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!