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GameMaker Blog: Weekend Community Links

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:26:55 -0400

Vertigo Gaming have released two ‘combo-packs’ of their commercial games. The Oil Blue, Sandbox of God: Remastered and greenTech+ can be purchased for $19.95 whilst adding ShellBlast and Spirits of Metropolis to the pack takes the price up to $25.

Grabeorama’s GMag is now up to its fifth issue. The short fortnightly magazine contains a summary of Game Maker news for the period it covers along with brief game reviews.

A moderator at the YoYo Games forums has had his status revoked because his “behaviour just doesn’t match with what a moderator is supposed to do”. NessXX‘s demotion by the often silent Trollsplatterer, who appears to run the forums, didn’t come as a surprise to many users who detailed various unsuitable things he had been responsible for.

Weekend Community Links is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Competition Six Entries Confirmed

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:26:14 -0400

YoYo Games have released a list of the 275 games which have been entered in their sixth competition and have created a portal where you can see how judging is progressing. The figure for entered games is higher than we reported earlier today as it appears games which were labelled using the old style tags have been included.

Round one of judging, which takes place this week, will remove from the contest games which do not comply with the contest rules or are unplayable.

You might find you need to install a Silverlight plugin in order to view the judging progress page though, at least at the moment, the page doesn’t do anything fancy.

Competition Six Entries Confirmed is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Competition 6 – entrant list…

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:00:06 -0400

The list of entrants to Competion 6 is now up and available you can access them here… http://competition.yoyogames.com. We have a very simple application that we are using to help with the judging and you can use to visualise the information.

We have also added an RSS feed to the page so you can use your favourite reader, rather than our application to follow what is going on.

This is the definitive list of entrants (in no particular order) that we will be judging and you can follow progress on Twitter using the tag #YoYoComp06.

We will be judging round 1 this week, where we will be looking at the entries that will move forward to the next round and we will be updating the information and the application as we proceed.

Please note that due to the vast number of entries we can’t give feedback to individual games.

GameMaker Blog: Mid-week Competition Links

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:19:03 -0400

The deadline for entries into YoYo Games’ sixth competition has now passed. 239 games were uploaded and tagged with YoYoComp06. As part of the more transparent judging process taking place for this contest we should soon see the list of games that have been accepted for judging. The previous YoYo Games contest attracted almost 500 entries.

Today is the final day to vote for the community favourite award in IndiePubGames’ (formerly 2BeeGames) latest competition. $5,000 is up for grabs for the game that receives the most votes and $100,000 will be awarded to the judge’s favourite. The entries include several Game Maker games (Remaddening and The Oil Blue are in there) though I have not had the time to go through them all to see which or how many.

A couple of days ago Game Maker Community member time4dan launched a narrowly themed Real Time Strategy competition where entries must focus on “human evolution from Ape to Stone-Age Man”. There is a $250 (CAD) prize and the winning game will be sold with at least 60% of royalties being passed on to the game’s creator. If you decide to enter make sure you read through both the contest and the game rules carefully as there is quite a lot in there.

Mid-week Competition Links is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Daisy, Daisy give me your anssssweer doooooo……..

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:28:12 -0400

We have been notified by our hosting provider that our servers will be down for essential repairs for 8 hours from 00:00 BST on the 2nd September to 08:00 BST on the 2nd September, this should not impact Competition 06 but all our services will be affected the main website, GMC, Forums, Wiki and any purchases of Game Maker for Mac.

We apologise for any disruption but it is out of our hands.

Normal service should be resumed by 8am BST on the 2nd September.

GameMaker Blog: GMIndie and GMVision Game Maker Survey: Poorly Implemented

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:40:50 -0400

GMIndie and GMVision have launched ‘Game Maker Survey 2010‘ a collection of 60 questions designed to ask about your usage of Game Maker and collect opinions on various aspects of Game Maker.

I waited a couple of days after I first saw (and started but did not finish) the survey to see if others shared my opinions on the survey. I did not want to be accused of undermining a project produced by a site some may view as a competitor to Game Maker Blog by voicing my thoughts on the survey before criticism had arisen elsewhere.

