Ludum Dare #24 rankings

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Voting is over. Rankings are up.

I wasn’t expecting great things for Karyote, and I got about what I expected.

Karyote Ratings:

Ranking/1406 Category Score (out of 5)
Coolness 100%
#253 Theme 3.20
#301 Audio 2.60
#335 Mood 2.70
#449 Humor 1.86
#459 Overall 2.82
#489 Fun 2.58
#492 Innovation 2.58
#628 Graphics 2.22

Comparing to my LD23 game, I ended up doing about as well as last time. I’m a little surprised, because I really didn’t think this game was as good at deadline, and I struggled during most of the compo, both to come up with ideas for the game, and to implement most of my experimental ideas, and I probably put in 10 fewer hours over the weekend on this one.

Category LD23 LD24
Coolness 56% 100%
Overall 2.76 2.82
Innovation 3.41 2.58
Fun 2.62 2.58
Theme 3.34 3.2
Graphics 2.75 2.22
Audio 2.07 2.60
Humor 2.07 1.86
Mood 2.68 2.70

Really, both games are fairly similar if you compare them — they both are about microorganisms. I guess microorganisms are easy to do games about when you don’t have any good ideas ;-) I hope I have a game idea for LD25 that doesn’t have anything to do with microorganisms!

Now that I’ve worked out a lot of the kinks in my post-compo version, I think Karyote is a lot better than it was at deadline, and I wonder how the enhanced builds I’ve been working on over the last two weeks would have rated. I’m two major features away from calling it complete now, and I am hoping it won’t take me much longer than the next two weeks to finish it up.

A Viable(?) New Business Model for Indie Game Development?

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This article has also been posted on Gamasutra blogs.

So, I was thinking about making games, and why I do it. I’ve always said that I don’t care if the games I make generate income. I’m doing it because I love it, and while that’s enough motivation for me, any money I do make will help justify doing it more.

Then I thought about business models, and piracy, and copyright, and all the pain that goes along with that, on all ends of it. And I thought about the “pay what you feel like” model, and the crowdfunding model, and the way some AAA games get pre-ordered so gamers can reserve a copy at their retailer. I kindof like pay-what-you-feel-like. But then I thought of something innovative, that combines the strengths of these approaches, and takes them to the next level.

It’s a secret to everybody

So here’s my idea: All the games I release are free/pay-what-you-want. There’s no DRM on any of it, you can play it as much as you want, share it with whoever you want. I think most will agree that DRM sucks, and I don’t want to spend time or resources trying to come up with some copyright enforcement mechanism that will only be broken hours after I release the game, or tie the game to some online service that will mean that if the company ever goes out of business, all the games will become unusable. I don’t want to inconvenience legitimate owners of my game and then have to offer a quick patch and a lame apology for it later. I want people to play my games — and share them with their friends — why would I want to put an obstacle between them and the game that I want them to play? I’ll even put in social features that help you share it with all your friends and tweet about how much fun you’re having playing my game.

Let’s play money making game!

Here’s the money-making part of the plan: You pay for me to make my next game. Whatever it is. I’ll announce my projects and work at them at the pace that I can sustain. If I have to work a lot at some other job in order to pay my bills, then I spend more time working, less time making games, and the game still happens, but probably not for a long time, and maybe not ever.

This is, after all, pretty much how Kickstarter works: you pay up front for a thing to be developed, and you wait some time until it is ready to be released. And like Kickstarter, pledged funds would not be collected until the goal has been reached. And it seems to work well, at least for established names who have a reputation and fan base. But how does an unknown attract The Crowd and convince them that they’re worthy of funding? Anyone can start out small and build their fanbase over time, assuming they are dedicated and talented and put in the work. I know of no other way to build a fanbase than to release high quality games and distributing them as widely as you can, and ensuring that people who get to play them learn how they can get to play more awesome games even better than the one they just played. And the best way to ensure the widest distribution is to release for free. Once you have fans who believe in what you are doing, enough of them will gladly pay to see more.

If I finish the game before it has reached the money goal, I hold on to it until my fundraising goal is met, and taunt you with YouTube videos showing how awesome it is, and asking for money to release it, and otherwise marketing the game. Once I hit my revenue goal, I release it, for free, no DRM or anything, and the game becomes an advertisement for my next project which I am happy that you share with anyone and everyone.

