He was asking if people think it's doable, and the topic has turned into a really interesting discussion of what could make the game work. I'd say that's a perfectly valid reason for a topic.

I think his point is that it would be easier to learn how to work with velocity and acceleration in games without considering delta time. It's a concept that can get a bit complicated, and it's important to get the basics down first.

Nice game! I got 22 gems, so I'll have to come back and get the rest sometime. The effect when you pause was neat - did you have separate sprites with just the outlines for that, or does it just calculate the lightness of the pixels or something?
The music was catchy, too.
Good job all around!

Ah, also, every time I've read the title, I've though of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xevC7nT71o
Interestingly, the music in the game reminded me a bit of Hideki Naganuma's style (probably because of the vocal samples). I have to assume this is probably a coincidence, though.

The part I find interesting about the classic Sonic games is the idea that you'll see different parts of the level depending on how well you're doing. There are pieces of levels in Sonic 2 that I don't think I've ever seen, even though I've played it many times - to this day, I'll find something and say "hey, that's new". The reason I'm still finding different paths is that it's based almost entirely on your speed, which varies from playthrough to playthrough. As well, some levels will send you off a jump that lands you just below another platform, for instance. It's clear you could have gotten to that platform, but only if you were going faster.
That said, I agree with Toom that getting that speed in the first place is very much based on reflexes and predicting what's coming up. However, there's still some really clever design to look at, and it would be nice to see Sega coming back to that someday.

Anyway, as far as Generations goes, I'm going to reserve judgment until there's some more content to see. It seems like a step in the right direction, but at this point, the Sonic series has a lot of steps to take, so I'm not sure what to say about it yet.

Part of your issue probably lies in the fact that Time.timeSinceLevelLoad is a float, meaning it can have decimal places. Since you're calling this in FixedUpdate, which is called in every fixed update frame, you're not always going to get a rounded number. More than likely, Time.timeSinceLevelLoad % 3 is working out to something like 0.005, meaning it isn't exactly 0. As well, comparison between floats using the equal operator isn't very accurate - you should always use Mathf.Approximately for that.

One thing you can give a try for this is a coroutine. They're very useful in Unity, and they fit what you're trying to do quite well. Just set up a function that looks like this:

Code:

function SpawnEnemies() {
while (true) {
yield WaitForSeconds(3);

var position = Vector3(Random.Range(-5, 5), .5, 80);
Instantiate(prefab, position, Quaternion.identity);
}
}

This code waits for 3 seconds, then spawns an enemy using your code, and just repeats that indefinitely. "yield" lets other scripts run while this function stays as a coroutine, meaning that the infinite loop won't freeze your game - it'll just keep spawning an enemy every 3 seconds. To start the function, just call it once in a script's Start function like so:

Code:

function Start() {
SpawnEnemies();
//Or, if you're using C#, call this:
//StartCoroutine(SpawnEnemies());
}

And that's it! Hope that helps. Let me know if any of this confuses you and I'll try to help.

I just played co-op with my friend about 15 minutes after release. I'm really enjoying it so far - the co-op has some really brilliant techniques to get you working like a team.

Or you can treat the third dimension as only a visual aspect and keep all calculation in 2D. You gain the graphic Power of vectorial and 3D and keep the easiness of 2D. Unity allow orthographic projection.

That's true, and I've been using it that way, actually. That said, for your first game, vectors and raycasting can get a bit confusing, and unless you're very careful, there's almost always an element of the third dimension involved. Also, rotation with quaternions can be difficult.

Getting some of the bandages was really hard. A few in the first world are actually impossible without the run button, so I ended up having to do really weird stuff with Commander Video to get to them.
Of course, I didn't suspect a thing - I just kept thinking "this game really is as hard as they say".

If you seriously want to make games, you're going to have to learn some programming. Game Maker isn't a bad place to start, because it takes care of the more complicated engine-side things for you (such as rendering and collision detection) and has a fairly easy-to-use interface. If you want to give Unity a shot, you can, but keep in mind that the addition of the third dimension can make programming things a lot harder.

The original PC version is still available here:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/55608-skullpogo

Game Maker's reputation is bad because it is often used by novice programmers and game designers. However, that reputation really only exists with developers - if you're planning on selling a game, not all of your customers will be aware of that stigma. You don't even have to mention that you used Game Maker. As I said before, what matters is the game itself, not the tool you used to make it. The only limit with Game Maker is that you'll have to sell it yourself and it'll be Windows-only, for the most part.

Not if you do a really precarious walljump. The first level that you can't do at all without running is the first level of world 2 (or if you can, it's damn hard).

(haven't heard of Unity having any plans to support consoles, but that would be interesting)

Unity currently supports the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

As for the OP, as a number of people have said, there are some commercially successful Game Maker games. I get the feeling that you're trying to determine whether Game Maker will make you money - don't worry about the engine. The game is the part that matters. The only reason Game Maker would cause you any issues commercially is that it only has full support for Windows (I'm ignoring the Mac version because, from what I've heard, it's outdated and quite buggy), and that it runs slowly on some computers. If you don't foresee either of those being a problem, then your only concern is the quality of the game you make.

I got every bandage on the first world, got an A+ on every level, and beat some of my friends' scores.
Then I learned that there was a run button.

Disc table of contents for April (#4) ( http://www.dpk.com.ua/content/34015?mode=disc ) includes your game. And indeed, you should just ask one that contacted you.

Oh, I see - I was looking at the magazine's table of contents instead of the disk. Thanks again!

This is more of an IDE thing, but since we're on the topic of autocomplete, I really love the autocomplete in FlashDevelop. As long as letters are in the right order, you'll get what you're looking for. For example, "overlyVerboseName" could be typed in as "ovn" and it'll guess it for you.
On the other hand, I hate it when it assumes I'm talking about something that I'm not and then I keep hitting backspace to re-type what I just meant to type.

Awesome, thanks for the help. Now it's just a matter of finding which issue has the game in it (or whether they've published it yet).

I was recently contacted by a Ukranian magazine, Domashny PK, asking permission to include a copy of my game, Gravity Garden, on a disk in their magazine. My collaborator and I want to see a copy of the magazine, but unfortunately, we both live in Canada. Is there anybody here who could keep an eye out for the magazine and possibly snap a picture of it for us? Send me a private message or post here if you can help. Thanks!

Another thing you could do is directly set the x and y position of the object using trig (unless I'm misunderstanding what you need). This should do what you're looking for, assuming the following:

• "target" is the target object
• "radius" is the circle's radius
• "spiralSpeed" is how quickly the missile spirals (in degress per frame)
• "radiusShrinkSpeed" is how quickly the spiral pattern shrinks
• "angle" is the missile's angle relative to the spiral's center

Code:

x = target.x + lengthdir_x(radius, angle);
y = target.y + lengthdir_y(radius, angle);
angle += spiralSpeed;
radius -= radiusShrinkSpeed;
if (radius < 0) { radius = 0; }

This way, you can also control how fast the spiral goes and how quickly the circle shrinks without having to deal with tweaking gravity and such.

It's been a while since I've used GML, though, so sorry if the code isn't entirely correct.

EDIT: Actually, I think I get what you're trying to do now. If you just move the position of "target" toward the center of the screen gradually in my example, it should do what you want. You could also replace "target.x" and "target.y" with two variables if you don't want a separate object.