I thought the survey was extremely poorly designed. Some questions don’t let me give the answer I would like to whilst at least one other, question 57 (see below), has two answers which mean exactly the same thing.

And apparently you either “know GML” or “don’t know GML” with no middle ground.

If you start the questionaire you are required to answer all 60 questions even though, as stated by robert680, some of the questions assumed you use Game Maker 8 despite an earlier question asking which version of the software you currently use.

There have been many other criticisms of individual questions and the general style of the survey, some comments taken from the Game Maker Community are listed below.

“Ok the survey had two kinds of questions:
What’s your favourite color? (Who needs this information?)
Aren’t all the useless features that are in Game Maker all useless? And aren’t stupid Yoyogames doing everything wrong? (Answer options: “a) Yes, b) Yes, but not often”.)”
- Tepi

“The quiz has some design flaws and its usefulness is suspect. For example you must choose a single GM version. I use GM8 and GM4Mac. You are forced to answer every question, though some don’t apply. Having a N/A, for some questions is important. Some questions are subjective and won’t have concise meaning to every one. For example, “How often do you save your project?”, the choices are meaningless.”
- NakedPaulToast

“Have answered it, though I should imagine about half my answers are inaccurate because there wasn’t an option for my own response.”
- NAL
[gmc topic]

This survey, which GMIndie list 6 people as contributing to, needed more thought put into it before it was released. Like I’ve mentioned before when offering so many different ‘products’ the quality will suffer. I am unsure of the level of involvement from GMVision (who haven’t released anything since May,) it appears their contributions may be limited to promoting the survey and providing two of the questions.

GMIndie and GMVision Game Maker Survey: Poorly Implemented is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Competition 06 – UPDATE!

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:27:51 -0400

We have now added the #YoYoComp06 tag to all current Competition06 games. You should now check your game to see if it’s been tagged, if not you should add the tag yourself.

The reason we’ve added the new tag is simply because there’s been so many miss-spellings of the Competition06 tag! We will still search for the Competition06 tag, but you must make sure you’ve spelt it correctly. If in doubt, use the shiny new #YoYoComp06 tag and all will be well.

GameMaker Blog: YoYo Promise more Transparent Judging for their 6th Competition

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:53:25 -0400

Russell Kay has promised that the judging process for YoYo Games sixth competition, which closes Tuesday, will be more transparent than it has been in their previous contests.

The discovery themed competition has $1,750 of cash prizes up for grabs for the games YoYo Games deem to be the best.

Some Game Maker users had expressed their surprise at the runners-up listed in YoYo’s previous competition, won by 2DCube’s They Need to be Fed, which they felt were less worthy than some titles which did not receive a mention.

It appears the transparency will enable competition entrants (and everybody else who reads YoYo’s blog) to know if their game is still in the running as Russell said that a day after the deadline the titles accepted for judging will be announced. Presumably this stage will weed out all of the created-in-five-minutes, not-actually-playable and blatant rule-infringing entries.

YoYo Games also want you to spread the word about their sixth competition on Twitter. In an attempt to widen the audience of YoYoGames.com and the Game Maker software it has been announced that entries must be tagged with #YoYoComp06 which will also be used by YYG and others to discuss the competition on Twitter. So far no-one has used the hash tag.

YoYo Promise more Transparent Judging for their 6th Competition is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Mid-week Community Links

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:34:52 -0400

Jonatan Söderström aka cactus had his website featured in Time.com’s 50 greatest websites of 2010. Whilst the list may be a bit premature being published being published with four more months to go it is an impressive achievement as it is listed alongside the well known Kongregate and Newgrounds and well known sites from other categories.

Andrew McCluskey wrote his first glog post for YoYo Games discussing more efficient alternatives to the draw event in Game Maker. The post is the first in a series which YoYo Games hope will eventually cover all aspects of Game Maker coding.

Jacob Habgood’s Game Maker’s Companion [Amazon: $26.39 US|£23.62 UK] has had its release date pushed back again – to 30 September this year.