So, if you like the games I make, and you want to see more of them, give me more money, and the more I get, the more time I can spend making games instead of doing other things that make me money.

I like it. It’s straightforward, it completely eliminates any concern about piracy or DRM, because you can’t pirate what hasn’t been built yet, and in fact my games’ popularity is aided by people who enjoy the games spreading the word about them, and getting more people to play them, it basically de-fucks copyright and performs its original purpose — To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts — and, if the money comes in, it encourages me to make more, better games faster.

Learning from previous business models

During the shareware era, the proposition to the market was: “If you like this game that you just played for free, pay the shareware license for this game, because if you don’t then I’ll go out of business and there won’t be any more games.”

But most people ignored this. Revenue from shareware releases was always a tiny percentage of the total number of people who used the software. Users don’t like the nag screens and the guilt trips, and they’ll hack the binaries to eliminate them. They share the activation codes or crack whatever license controls you can think of, and you end up spending more time researching anti-piracy and fighting the spread and popularity of your game than you do making more cool games. It’s counterproductive.

But with this new approach, where the developer is explicitly saying: “This game is free, play the hell out of it and share it with as many friends as you can!” but also, “Here’s what else I have to offer, and you can help make it happen by contributing money to the project.” Kickstarter and IndieGogo have proven that this is viable. So, we’ve fixed all the problems of the old model — although the difference is subtle, the business model is crucially different, and addresses the failings of the previous models, and turns them into strengths. All the games are free upon release. Suddenly, there’s no longer an adversarial relationship between the players and the developer: I do what I love and make games, and you do what you love and play them. And if you want to play my next game sooner, you help me out by funding it.

By itself, I think many, perhaps most gamers would still ignore and pay nothing, like always. I mean, sure there’s always going to be leeches in any system. Leeches gonna leech. But that’s fine, because in my business model, they’re performing a valuable service: they’re doing your marketing for you, if you get out of their way and let them. Some people would pay because the idea that they’re helping to create the next game sooner holds great appeal. It’s that hipster “I was into X before X was cool” prestige. But there does need to be enough of those people. I think Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and others have established that there are indeed enough of these people. So, there just needs to be ways to encourage and incentivize gamers to fund your next project.

We’re already seeing this done with the Kickstarter model. A pitch video, a tiered system of rewards, regular, open communications between the creator and the backers. That’s part of what was missing from the old shareware model. In the shareware days, the developer was faceless. But today, the developer’s on the web, on youtube, on Twitter, in your inbox. You have a relationship and they’re more responsive to you than ever before. This makes you much more likely to be willing to spend some money. Because you know who it’s going to, and you see what it does.

To encourage people funding me, I would have a progress bar tied to my income stream showing the actual money raised, making that information public. And some kind of goal showing what my expenses are. We’re not just talking direct project expenses, but the funding level needed to buy me out of my job and go full time indie.

There could also be a progress bar for each project I have announced, or each feature, showing how many hours are needed to complete them, how many hours are funded in the next week, and how many dollars need to be raised to fund more hours.

That way, you could see things like:

  • How much I’m making
  • How much I need in order to not have to work on anything but game development
  • How much the money you’re paying towards my projects is helping me to get them done
  • What projects I have announced
  • How much progress has been made on each project
  • How soon you can expect my next release to be

I’d also establish a relationship with the players of my games, through active blogging/tweeting of what I’m doing with the game projects, and where my time is going, why it’s not going to game development, and stuff like that.

I figure if people see the person creating the games, it will tend to humanize them, and make it clear that the developer isn’t a faceless corporation with huge revenues that won’t notice if their money isn’t added to the giant swimming pool of gold that we all splash about in.

Plus, if gamers know how much money a game is making, it will tend to disabuse them of the idea that wealthy corporations are raking in all kinds of money hand over fist, that they can’t possibly be hurt by people not paying anything to enjoy the games. And by tying the money paid directly to new projects, it’s easier for them to see what they’re getting for their money.

Actually, hell, I could turn it into a web service and let any indie dev sign up for an account, and they’d each have their own blog, their own projects page, and their own “fund this and it will happen sooner” button. Maybe an API that they can tie into their games, allowing them to meter usage so they can show “X number of people played this game X’ times in the last 1|7|30|365 days, and collectively have kicked in Y dollars to fund my next project, an average of just Y_avg cents per play, which means that I am in H financial health, and so my next project will get delivered in Z months.” And here’s an appreciation leaderboard showing the G most generous, loyal fans, thanks so much for your patronage.

