Dangerous Dave's Dlog

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Posts tagged with "game maker for mac"

Happy Holidays!

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Happy New Year to you all. I hope you all got what you wanted for Christmas. Or at least what you expected.

Underwear - Check
Socks - Check
T Shirt with witty statement on front - Check
Chocolate - Check
More chocolate - Check
More video games than I could play in a year (about 6 or 7) - Check
Gift vouchers since I'm so hard to buy for - Check
Odd presents for sake of inside jokes (see 1, 2, and 3, plus many more (including a 30 meter hose)) - Check

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GM for Mac: Beta Two

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Some early hour this morning I received an email with a (somewhat amusing) user name and password to access the new version of the Game Maker for Mac runner and editor. I eagerly downloaded the file and tried to unzip it. Last time there was a missing runner, this time the file wouldn't unzip. I tried three different unzipping programs, one reported the file was busy (even after a restart), one froze up completely and one complained that I was copying something to a directory that already had a file or folder of that name in it, which was some file deep inside the runner and editor.

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Panels vs Windows Re: GM4Mac

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In Mac OS X, there are two types of what I will call "windows" (that I know of whistle). There are regular windows, and there are panels. Panels do not behave like normal windows, for example when you run expose (the program that shows all of your windows on the screen at once, allowing you to choose which window to give focus to), panels are not shown.

I have been thinking about the windows in GM, the ones that pop up when you double click on an object, a sprite, a room; a resource. Should these be panels or regular windows?

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Free Time (Pt 2)

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For the past two weeks I have had all the spare time in the world, yet no free time to update my blog.

I finished work on the 8th of February, giving me two weeks of free time before heading back to university. On the 9th, I drove for 8 or so hours to a beach batch where I stayed for a week with my girlfriend, father and relatives. There was no internet access, and most of the time spent there I was either fishing, at the beach, or sleeping.

The following week I organised to get power and internet connected, and organising for all my stuff to be returned to my flat.

But enough about me. I have made a bit of progress with my new (yet still probably never to be released) game. There are now three levels, each reasonably unique, and nearly complete. I'm using one of the (as yet not fixed) GM for Mac bugs as an excuse not to work harder on it, but that might change with lectures starting next week (lectures are a great place to make games, because it's an Ultimatum. Either make the damn game, or you will have to listen to what the lecturer is saying).

I'm having trouble conveying my ideas with black squares as sprites, but hopefully the replacement of those with animated walking things will help get the idea across. Also, the game is to be themed around finding pieces of a time machine. Problem is, I don't know how to build a time machine. All I know about time machines is that your flux capacitor must be fluxing and you need to be going 88MPH. Since you can't pickup a 88MPH, so far the only pickup I have is a flux capacitor.

If anyone knows what other components you need to make a time machine (or can think up something that could fit), please speak up now smile.

-Dave


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Free Time

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One thing I am very short on is free time. I will try to update this blog more often once Uni resumes (later this month) when I will have more spare time (weird, ain't it?), but until then you will have to make do will irregular posts.

I have been working on a new game. Of course, if any one you have known me long enough, you will know it will never actually be finished or released. I am horrible at making games. No really, horrible. My sore points are sprite drawing, game idea design, and sometimes (like in the case of SG1) a horrible user interface.

If you ever get the chance to play SG1, don't. It was an awesome idea, I just had no idea how to implement it properly. The player movement was the worst design I have ever seen for any game, ever. There was no flow to it, the movement was awkward and the shooting even worse. I didn't steal the game design off of another game, which was probably a bad move.

It took me five years of using GameMaker before releasing a game demo. Chances are it will be five more before I release another.

This new game I am making will be an epic fail when it comes to graphics. I can't draw, I accept that, so I currently have black squares for almost everything. It really looks awful. If I actually finish it (which I wont), and the game is actually fun to play, I may try outsourcing graphics.

The main reason for creating this game is for testing the new Mac GameMaker. I found two new bugs the second I started making this new game, and both have reportedly been fixed when the next beta version comes out. They both sounded very simple to fix, and apparently were. The bugs were as follows:

- View could not be larger than 100x100

- Shift all objects would only shift them down or right, not up or left (shift all would not accept negative numbers)


I have used blend modes, alpha and image scales in this game. None of these are yet working in GM for Mac, so I have just guessed and hoped that the lack of error messages (well, GM for Mac doesn't actually have error messages (at least I don't get them), the game just crashes) means that I have coded it correctly.