Mid-week Community Links is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Comp06 – And Now The End is near…

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:45:23 -0400

Competition 06 is almost finished, entries need to be submitted before Midnight GMT next Tuesday 31st August 2010, anything not submitted by then will NOT be considered, so please submit before then.

We are modifying things a little in that we are changing the tag to apply to entries, this will be #YoYoComp06, this will be the twitter hash tag that we will be using for any announcements with the competition. Any games currently submitted with the old tag of Competition06 we will automatically add the new tag today, so do not worry about anything currently submitted.

Starting with this competition we will have a more transparent process for judging that we will announce next Wednesday, when we will also reveal all the titles that have been accepted for judging.

We are all looking forward to playing the entries, so get those games in on time!

YoYo Games Glog: Optimising your Game’s Performance I: Sprites

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:14:29 -0400

This is a planned series of glog posts focusing on aspects of a game that may cause needless slowdown, and how it can be remedied with alternative methods producing the same effects, as part of YoYo Games’ plan to introduce technical posts about working within Game Maker to the glog.

If there’s anything that ruins a fun game, it’s it running so slowly it verges on being unplayable. Although it will sometimes be down to an underpowered computer or graphics card, much of the time it’s simply down to some some slow code and we can fix this by trying to optimise the offending code.

Remember that even if your game runs smoothly on your own computer, it may not for people with older/cheaper/worse systems. You’ll presumably be wanting to have as many people as you possibly can experiencing the game as you do, so optimisation is still very much worth doing. If you can, test your game on as lousy a system as you can get hold of. Run it in debug mode (or just draw the FPS somewhere), find the areas where it’s slowest, and see if you can figure out why.

The first area of focus will be the first thing you can edit in Game Maker: sprites. The majority of objects in a game will each contain a default sprite, which can then, through code or drag & drop, be altered in a number of ways. And while the Draw event seems like the most logical way to go for sprite manipulation, it is a lot slower than other methods, requiring every step to redraw things while the object already has its own default drawing. One thing to remember is that the majority of transformations can be handled through variables such as image_xscale, image_yscale and image_alpha. Setting these just once or whenever needed is a far quicker way of manipulating the appearance of an instance than using something like draw_sprite_ext() and having it set itself 30 or more times per second.

Sprites, images with optional animation, are each drawn as two textured triangles by the hardware, and in many cases the triangle count can be reduced through simple merging. If you have a man made up of separate head, torso, arm and leg sprites, see if you can find a way to put all or some of these into one single sprite. As long as the resulting sprite isn’t huge (either in the subimage count or actual dimension department), the speed of its drawing will be greatly increased and the slight size increase will be minimal.

There are many other applications in which sprites could be merged. Take a side-on platformer/shooter hybrid, in which your main character has the choice of four different guns. Your direction in creating this would probably be to create the player holding nothing, then the guns separately, using code to bring the player and the selected weapon together as one. However, this doubles the amount drawn. A better method would be to create four different player animations –one for each gun. Though this is a slightly longer drawing process on your part, not only does it bring the number of triangles drawn from four to two, it also reduces the amount of code processed. Another example: an overhead space shooter. Say there’s a powerup which gives your spaceship a temporary forcefield. The quickest way for Game Maker to interpret this is to make a second sprite which displays both the forcefield AND the ship, instead of a forcefield sprite drawn over it.

Though techniques like these increase the size of the game, it’s a very minimal increase (a few kilobytes), and while they increase the amount of memory required to play it, it will reduce the power required to run it allowing low-end computers (or even better ones depending on the complexity of the game) to run to more smoothly. The general idea of game development is to strike a balance between everything being done – a few extra sprites has little impact on the memory a game requires, but shortening the code can increase performance significantly, and allows for other areas to be fleshed out for a better, more polished game as a whole.

GameMaker Blog: KC LC retires from the GMC

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:52:26 -0400

After being inactive for almost 2 weeks on the GMC, KC LC quietly backed down from her Administrative position on the board. No official announcement has been made which is leaving many people confused, but her own Profile reads “Retired Staff” under Group where it previously labeled her as Administrator. Currently, there hasn’t been any word on whether or not another Member will step up to the Administrator position.