I’d love to develop this idea into an actual business, but I’d also gladly work with an e-commerce services provider who could set up a system that would work this way.

The Internet Is Vast, But We Travel At The Speed Of Light

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Ingenuity Fest Day 2 is behind us now. Lots of kids came and played JS Joust and BaraBariBall. I’m not at all surprised, but younger kids especially seemed to like BaraBariBall. It just goes to show that classic game style appeals to everyone, not just nostalgia-seeking old schoolers.

JS Joust seemed to be quite popular, lots of participation. The novelty of it is that it’s more of a kinesthetic game than anything — it uses computer technology and wireless controllers, but there’s no screen at all. It’s more like a weird game of tag. Imagine playing tag while eating ice cream cones, and the way you win is to knock off everyone else’s ice cream. Only, no one’s crying at the end because their ice cream is now melting on the ground. But also, no one has any ice cream at all.

So, the internet. It amazes me. This is the best time to be alive, I think, despite everything wrong that’s going on in the world. Two days ago, I hadn’t even heard of BaraBariBall, and within a day of posting about it, I got a comment from its creator, saying that he follows the site.

I’m really starting to feel like I’m making connections in the world of Indie game development when things like that happen. Since the end of August, this site’s daily traffic has about doubled. In the last two months, I’ve receive about 20% of the visits since I started this thing back in January 2010.

I’ve been at this for going on 3 years now, which I guess is a long time in one way, and not long at all in another. It’s hard to quantify success, and easy to discount its indicators. The stats counter tells me I have an audience, and it’s building, gradually, so I know you’re out there. I don’t know who you are, though, and I don’t really hear from most of you. I don’t really know what kind of impact what I’m doing has on you, and only my own ideas to tell me what I’m doing right or wrong, or what else I should be doing.

I guess what I’m saying is, I really thrive on feedback. Like anyone else on the internet, it’s all about knowing that you’ve got people’s attention. I’m doing all of this stuff because I love doing it, but it really means a whole lot more when I know that there are other people out there who like what I’m doing and are taking interest.

I’d love to hear from you more. Even if you don’t have anything in particular to say, if you just want to drop a comment on this post, and say “hi”, that’d be great. If you’ve done anything I might have heard of (or that you’d like me to hear of) mention that, too. Or tell me how you came to find the site, what you like about it, what you don’t, or anything else for that matter.

Ingenuity Fest

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This weekend is Ingenuity Fest in downtown Cleveland, held this year at North Coast Harbor. Cleveland Game Developers has a space, and we’re hanging out, demoing games and promoting our projects and talking about our craft. A number of our members brought tech demos and projects to show off.

One of the most fun games I’ve seen in some time, BaraBariBall, is on display here in our space. It is not, unfortunately, one of our creations, but it is a lot of fun. It’s a bit like Super Smash Bros., but simplified and with a graphical style reminiscent of the Atari 2600. I really like the graphical style. The animation is particularly well done. And the controls are superb. I never could get into Smash Bros. due to its overly complex controls. Any time I played it, all I could do is mash buttons and hope for the best. With BaraBariBall, the controls are greatly simplified, and this makes the game much more fun. It’s now more of a contest of reflexes and tactics, and less about memorizing and mastering strange controller contortions that unlock special moves.

I can’t wait for this to come out so I can buy it.

We also have JS Joust set up. Again, this isn’t something one of our group created, but it’s fun. It uses the PS3 ice cream cone controller and a Mac OS X computer.

Cleveland Game Developers Matt Perrin, Brian Gessler, and Jarryd Huntley have all brought in projects that they’re working on.

Matt Perrin whipped up an interesting project just for Ingenuity, which he calls Monster Sumo. You draw your own graphics on a sheet of paper, then take a photo with a camera phone and upload your monster to a server. Then you can do battle with another monster created by your opponent. I suggested that this would be a lot of fun to play with a Kinect interface, but for now it’s just controlled with a more traditional input device — I’m not sure if it’s keyboard, or gamepad, or possibly either.

Brian Gessler brought a prototype game that uses Kinect. He described it as kindof a reverse Breakout, where you’re trying to push the wall up and the computer is trying to break holes in it. It looked interesting but unfortunately the laptop he was running it on was having trouble playing it at full speed. Brian promised to do some performance optimization before bringing it back tomorrow.

