Tag: asset

Control Schemes 0.1 released

development, games
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ControlSchemes1140x360

This is a collection of scripts and macros that handle motion and action. A “control scheme” is a set of inputs and their associated actions. Add a control scheme to your player object with just two lines of code!

It is intended to handles input, motion, and action quickly and easily, while allowing you to extend to include any audio or visual effects that may be needed.

Documentation is awesome.

Currently, just two control schemes are implemented; I’ll be adding others in the future, much more is planned.

It’s currently free, as I’d like to get everyone to try it out and provide me with feedback, but when I’ve added more features I’ll be charging for it, so be sure to get it now while it’s free!

mmap mini maps is back in the GameMaker Marketplace

development, games, programming
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I’ve re-published the mmap mini maps over at the GameMaker Marketplace. The new version, 1.1.6, fixes the bug of the missing mmap constants — this time the right way, replacing the earlier workaround that I had supplied a few days ago.

Building the asset package the way I needed it was not obvious, but with the help from some GameMaker Community Forums users, I was able to learn the correct method to get the constants added to the package.

Two ways to build a Marketplace Asset

GM:S has two ways to build an Asset.

The more visible method of the two, and the one I had used at first when building my Asset, is to use the Package Manager, located in the Marketplace Menu.

Using this method, you can only build an asset which includes “project resources” — Sprites, Sounds, Backgrounds, Paths, Scripts, Shaders, Fonts, Time Lines, Objects, Rooms, or Included Files.

NOT include-able are Extensions, Macros, Game Information, or Global Game Settings. It’s a good idea to understand the rationale for not including these, and how YYG intends for GM:S users to work around these limitations:

  • It makes sense not to be able to include Extensions, because building an Asset is building an Extension, and Extensions are not designed to be nested.
  • Macros cannot be included, but I’m not clear on why. Perhaps because it’s not easy to separate built-in Macros such as GM_version and GM_build_date, and importing these would create conflicts?
  • Game Information is a deprecated legacy feature which YYG seems to be phasing out. No longer can Game Information be displayed at runtime when a game is playing. So it really only serves to exist as a readme file that you can access from within the GM:S IDE, when working on the project. The same information you might put in here is better added to an Included File.
  • Global Game Settings includes a number of fields that are developer-specific, and should not be shared, such as advertising account credentials, Facebook App ID, etc. There are some settings that would be nice if they could be included in an Asset package, such as HTML5 graphics settings, and options for Use New Audio Engine and Short-Circuit Evaluations, but if your Asset depends on such settings, the only option is to document that in your user manual so that users of the Asset can be informed of how they will need to set up their project.

The other way to create an Asset for the marketplace is to build an Extension. Right click on the Extensions folder in the Resource tree of a project, and Create Extension. Then right-click the newly created extension and Add Placeholder. The purpose of a “placeholder” is vague, but what it allows you to do is define Macros which reside at the extension level,which is done one at a time, in an interface that is different from the project-level Macros editor, and even more of a pain to use.

You can also add Functions to the Extension placeholder. You can add a code file, such as exported scripts in .gml format, or a .dll, .js, .dy-lib, etc. and then define Functions which hook up to the code file.

Once the Extension is defined, you can create an Asset out of it, by logging into Marketplace, and then right-clicking the Extension, and choosing the Create Asset Package option. Creating the Asset Package this way is much the same process as creating an Asset Package from the Marketplace menu, with the exception that the Extension that you right-clicked on will be included with the Asset Package.

Why there isn’t a simple way to include an Extension in the Package Manager build process, I don’t know. I guess the answer ultimately is that this is a new feature in GameMaker, and still in beta. The UI design is rough, inconsistent and not as obvious as it could be. Hopefully this will be addressed as the features are refined. But, for now, it is what it is, and game developers who use GM:S will just need to be aware and familiarize themselves with the differences between these two methods of building an Asset Package.

mmap mini maps asset temporarily withdrawn from GameMaker Marketplace

development, programming, reviews
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Well, they SAID it’s in beta.