KC LC retires from the GMC is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: How to get the most out of Game Maker Affiliation

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:13:40 -0400

If you run a website relating to Game Maker one of the ways you can promote it on other similar websites is through the Game Maker Affiliation programme. Here are five tips to help you get the most out of the system which has now delivered over 26 million impressions.

Check the performance of your banners. You can see the click-through ratio of individual banners uploaded to your account. If the performance of one banner is significantly lower than others in your account consider why – how is it different from the banners which are getting more clicks? You can pause or delete poorly performing banners at any time and upload new banners if you have a new message or design.

Don’t upload multiple identical banners. Uploading a particular banner and linking URL combination more than once is pointless. Because of the credits system (every time you show a banner your banner will be seen once) there is no benefit to flooding the system with identical banners. They simply divide your statistics between multiple pages and the banners can also be shown in the same GMA block on other members sites which wastes the impressions.

Good: 4 different banners

Bad: 4 identical banners

Have a static banner. GMA gives members an option to restrict animated GIF banners from appearing on their site by affixing &angif=1 to the end of the URL in the banner display code. If you don’t have a non-animated banner you will never be seen on these sites.

Place one promotion code on every page of your website. Promotion codes display from one to ten banners at a time in lines, rectangles, squares or as a single banner. It is easy to find space to fit a code. Remember though – you are only allowed to place one code on each page, if you use more duplicate banners may appear on your site which wastes advertisers credits and can result in a system ban.

Make sure you have at least one active banner in your account. There are currently more than 3.5 million credits held in accounts that do not have an active banner. The owners of these websites have helped to promote other Game Maker user’s websites but are not reaping the benefits by having their site advertised elsewhere on the network.

How to get the most out of Game Maker Affiliation is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: YoYo Games an Industry Partner at AppJam 2010

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:37:32 -0400

Dundee College, along with key project and other industry partners (including YoYo Games), are holding a 3 day International App Development Conference. The event will run from the 8th to 10th November 2010 in Dundee, Scotland.

The Conference:
If you are already an app developer, or someone who is looking to get into app development, this conference is for you – with a program of essential information to get you developing that killer app and connect you with all the people to make it happen!

The AppJam:
Running parallel to the main conference will be a 48 hour ‘App Jam’ where selected participants will have the challenge of developing and presenting their app concept. Participants will be working together in small, international, multi-discipline teams to develop original ideas and IP with the aim of releasing any new titles developed, and exploiting routes to market immediately after the event. Supported by industry lead workshops and surgeries, the teams will be encouraged to help each other out with problem solving and production while sharing their skill set to achieve final publication.

If booked early conference tickets are £100 or £30 for students (excluding VAT). Entry to the AppJam is free.

YoYo Games an Industry Partner at AppJam 2010 is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Immortal Defense Pay What You Want Sale – Results so far

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:30:47 -0400

Paul Eres has posted in the Indie Gamer forums showing the effects so far of allowing purchasers of Immortal Defense to set their own price for the tower defence game. The Game Maker game, released just over 3 years ago, attracted 259 sales in the first 17 days of the offer at an average price of about $4. (graph below shows $ not number of sales)

Also on Game Maker Blog:

Immortal Defense Pay What You Want Sale – Results so far is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: I’m a PC… and I’m a Mac

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:14:23 -0400

As many of you know Game Maker has supported the ability for others to provide Extensions that will expand and extend the functionality of Game Maker, with the release of Game Maker for Mac many of those extensions will not work as they require native extensions, and these are not available yet. This situation will change over time as authors start to provide extensions that will work on both PC and Mac.

To help this situation I have uploaded an example project for developers to look at, this extension will work on both a PC and a Mac, and uses native code, see the information at http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/Game_Maker_for_Mac#Extensions.

GameMaker Blog: GMC Urges YoYoGames.com Stay-away

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:40:29 -0400

Two days ago former Game Maker Community administrator Smarty posted a GMC topic urging anyone who is not confident with their system’s security settings to stay away from yoyogames.com.