Jarryd Huntley had a game rigged up to play on an Oscilloscope, in homage to Willie Higinbotham’s original ur-pong, Tennis for Two. Unfortunately, his oscilloscope died just before the festival, and he is trying to source a spare on short notice so he can demo the game.

GameMaker has a roadmap

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A few months ago while I was submitting bug reports for the HTML5 beta, I’d asked one of the mantis bugtracker admins if there was a public roadmap for YoYoGames’ plans for the product. At the time, there wasn’t.

Now there is.

Currently, the document as is is very high level and doesn’t go into as much detail as I’d like, but it’s a start. It’s good to know that this exists now, where it didn’t a few months ago. Knowing what YYG has planned for the product is very useful for game developers who want features that don’t exist yet, and helps to foster conversation between them and the YYG developers who deliver those features.

Overall, I’m very pleased to see YYG being responsive and listening to their users. Over the last few months, I’ve been able to interact with prominent persons from YYG, through twitter and this blog, and I am very appreciative of this opportunity to interact with them, ask questions, and provide feedback.

The Wii U. Texting while Driving?

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Nintendo officially announced the launch date and pricing of the Wii U today. We’ve known a few things about it for a while, now, specifically the new controller with its built-in high resolution color touchscreen.

Secondary screens have been done before. The Sega Dreamcast controller had a built-in module that docked in the controller and provited a tiny low-resolution monochrome display, for minigames and private information for multiplayer games. And Nintendo has on occasions done Game Boy/Game Cube crossover games, where part of the game is played on the handheld system and part is played on the TV.

Wii U represents a maturation of the concept, and the first time a very high quality screen was put onto the controller. There are a lot of interesting possibilities that come out of this, succinctly summarized as “asymmetric”, which is fancytalk for “Thing A happens on screen A while Thing B happens on screen B.”

The main strength of 2-screen gaming is this assymetric aspect. Of course, network multiplayer gamers have had this for quite some time. The Wii U seems even more geared toward multiplayer gaming, where the multiple players are together in the same room. One difference I see is that the Wii approach lends itself more to a “shared data/private data” game. While technically this is the way it usually is with network multiplayer gaming, the sharing now becomes more literal.

Most networked PC games give each player “*My* Thing A,” where whatever that thing is, it’s essentially the same for all players, just their view of it. For example, their avatar’s first-person view of the map from its position on the map, with their private data for their health and inventory. Wii U has the potential to give each player a unique “Thing”. A great example of this is given in the recent Penny Arcade strip, depicting a hypoethetical computer-aided role playing game on the Wii U. Unlike the typical computer RPG genre, where the computer acts as the game master, and the world and storyline are all pre-programmed, the Penny Arcade concept shows a DM using the Wii U as a world realization tool, but controlling the world in a more interactive way.

This is great stuff, and I hope we’ll get to see it, but it makes me wonder how the Wii U serves the single-player game. To me, the first thing that occurs to me is that a single-player dual screen game is very much like texting and driving. Diverting attention between two screens is a challenge, but maybe not a rewarding one. There’s definitely potential for novel, interesting new modes of play, but I’m not sure yet how it will take shape.

Hopefully today’s press conference will have shed some light on this. I’m looking foward to finding out later today.

5 Stars of Ambiguity

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Originally posted at my Ludum Dare blog

(more…)

Game Review: Iron Tank (NES)

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Iron Tank (1988, SNK) is a mostly-forgotten title for the NES, but deserves more recognition than it’s gotten. I think of it as a spiritual companion to the other great NES WWII Shooter, Capcom’s 1943.

Many of its features were successful in other popular games, but it has enough of its own unique strengths that it can stand up proudly as an innovative game with an experience you will find similar to many other games, but still feeling original and well done, not generic or derivative:

