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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

well, you can follow what sandy is doing on twitter: http://twitter.com/zanderduyoyo

[pgil]

Ugh... The more I read about GM8 and Mark Overmars' douchebaggary, the more I want to learn Construct.

[falsion]

Ugh... The more I read about GM8 and Mark Overmars' douchebaggary, the more I want to learn Construct.

Construct isn't hard to use. It's pretty much the same as MMF, with a few minor differences.

If you know how to use at least Klik and Play (which honestly isn't very hard to use), you'll be able to do fine with Construct. Even if you don't, it's still pretty easy to learn due to it being a offshoot of the klik series.

Then again, I don't know. I'm really used to the entire line of Clickteam's products since I started with KNP. As a result, Construct was really easy for me to pick up in a matter of seconds.

[pgil]

Yeah, I tired MMF a while back, and I couldn't really get into it. I just don't know where to begin. I'm having the same problem with Construct. Game Maker, in spite of its quirks, is really intuitive for me.

[Oddbob]

Ugh... The more I read about GM8 and Mark Overmars' douchebaggary, the more I want to learn Construct.

Oh, don't get me wrong it's still a fantastic package. Without it I'd seriously doubt I'd have ever managed to make games (whether that's a good thing is in the eye of the beholder, obviously) it's just well, it's the work of one man prior to GM8 and I'd be *very* surprised if it wasn't still.

And I know I'm griping, but beta crashiness and a few things aside, the native png support is reason enough for me to upgrade. I don't want to start messing around with code when I can just lob something in the sprite editor quickly and be done with (in fact, I used the beta sprite editor for resizing and creating the sprite strips for the 360 version of SYNSO so that alone has a use enough for me) it's just the development of the package has been frustrating at best since YYG and GM7.

It's been 2 years now with no bugfixes or improvements, a fucked beyond reasoning DRM implementation (it took YoYoJim chasing a fresh set of activation codes for a fortnight to get me back up and running a year or so ago because no-one else was responding, not YYG nor Softwrap) which should have been pulled long ago and replaced with something that bloody works and doesn't randomly knock some versions down to lite.

Bugs from 2 versions ago (pretty major ones) shouldn't really still be outstanding a good 3 or 4 years later. There's workarounds, of course, but they sort of defeat the point of what the package is trying to achieve by being there.

Stuff like native anti-aliasing, a decent room editor and shader support coupled with bug fixes (*cough* sound *cough*, *cough* tearing *cough*) could make GM quite possibly the best thing evar. And a help file that doesn't make BlitzMax's documentation look complete. Cock knows if we'll ever see that though at the rate stuff is going now, and that's the big shame especially with (the admittedly more expensive) MMF2 getting proper HWA and Construct (free!) already having the same, if it weren't for how fast I can get stuff out of my brain with GM, it'd be really tempting to go and find a package with some support.

But! Having said all that. I paid around £10 for it 5 or 6 years back? Just for some perspective, like - so as frustrating as it is, I've had my value for money (and earned that money back multiple times over) with it and then some so perhaps it is a bit churlish to complain. Can't blame a guy for seeing potential though.

[___]

...Cock knows if we'll ever see that though at the rate stuff is going now,

:D

and that's the big shame especially with (the admittedly more expensive) MMF2 getting proper HWA

Yeah right.  Hardware acceleration I think was promised 3 years ago now, and has been in a stand still beta for 2 years.  That's never happening.

[moi]

What exactly is the "room editor"?

[JoeHonkie]

RobF, how bad is BlitzMax's documentation?  I was actually thinking about mucking around with that.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@moi: it's the place where you place objects (the player, creatures, tiles, etc.) spatically on the map

[Oddbob]

Joe, it was terrible. In its defence though, the last time I looked at it was over a year ago so things may have improved since.

It's still a great language, mind, just expect a bit of forum trawling here and there.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i could never keep all the blitz stuff straight -- there's blitz, blitz3d, darkbasic, blitzbasic, blitzmax... i don't get why there are so many names/versions of it

[JoeHonkie]

Isn't darkbasic/darkwhatever a totally different (and windows only) thing?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

probably, could be the darkbasic/blitzbasic name similarity that confused me, i assumed they were related somehow (since both use basic as a language?)

[JoeHonkie]

probably, could be the darkbasic/blitzbasic name similarity that confused me, i assumed they were related somehow (since both use basic as a language?)

I think the BASIC base and the gaming theme are the only common thread although I could be totally wrong (as I'm new to all this, but used to see DarkBASIC ads all over the damn place and looked at it a few times).  DarkBASIC has always been a DirectX thing so far as I know, while Blitz (except for some of the newer) stuff seems more focused on cross-platform.

[Oddbob]

DB is TheGameCreators pet project and Blitz and all its variants, Mark Sibley's. Totally unrelated aside from both using some form of BASIC. DB always reminded me a bit of Speccy BASIC which freaked me out, Blitz made a -lot- more sense to my brain, more so with Max.

Somehow I ended up with most of them over the years due to competitions and stuff (although I did punt out for and then never use B3D, still got a boxed copy about somewhere - I think owning Blitz3d is a rights of passage thing everyone has to go through at some point!).

Weirdly though, I can only think of two devs who have done anything half decent in DB in all my years of trawling the indienets. Not entirely sure why that is either, although using bleeding edge DX builds certainly hasn't helped stuff no doubt.

[JoeHonkie]

Hah!  I was just about to make a comment about how everything I've seen made with DarkBASIC was pretty awful.

I just found out Tank Universal was made in Blitz3D.  It had a few design problems, but if that's the kind of stuff you can put out with Blitz software, color me impressed.

[Melly]

I remember reading Mark's blog, him talking about game design. It felt very amateurish, like he didn't really know what he was talking about.

And yeah, everything I hear about him paints him as a massive douchebag. I think he got sick of it around the time before he sold it to Yoyo, and hasn't cared much since then.

A shame, really.

Though when I hear about Construct having a ui like MMF I cringe a little. MMF is a bit alien to me.

[pgil]

I remember reading Mark's blog, him talking about game design. It felt very amateurish, like he didn't really know what he was talking about.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. Reading his tutorials, I feel like they were written for children. Thank God for people like Chevy Ray and Derek Yu, who-- although they may not be professors-- actually know how to fucking teach something useful.

[Oddbob]

I remember reading Mark's blog, him talking about game design. It felt very amateurish, like he didn't really know what he was talking about.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. Reading his tutorials, I feel like they were written for children. Thank God for people like Chevy Ray and Derek Yu, who-- although they may not be professors-- actually know how to fucking teach something useful.

They pretty much were written for children or at least, kids who just want some ideas of stuff to bung into their games. None of the design posts were "bad advice" and a lot of the stuff probably seems obvious but cripes, how many games have we all played where someone didn't even understand the basics of how games work?

It's ground up teaching and that's obviously not for some but breaking down important tropes into something a kid can understand is an art to itself.

So yeah, I quite liked them for what they are and I'd be happier if less time was spent beard stroking abstractions and more time spent teaching fundamental game stuff. See the old adage of you can only break the rules well once you know the rules to break.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'm all for fundamentals, but some of his fundamentals were a bit misleading. i remember this one was particularly simplistic: http://glog.yoyogames.com/?p=181 -- i mean, there are many values you can get out of games besides those four points. read my comment to that post and his reply to it, especially. he denies that any other primary points or values exist besides the four he named. he says 'these four are based on research' as if that were conclusive. i asked for what research he meant, and he never replied.