If anyone wants to test, or give me suggestions for which direction to take the (probably never to be released) game in, feel free to get in contact with me. It's not very progressed (one unperfected level, a handful of objects) but maybe that will change.

-Dave

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Game Maker for Mac: An Update

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I think it's about time for an update for the Mac Beta, and some comments on my last post. I will go through each of my Pointed games, describing what doesn't work. Most of the bugs I found had already been reported by the time I got the time to start reporting them, so it's good to know that it's not just me (or is it...).
I haven't actually managed to give the UI a decent try. I will probably never test the D&D, as I find it too confusing to use, but I will eventually get around to using the rest of it. One thing I noticed is that the code editor is not at all pleasant to use. The text is too small for me to read, and there is no highlighting of functions. Also, the cursor starts from where you click with regards to horizontal axis, but from the bottom most used line. So if I click in the middle of a blank code box, the cursor will jump to the middle of the top line. IMO it should jump to the start of the line. The cursor is also not visible, and you only know where it is when you start typing. Here is a screen shot:



And that thing I said about the sprite editor working while zoomed out? Forget it, it's got almost all the same problems as when it is zoomed in, minus a couple such as the extra line.


Now onto the games. Note: A common, yet expected, problem is that the link to Pointed doesn't work. The method used to open the browser is Windows only.

Beshaped: A bejeweled type game.

The mouse events don't seem to register correctly. I haven't pinpointed the problem, but when I try to select a shape, it gets selected, then unselects itself. This is to do with the alarm, and appears to be the game checking for a mouse press rather than the mouse being held down (ie mouse press event instead of the intended mouse event).

The game uses draw_set_alpha() along with draw_rectangle() to draw a alpha'ed rectangle over the selected shape. This shows up as being a green (as in default new sprite coloured), solid, rectangle. The rectangle appears to change to the colour of the transparent colour of the sprite.



Besides those two things, this game runs fine.


Blobber: A frogger clone.

This game appears to work fine, besides a little bit of a gap seen between the tiled objects.


Breakish: A breakout kind of clone, but a little different.

The game appears to run fine. Some of the drawing colours aren't right, but could probably easily be fixed (though it worked fine in Windows). Probably due to drawing order.
Also, the balls right hand side collision is about 32px off, probably due to the sprite being incorrectly drawn.
Fullscreen does not work, and the game is incorrectly proportioned without it (although it is the same in windows).


CarRace: A clone of the police-avoiding car game included with GM.

Game runs fine except for some keys sticking, which happens very frequently. There appears to be bugs in the keyboard and mouse event handling.

Climb: Climb up as the screen moves, don't fall off the bottom of the screen.

The game runs fine except for the keys sticking, and a very minor problem with the scaled graphics, making the lines appear to pulse as the screen moves.


Dong: A pong style clone.

Works fine except for the keys sticking.


Galaxy Attackers: A space invaders clone.

Works fine except for keys sticking.

Missile In A Cave: A Helicopter/Jet Man type game.

Works just dandy.

Rocket Control: A missile command type game.

Mouse presses are sometimes not recognised. Text in message boxes is drawn past the end of the message box, and in the currently set drawing colour. Explosions are not drawn in the correct colour, often they are drawn black.


And one last game is an InkBall type game that I made, yet never released. It works exactly like the Windows game, and runs fine in Windows. It uses surfaces to create sprites to assign to objects to draw the lines you draw with your mouse, and allow the balls to collide with them. The surfaces don't appear to work at all, drawing with the mouse does nothing.


And for those not part of the beta, I will give you some examples of errors others have found (allegedly, I haven't tested any of these):

Game info:

1. Game Information has lots of formatting tags around the actual info, for example:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Comic Sans MS;}{\f1\fnil Arial;}}
{\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;}
\viewkind4\uc1\pard\qc\cf1\i\f0\fs60 Cheat Commandos: The game!
\par \fs24 Sworn to protect the world from the evil forces of Blue Lazer!
\par (Demo version 3.4)

Error reported by Paniel25

2. Game info can be edited in-game.

Error reported by Paniel25

3. No scrolling while editing game info.

Error reported by Paniel25

General Game:

1. The games do not appear to work on PowerPC Macs, with most crashing on startup.

Many people have reported problems on PowerPCs.

2. Custom game icons are not used, even when set in editor.

Error reported by infinitegames.

3. Apparently Ctrl + MB doesn't register as a right click, and the reporter needed to use "start + mouse" to register a right click. My Mac doesn't have a start button, maybe they mean Command, since that is the button used with the Windows key when running windows.

Error reported by sharprm.

General Editor:

1. Unable to change order of any resources.

Error reported by sharprm.