  • Radio communications screen for narrative elements (Bionic Commando, Metal Gear). The radio will sometimes give you warning about upcoming challenges, or some mission background to explain why you’re here and what you need to do. This is mostly inessential because the mission is always “Stay alive, destroy enemies, and advance, and destroy a boss.” but it still gives the game a story of sorts. Often the radio message will be “too late” advice, warning you to be careful about a challenge you just got through. Toward the end, the enemy starts broadcasting to you, threatening/begging out of desperation to get you to turn back. This boosts your ego, and is a neat reward for the player.
  • Configurable power up system (many NES games featured this, but Iron Tank’s is unique in its implementation, but perhaps could be described as a combination of Mega Man and 1943.) Your main gun has four different types of power boosts — Long range, Rapid fire, Armor Piercing, and Bomb shells — which you refill through pickups.The pickups are odd in that they are letters which sometimes don’t have an obvious relationship to the power boost they represent. L = Long Range (ok, fair); V = Rapid (velocity?); F = Armor piercing (huh?); B = Bomb Shells (right). Rather than remain enabled until expended or a timer runs out, you can enable/disable them on a sub-screen as needed. This means there’s strategy to the game — you can save up your power and use it when you hit a really tough spot in the game. Managing your power-up resources is critical to winning. Knowing when you need them, and deciding what you need at a given time, and balancing that against the yet unknown challenges that lie even further ahead makes for a cerebral game that layers on top of the action game. There are times when an obvious approach of using power-ups isn’t really necessary, because a subtler strategy will enable you to get by with a stock configured tank, and it often pays off to take the harder challenge now, conserving the power boosts for an even more difficult challenge later.
  • The most interesting power-up mechanic is the [R]efuel tank, which gives you a secondary life bar that extends your primary life bar — but only if you choose to have it enabled. Another interesting thing is that you can both shoot and run over foot soldiers — and the game seems to encourage you to run them over, as doing so gives you a tiny but vital boost to your main energy.
  • Infinite continues, and a password save feature, allowing the game to be longer than would otherwise be practical to beat in one sitting, and not punishing the player too severely for not being able to make it through the challenging parts of the game, and allowing therefore for those parts of the game to be even more challenging.

Basic gameplay

There’s a very good “Let’s Play” series on YouTube, if you aren’t familiar or need to get reacquainted. You are Iron Snake, commander of the Iron Tank, invading Normandy and liberating Europe from an implied but unnamed Nazi occupation. And by “liberate” I definitely mean “blow the hell out of.” Actually, there are occasional resistance fighters and POWs who you’ll rescue throughout the game, as well.

Controls

Controls are often a weak point in games featuring tanks. Not so in Iron Tank. Your tank features an aimable turret, which allows you move and aim independently. The way this was implemented on the standard NES gamepad was effective — hold button B and the D-pad controls the turret. This takes a little getting used to, but is very effective and you can be quite nimble with practice. Being able to aim to the side or diagonal and strafe is an important tactic, and makes the game more realistic and more fun.

Graphics

There is a huge variety of tile-based backgrounds, for simulating the European countryside, cities, docks, airplane hangers, the Normandy beach, cliffs, trees, roads, paths, rail tracks, fortresses, you name it. Even for the 8-bit NES, these are a little rough in spots, though never truly bad, and the variety makes up for it.

Music

The music in Iron Tank is really first rate. It is heroic and epic, evokes both the military marches and the WWII era, adds drama and tension, and provides cues to when more challenging areas are up ahead. Most of the music is in the lower and mid octaves, which gives it a characteristic unlike most other background music on the NES, while seeming suitable for a game about tanks.

Enemies

There really isn’t anything in Iron Tank sophisticated enough to call AI. The enemies all move in basic, simple patterns and pre-set routes, but a lot of variety makes the game challenging. Some tanks sit still, others chase you, while others seem to stand off at a distance and duck and feint, and still others will enter, make a quick attack, and then retreat before you can retaliate.

There’s also a great variety of enemies: infantry, officers, tanks, train guns, fortresses, turrets, and boss tanks called “Think Tanks”. I guess they’re hard enough that you need to think about how to defeat them? You even do battle with airplanes and submarines. Of course tanks are the star of the game, and there is a satisfying variety of enemy tanks, different styles of light, medium, and heavy, which vary in their speed, armor, and armament. Some are barely any threat to you, while others necessitate caution.

This variety of enemies invites a variety of tactics, which keeps the game fresh and challenging. The key tactic is avoiding being in range of the enemy cannons, flanking the enemy’s turret when you can, or when that isn’t possible, waiting for a pause in their fire and placing a well-timed shot to take them out. You can also sometimes use your long range shots to safely take out enemies before they’re able to engage you with their own armaments. Individually, their cannon fire is usually not too hard to dodge, being limited to 8 directions, resulting in predictable pie slices of safe zone. It’s not too hard to take out enemy tanks when they don’t outnumber you too badly and there’s plenty of room to maneuver. Sometimes moving slowly and cautiously, taking out the enemies one at a time, picking apart their defenses is the best approach, other times it’s better to just run for it.