Over the past few days visitors to the site have reported virus infections on their Windows machines caused by an exploit in the Acrobat PDF reader browser plugin.

~~There have been no public comments from YoYo Games on the issue.~~ Although YoYo Games is a bespoke site the makers of Game Maker have a history of using out of date software which has been exploited on more than one occasion in the past.

Update (~12:35 BST): At around the same time as this post was initially written YoYo Games made a post about the matter. Russell Kay writes that the problem was caused by an attack on the OpenX ad server which was used to manage the advertisements displayed alongside games on the website. The ad server has now been removed with ads being served directly from Google and it appears that the issue has been resolved.

GMC Urges YoYoGames.com Stay-away is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Hackers Hackers everywhere…

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:26:02 -0400

We have been the target of a consistent hack on our adservers which no matter what we did to lock it down, meant that our adverts have been compromised on the main web site… We use OpenX as our adserver and this appears to have a vulnerability that the hackers could just enter the adserver site at will and modify the database behind the scenes… Several avenues have been followed to purge the adserver of any contamination and no matter what we did were still compromised, so this morning we have removed the adserver completely (all adverts are now served directly from Google), these are not compromised in any way and we are going to ditch OpenX completely.

Apologies to everyone who has been affected by this, and we have been working behind the scenes to fix this but the hackers have stayed one step ahead of us.

GameMaker Blog: Official YoYo Games Twitter Account Launched

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:05:21 -0400

YoYo Games are finally on Twitter.

You can follow them at @YoYoGameMaker.

And if you aren’t yet following Game Maker Blog(!) then you can do that here: @GameMakerBlog

Several months back there was a fake YoYo Games twitter account which spouted ridiculous nonsense for a couple of weeks before it was closed down.

Official YoYo Games Twitter Account Launched is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Weekend Community Links

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:20:23 -0400

On Friday evening I discovered that YoYo Games has a page on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Mentioned are the rating system, the “glog” and the original choice of Game Maker 8 logo. There are also a couple of quotes by site users as well as a “Sandy Duncan logic” section.

Last week I started writing a review of the Stencyl beta but fellow tester Jack Brockley beat me to releasing something fully readable (as well as a fully playable game entered in the recent GameJolt Jam). You can see his thoughts on Stencyl here.

Weekend Community Links is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Game Maker Entries in Second GameJolt Jam

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:12:00 -0400

Last weekend the GameJolt indie gaming community held their second Game Jam – the majority of submitted games were made in Game Maker.

The highest rated game is currently Chawp! created by Ted Lauterbach and Brian Rodriguez with sounds from Matt Scorah and Ashley Gwinnell.

In this arcade game “made over the course of 4 days” you chop coloured lines which connect moving points. If you chop from close-range you inflict more damage but risk making a mistake. Lines appear in multiple colours and are easier to chop when you have selected the right colour.

It even has online highscores.

Other Game Maker entries:

I Wanna Be The Boss by Neutron – design and control an end of level boss using a variety of weapons which will take on a computer controlled ship.
Deathglare by Darshell – 3D stealth assassination.
Jam Scrollin! by Nikc-Nack and Zargy Studios – glitchy platformer. Rate it less than 4 for a free chance to be accused of down-rating (perhaps we should stop mentioning GJ before the entirety of the YoYo Games forums migrate!).
Freak by Electron – Grappling hook platformer. Comments suggest it too is glitchy.
Shark Week by Samuel Garcia – Swim around eating fish whilst avoiding mines, torpedoes and living obstacles such as jelly fish.
Dungeon Mapper by runewake2 [downloadable .rar only] – this isn’t complete nor is it a game. Dungeon Mapper is a utility created in Game Maker that enables the construction of dungeon worlds.

One game maker was noticeably absent however.

“Am gonna have to drop out. In a NALFirst [twitter hastag anyone?], the game I made is actually so crap I don’t want to release it. Think I’ll probably have to give it a good poke some time and see if I can salvage it.”

Game Maker Entries in Second GameJolt Jam is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: “App Store” is a Registered Trademark of Apple Inc

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:18:53 -0400

Earlier today YoYo Games announced the launch of the “YoYo Games App Store” from which Game Maker 7 for Mac can be downloaded.