I’ve been struggling with updating my mmap mini maps asset pack in order to fix a bug that I discovered with it. Since I’ve been unable to do so, I’ve elected to temporarily withdraw the product, rather than continue selling a broken asset. I’ll have it back up as soon as I can get it fixed, but I don’t know how long that may take, due to problems I’m having with the tools.

First, the bug. In the mmap mini maps package, there was supposed to have been a collection of Macros (what used to be known until recently as “Constants”), which I used to assist with programming the Mmap object. When I built the Asset Package, I failed to realize that these Macros did not get included. Without the Macros defined, the project doesn’t work.

One workaround would be to add the macros manually. They are documented completely in the user manual that I wrote. I can also furnish a .txt file that can be imported, to save the data entry. If I can’t get the tools to cooperate, that may end up being the solution I go with for the short term.

It was not obvious due to the way the package builder works, and I didn’t notice it in testing because I tested it by bringing the package into the same project that I had used to build it in the first place.

Lesson learned: Build the package in one project. Import the package into a fresh project to test.

Betas gonna beta

When you build an asset package in GameMaker: Studio, you start by taking some project that you’ve been working in, and then going through the Marketplace Package Manager to build a Marketplace Asset using resources from the project. However, the interface that YoYoGames have built is still very beta. It is unstable, resulting in error messages and crashes. But the greater issue is that the design of the interface, and the workflows it supports, is also rather poor and unrefined at the moment.

When you build your Marketplace Asset Package, you are presented with a Package Builder that allows you to select resources from the project and add them to the package. But the resource selection options are not complete. You can’t select Macros. They just aren’t even there.

So how do you add Macros to a Package? By adding them to an Extension, supposedly. There’s an Extension Builder built into the GM:S IDE, as well as this new Marketplace Package builder. I’m presently unclear as to the relationship between Extension builder and Package builder, but the end result of a Package is that you get a package that is ready to be uploaded to the Marketplace as an Asset, and when you download Assets that you’ve purchased from the Marketplace, it installs itself in your Library, where you can add it to a project, where it… becomes an extension.

The Marketplace asset-extension has whatever resources you had added to the Package — sprites, scripts, objects, sound effects, fonts, included files, timelines, shaders, you name it… just no macros.

But if you build an GMEZ extension using the Extension Builder interface, things are very different. I can create an Extension, add a “placeholder” to it, where I can define Macros (one at a time, which is horrible, like each Macro is its own asset in the tree), and I can add a code file, which can be .gml, javascript, a dll, a dy-lib, or java. And I can define Functions which access the code residing in the code file, providing an interface between GM:S and the functions provided by the extension.

And the documentation shows a similar resource picker for handling both importing resources from a completed Extension into the Project, and for moving project resources into an Extension that you’re authoring. But, for some reason when I am in the Extension Builder, it’s one-way only, I can import from the Extension to the project, but not from the project to the extension.

So when I build an Extension, the only things I can put in it are Macros and Functions and Code files. And when I build a Package, the only things I can put into it are project resources other than Macros and Extensions. So I can’t add Macros to an Extension, then add the Extension to the Package. And I can’t add project resources to the Extension Builder. So there’s this impasse that I can’t figure out how to work around.

It could be the documentation is just out of sync with the version of GM:S I’m running, or it could be there’s some serious design bugs in GM:S currently, or it could be I completely misunderstand both the documentation and the user interface, and am missing something that will become apparent to me eventually.

I’m a bit frustrated now, and very tired of banging my head against a wall trying to figure out how to make it work, so I need to step away from it for a short bit.

Simple Performance Test 1.0 released to GameMaker Marketplace

development, games, programming
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Simple Performance Test is a stub project to enable GameMaker developers to quickly set up and run performance tests comparing two snippets of GML code to see which is the faster.

Ever wanted to know which way of coding your project will run faster?

Want to understand GML better?

Use Simple Performance Test to compare two blocks of GML code, and prove which is faster.

Don’t guess at which code is better optimized, test it and know!

It’s completely free!

Get Simple Performance Test at the GameMaker Marketplace

Project documentation