That's enough for now. As of yet no update has been released, lets hope YoYo are hard at work on fixing up the bugs.

-Dave

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Game Maker for Mac

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Let's see if this gets 7th in Google for the search term "Game Maker for Mac", since my last Game Maker post, hardly about GM for Mac got there nearly overnight. And I haven't even told anyone about this blog yet... Thats awesome smile

So, Game Maker for Mac. I got the email from YoYo a few days ago, we were all sent a link to a site that contained the runner, but no editor. Today it finally got sorted, and I now have both the runner and the editor (separately, for some reason).

My first impression: Really bad looking. I wanted it to feel like a Mac program, this did not at all. I could have settled for looking good if it was in Windows. None of that either. It's worse than the Windows version. Here's a screenshot of the main editor:



Not impressed. As a Mac user, looks are very important to me (in all parts of my life ;-) ). But I guess I could get over that if it was beautiful on the inside as well (That YoYo Games logo is actually stretched like that, it's not just the screenshot). So I decided to make a game. The first thing I did was (try to) create a sprite. I got an error (yes, while trying to make a sprite). After a couple of tries, I'm no longer getting this error (at all). Cool, let's go and draw something. I got my pencil tool, and started to draw, this is what I got:


By the way, all I did was click in the top left hand corner, and drag to the bottom right hand corner. Once. that other line wasn't me... And that blurring is in the sprite editor, also not a fault of the screenshot. It appears to be affected by the zoom. In fact, the sprite editor works almost flawlessly when zoomed out, it's just a pity it's only half an inch wide on my screen.

My first impression is that it is unusable. I feel YoYo Games may have felt pressured into showing they were actually doing something, but this seems to fall short of beta status. I think it was released much too early.

With that said, there is a possibility that it works fine on their test machines, and the beta has shown that some machines aren't handled as well. My MacBook fits into the Intel processor and 10.5.5 (Leopard) group, which is what they wanted. All bugs I have encountered so far point towards a video card problem, and it is likely I run a different video card than their test machines (with their much bigger budget smile).

It will be interesting to see whether others have the same issues. One last thing, did I mention a stand alone game is 19MB when blank?

But one exciting prospect is having easy access to the game data file, which could technically be distributed without the runner to make the games 19MB smaller, but we will have to see about the EULA for that.


-Dave

Edit: A few updates, minutes later smile

Surfaces don't appear to work. Drawing on the screen doesn't appear to work in conjunction with keyboard_wait(). And a lot of the 3D doesn't work as expected, especially when it comes to non-conventional use, such as drawing in 3D without 3D mode turned on (which works in Windows). Also I get strange effects where draw_set_alpha() has been used. Blobber runs flawlessly smile. Textboxes don't wrap long strings, and don't stretch to accommodate length when # is used. Fullscreen doesn't appear to work.

The files left behind are just ridiculous. If you have saved the game, the application is created in the same folder as the GMK when the game is run. It is never removed after the game is quit. If you haven't saved the game, it is created on your hard drive. I just found about half a dozen of these apps, all in a uniquely numbered folder, each 20MB. These are games I never saved, but these files are left behind.

Also, double clicking on a gmk file will open the maker, but it doesn't load the gmk.

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Game Maker

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For over 6 years I have been using a program called GameMaker.

GameMaker is software that, as it implies, lets you make games. And it makes the process much easier that any traditional methods. GameMaker uses drag and drop icons to piece together the parts of your game, making it very easy for anyone of any age to use. For more experienced users, a programming language is also available. Games can be distributed as executable files, that can run on any Windows machine that meets the requirements. A Mac port (private) beta is to be released by the end of this month.

After using GameMaker for all these years, I have got nothing to show for it. I have not released a single game past WIP status, and have learnt a lot about an industry I never plan on entering. But I have wasted a lot of time, and had fun doing it. Some GameMaker users have even gone on to work for game making companies.

After a break of a year or two from GameMaker, I returned to the GameMaker Community (GMC) where the users of GameMaker discuss and troubleshoot their games and game making techniques. To this day, I regularly visit the GMC to help novice users with problems, discuss issues and catch up with old friends, although I rarely use GameMaker anymore. Hopefully that will change with the release of GM for Mac.

If anyone is considering making their own games, and doesn't know where to start, then I suggest GameMaker. You can download the lite version (don't worry, you most likely wont need a single pro feature until you get more experienced) from the publishers website, YoYo Games, and if you get stuck, post a question in the Novice & Intermediate forum at the GMC.

-Dave


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