensive prospects in time and money respectively.

At first, I was tempted to activate my cell phone's limited internet capabilities (by adding a $5-a-month charge to my plan) but being through the bulk my time without the internet now, I think I'll just wait it out.

Being without the worldwide time sink that is the internet, I've also had some time (between games and unpacking, of course) to think about some of the GM content I want to release here on my site in the near future, particularly of the example and tutorial flavor. I still want to put together a simple tutorial about how to make that animated water texture I introduced in my 3D example, as well as an example for the fire particles I used in Sun Sun Der, and a few other small things. I should have plenty of time to work on a couple of these over the next few days, so we'll see what I can come up with. If anyone has any ideas about what they'd want to see, please let me know in the comments below.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a little about where I am with my GM work and offer an explanation as to why you might not have seen me on AIM/MSN/XBL/GMC/etc. over the weekend. Thanks for reading, and again, please let me know of any examples/tutorials you might want to see, preferably graphics oriented.

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Time Keeps On Slippin’

 Martin · 15 years

October is drawing to a close, and I'm questioning the future of my newest project, as far as its status as a YYG Competition #4 entry is concerned.

I'll be the first to admit that this is not an entirely unexpected outcome - my project was a bit ambitious. I still want to complete it someday, as I think the game concept is a good one, and I really liked the way the game was turning out. Unfortunately, with my trips to Vegas and BlizzCon, and lots of my free time being spent with my girlfriend as we search for a place to live together, I've not been able to devote the necessary time to Game Maker, and I don't want to be stuck trying to rush the game out, since it is still going to require a lot of artwork and programming.

Not all is lost, however.

A few days ago I came up with a decent idea for a smaller game, and if I have the time, I'll throw it together for the competition.

Since only a handful of people got a chance to play the other game, I'll post a demo here later for anyone who's interested in trying it out. It's nothing more than a driving engine with some simple collisions currently, but as I mentioned, I would like to expand on it eventually.

The whole year of 2008 has been like this for me, actually. I've begun (and continued) many projects, including the site update for Reflect, a new version of the Reflect system itself, a few games, and some paintings; disappointingly, hardly any of it has gotten finished. I suspect that much of it has to do with my limited time for personal projects, an issue that's been troubling me for quite a while now.

I don't blame most of my day-to-day obligations, however - I enjoy spending time with my girlfriend very much, and I waste a lot of time playing games and surfing the web to wind down, which is absolutely necessary to my continued sanity.

Other things though, like my daily commute, are increasingly annoying to me - I lose almost two and a half hours per day just driving to and from work. It's quite frustrating that, as a creative person, I have such sparing time for actually being creative.

Ugh. I hate that feeling I get when I have a project I've worked very hard on, but which I won't be able to finish for now. It's all part of the process, I know, but that doesn't make it taste any less bitter.

Anyway, I'll be posting updates on my competition #4 work as (and if) it progresses. Thanks to everyone who has supported me in my work thus far, and thanks for reading the blog! I shall find the time to finish some of my projects - it just takes time!

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Weekend Fun & Competition #4 Entry: Progress Update 2

 Martin · 15 years

This weekend was a much-needed break from all the stuff that's been going on lately. We got a nice bit of rain on Friday night, and my girlfriend and I spent that night and all of Saturday watching movies and lounging around. I would have liked for the cloudy weather to last a little longer, but the Friday rain left Saturday feeling cool and fresh, if not gray.

So now I've finally seen Baby Mama, which was hilarious, and Iron Man, which was also good. I also saw bits and pieces of 27 Dresses, a movie my girlfriend picked out, as I bounced back and forth between my computer and the TV. It had its moments.

The rest of my weekend was spent at an indoor soccer game, doing laundry, working on achievements for Grand Theft Auto 4, and throwing down some retro gaming on my newly acquired GameCube.

Amidst all that fun stuff, I also found some time to do some work on my YYG Competition #4 entry. The car you saw in the last post now has textured tires, I've made some preliminary tree textures, and I am working on a layout for the area you can drive around in for the activities in the game.

Graphically, I want to see the game look bright, clean and open. Since most of the gameplay will be driving the car around the yard (what I'm calling the open, drivable area) and a racetrack of sorts, I think it's important that the graphics are bright and clear, and fun to look at. Sound will also play a large role in bringing the world to life, but I won't be adding that until much later in the design process.

I believe I mentioned this in my last post about the comp, but as far as control goes, the car in the game is mostly finished. It's able to go forward, backward, brake, turn left and right (at greater degrees depending on speed), and use a simple e-brake for making tighter turns. I've got collisions in the game now as well, so the car can bump up against walls... It's basic, but I'm afraid I don't have time to program anything too advanced as far as collision physics go. I might refine what I have a little later on to make them a bit smoother, but for now what's in there works. The only thing I may tweak as far as the collisions go is upping the scale of the game by two, so that I can use more precise sprites for collisions. This shouldn't be noticeable on the graphics end, thanks to the nature of 3D.

Most of the work I am focusing on now is conceptual - I know where I want to take the game, but I need to envision what the world should look like, and how the interactive areas will play out. I have a look in mind for the area decor, but translating a painting of a scene in your mind to working, interesting 3D can take some time and thought. I'll probably be working on maps later on tonight - perhaps I'll post one when I'm finished.

Also on the table is a little bit of character design, as I'm going to have the few characters in the game be represented as simple cartoon-style characters, hopefully to strike a good balance between something a little realistic (the driving portion) and a little more inviting (in menus, interacting with NPC's, etc.).

So yeah - lots of work to do. Plenty of time to do it. I'll continue posting my progress as the game gets built. Thanks for reading!

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Competition #4 Entry: Progress Update 1

 Martin · 15 years

I've decided to take a slightly different approach with my YYG Competition #4 entry, and post semi-regular progress updates as things move along. I'm not quite ready to unveil my master plan for the game, but I will reveal more as time goes on (and as time allows). I'm still trying to decide which aspects of my ideas will be able to make it in under the deadline while still allowing me enough time to make sure the game is fun and thoroughly polished, so at this point, it's hard to say what the final game will be like anyway, or whether or not I will even be able to finish it.

That said, progress is good so far. The game is going to have a focus on driving, and the driving engine is virtually done, save for collisions and all the extra stuff I have to add onto it later. Here are some screenshots of the game as it looks now. Textureless and a bit empty. But fun to drive around in!

Hopefully I have something more substantial to show next time... for now, enjoy the stills!

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