Terrain

Some terrain is more open than others, however. The variety of terrain matches the variety of enemies and enemy tactics, and itself influences the tactics that will be most effective in a given area. Although the game is 2D, there are simulated ledges, cliffs, and rooftops where placed guns can harass you, sometimes out of your own reach unless you have some power boosts enabled. There are walls and buildings and natural barriers that can constrain your movements, but provide cover in return. Water likewise blocks your path, but leaves you exposed to fire.

There are wooded areas where the tree canopy foregrounds partially obscure the action beneath them. The NES didn’t have a capability of alpha channel, but they still made the forest sprites partially see-through, so that when you go under them, you can see the unobstructed part of your tank (or lurking enemies) through them. This is really cool.

Insta-kill anti-tank landmines will block your progress along otherwise open and inviting pathways. They blink, being invisible half the time, so can be difficult to spot.

Destructible terrain

While not dynamically destructible, there are enough buildings and walls that you can blow up to uncover secrets or alternate paths that it’s worth mentioning. Being in a tank and not being able to destroy these things just wouldn’t feel right.

Multi-path map

I don’t know of any other NES game that did this, so Iron Tank deserves special recognition for this design. At several points in the game, you’ll encounter road signs that point out a fork in the road. Depending on which path you take, you’ll proceed to a different level, with different terrain and enemies. One path might be more difficult, but you have no way of knowing before you make your choice. This means that in order to experience every bit of the game, you’ll need to play through it multiple times.

Map x-wrapping

Instead of having an edge, the map wraps on the x-axis. There are certain places on the map where there are no side walls, and you are unbounded in your horizontal direction, but in these locales, the map wraps around. While not exactly realistic, it does make for some potentially useful tactics, as you can return to an area by continuing in one direction, without needing to double back.

Overall

Iron Tank is a solid effort from SNK. The game integrates a lot of the features and design elements of successful NES classics, and does it well. While mainly an action game, the story elements provided by the radio communiques and the configurable power-ups give an element of strategy almost like a proto-RPG. It’s one of my favorite lesser-known games on the NES.

See Also

If you liked this game, you’ll want to check out 1943, Guerrilla War, Commando, Jackal, Heavy Barrel and Ikari Warriors. All have a similar WWII/war theme and vertical scrolling shooter gameplay.

Game Maker Studio 1.1 released

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Yoyogames just released Game Maker Studio 1.1. It looks like there are a lot of positive new developments happening with the platform, and I’m really excited about a few of them. Lots of good new features!

New Pricing

YYG has changed the pricing structure again. The exiting news (for those who may have been reluctant to try Studio due to its higher cost) is that there is now a free edition, which gives beginners a way to get in to try things out. Unfortunately, Studio Free is more feature-restricted than the old Game Maker Lite. The 8.x line is still available for download and purchase, at the same prices as before, but the old version is a bit further deprecated now, lacking prominent position on the YYG homepage.

The new Standard Edition is still just $49, no different than Game Maker 8.x Standard. Professional remains at $99, with the same price for the additional modules that you can buy separately. Or, if you want everything all at once, you have the option of spending $499 for Master Edition, which saves you $99 over the cost of Professional + all the additional modules.

I haven’t heard whether they’re planning to allow early adopters of Professional to move to Master Edition at a discounted price yet, but even if they don’t it’s nice to see the price coming down.

Another nice freebie is that Professional allows you to test Android apps, even if you don’t have the license for the Android module. I’m particularly looking forward to finally getting into mobile development. I had not yet spend the money on the mobile app modules, so the free testing on Android is a great thing for me to get my start on Android.

Target platforms

Gone from the site is any mention of a Symbian module. I’m assuming that since even Nokia is giving up Symbian OS and has gotten in bed for better or worse with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, we may in time see a module to allow Windows Phone as a build target. [Update: on 9/20/2012 YoYoGames announced that Game Maker Studio will target Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms.]

I’d like to voice a desire for a linux build target module. Since Android and OS X are both based on unix, I’d hope that extending support to Linux would be feasible.

Developer Features

The new audio engine and room designer are welcome, and I’m interested to see what they offer. One of the audio limitations in Game Maker that I’ve wished to overcome is generating sounds procedurally. I see a lot of potential in musical games where the game objects can generate different tones and pitches depending on what’s going on in the game. Whether the new audio engine allows this or not remains to be seen — I haven’t had time to play with it yet.

The room editor improvements are always good to see, as well. I’d like to see YYG continue to develop the editor into a more usable level editor, with faster UI access to the different objects and tiles, so that building rooms becomes less tedious.

I’d also really like to see them provide some built-in room templates for “boilerplate” things such as the title screen, configuration screen, achievements and high scores, load/save screens, etc.

The really exciting new feature is the Developer’s Portal, with its analytics and monetization features. This will make it far easier for independent game developers to realize a return on their investment in the more expensive Professional license, and hopefully will help quell criticism of the higher pricing. Reducing the effort needed to make money with Game Maker is huge. I’m really looking forward to delving into these features and learning all about them.

What else could I wish for?

Anytime a new version gets released, I think about features I’d like to see. My current list:

  1. An interactive GML console. It’d be great to be able to write a line (or block, or function) of GML code and execute it in a console just so you can confirm that it does what you’re expecting quickly, without having to build and run a project. The instant feedback would speed up my development.
  2. Drag n Drop to GML converter built in to IDE.  Drag and Drop actions are the way newbies learn Game Maker. I also use them when I’m trying to throw something together quickly for a proof of concept, because it’s handy. How handy would it be to right-click on my Event and select a “Convert DnD to GML” command, and have it automatically convert those Drag and Drop actions into a single Execute GML Code action?
  3. Linux built target. I’d really like to see my Game Maker projects running on native linux someday.
  4. A cross-platform Game Maker IDE. YYG has announced that they’re working on the Mac version of the IDE. I’d like to see a Linux version at some point, too.
  5. A robust GML pause() function to allow for easy, painless implementation of pause. Or a family of functions that give a variety of approaches to pausing your game. Or maybe even a Pause event, so you can easily define what your objects do when the game is paused (I envision telling objects to stop their collision event handlers, but continue their drawing/sprite animation, stop making sounds but make the background music volume reduce, dimming the whole screen while displaying a pause message or pause menu.) Hmm…
  6. Room templates (mentioned above) to make all the typical non-game screens (title screen, configuration screen, highscore/achievements screen, etc.) easier and faster to configure.
  7. User Control Widgets — a set of skinnable, extendible UI widgets to make it easy to make buttons, text boxes, pulldown menus, listboxes and all the other controls that make up a UI. Just wrap up Qt or GTK+ and be done with it:)
  8. Expanded Object classes. Generic do-everything Objects are great for their flexibility, but it gets tedious re-implementing the same types of objects again and again. Developing generic solutions that you can import into your projects as needed takes time and, while a good way to really learn programming and the Game Maker framework, is hard to get right. It’d be really great if there were some common subclasses of Object built right in to Game Maker, for things like platforms, pickup items, particle systems, object spawners, bullets, and so on, to make game development even faster than it already is.
  9. HTML5 integration with popular CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Ruby on Rails, etc. I’d like to be able to present an HTML5 within a wordpress page or article without the need for iframes, and to store the project as assets in my wordpress media library somehow. And possibly other things.
  10. Better Drag and Drop hover text. If you use DnD actions in your events, you’ll know that when you hover over the action, a tool tip will appear telling you what it is doing. There’s room for improvement here, in principle it should be possible to word the tooltip text in such a way that it isn’t necessary to open up the action to see what it does — only to edit. I’ll have to remember to post an example later to make this clearer.
  11. Non-modal edit windows on Execute GML Code actions. It’s a pain not to be able to switch window focus when editing a Execute GML Code action. Script windows are not modal, you can freely switch between them and have more than one open at a time, so these should be the same way.
  12. A pony. Everyone wants a pony.

Rave: betterexplained.com is the best thing I’ve read today

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I am probably going to curl up all weekend with betterexplained.com and brush up on my math. I haven’t been this excited to read about mathematical concepts since I was a high school senior and discovered William Poundstone’s The Recursive Universe. Which was really more about information theory, but that’s a type of math.

What compelling reads in math can you recommend?

  1. William Poundstone: The Recursive Universe
  2. Douglass Hofstadter: Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  3. James Gleick: Chaos