However “App Store” has been registered as a trademark by Apple in the EU. In the United States the mark’s current status is listed as “An opposition is now pending at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.” “App Store” is also listed as a Service Mark on Apple’s official list of trademarks.

Here is the link to the entry at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. There is no linkable URL for the EU database but you can find it by searching for “App Store” here.

Here is one of the three sections relating to the trademark application at the USPTO.

“IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Retail store services featuring computer software provided via the internet and other computer and electronic communication networks; Retail store services featuring computer software for use on handheld mobile digital electronic devices and other consumer electronics. FIRST USE: 20080306. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20080710″

A foolish and potentially dangerous oversight by YoYo Games?

“App Store” is a Registered Trademark of Apple Inc is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Game Maker for Mac Released on YoYo Games App Store

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:41:09 -0400

Game Maker 7 for Mac has been released for sale at the new YoYo Games app store. The free version offers all the features available in the full version but has a 10 hour usage limit. Upgrading via the App Store will normally cost $25 but until September 1st the price is reduced to $20.

Download Game Maker for Mac

One feature in Game Maker for Mac has which has yet to be added to the PC version is a built-in automatic updating system. Hopefully this will be added to the PC version soon so we can look forward to more regular updates.

The App store [our earlier thoughts] has been ready for a while but this is the first time it has been seen in public. Eventually the idea is to sell high quality Game Maker games through the website with YoYo Games earning a commission.

At the time of writing the App Store and Game Maker for Mac are yet to be integrated into the main YoYoGames.com website.

Game Maker for Mac Released on YoYo Games App Store is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Game Maker for Mac… is go!

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:55:15 -0400

Game Maker for Mac... is go!

We are proud to announce the official launch of Game Maker for Mac!

This is our first release on the Mac, it is the Pro version of Game Maker 7 adapted for the Macintosh environment and contains almost all the feature of Game Maker 7 and more.

Supports Intel only Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) and v10.6 (Snow Leopard).
Remote update mechanism (with regular updates for bug fixes and new features).
Full Drag and Drop included.
Full GML scripting.
Extension mechanism to incorporate 3rd party libraries – (need to be Mac specific extensions, will not run Windows.).
Room Editor
Sprite Editor
Path Editor
Create standalone games that you can share with friends.

It has taken a long time to reach this stage, and many thanks to everyone involved in helping us with alpha and beta testing.

You can download Game Maker for Mac from here – http://appstore.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4mac/Game_Maker.dmg – this will give you 10 hours of accumulated use (i.e. you can use it for an hour, then a week later still have 9 hours use left), before you need to purchase a license.

An introductory price of $20 until the end of August, then $25 from 1st September. You can buy a license for Game Maker for Mac now from the YoYo Games Appstore… http://appstore.yoyogames.com/gm4mac!

There is no upgrade path from Windows to Mac.

GameMaker Blog: YoYo Games Ltd almost break even in year to October 2009

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:00:00 -0400

In the year to October 31st 2009 YoYo Games recorded a loss of £12,430 ($19,850/€14,950).

Company accounts, filed Friday, show that YoYo Games Ltd almost broke even after a loss of £180,000 in the previous year to October 31st 2008.

In January 2009 YoYo Games raised the price of the full version of Game Maker by $5 to $25. Although Game Maker registrations accounted for 90% of income in 2009 we don’t have access to the full accounts so can’t say whether this was the main reason for the change or if spending was reduced elsewhere.

These figures do not take into account the registration fees received for Game Maker 8 as this was not released until December 2009, however the offer of free upgrades to those registering in 2009 may have helped boost sales of the Pro version.

YoYo Games have recently been helped by a Regional Selective Assistance investment grant of £220,000 from Scottish Taxpayers – however will only effect accounts for 2010 (and possible beyond).

YoYo Games Ltd’s cumulative losses now stand at £428,006.

YoYo Games Ltd Abbreviated Accounts for year ending 31st October 2009 (click to enlarge)

YoYo Games Ltd almost break even in year to October 2009 is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: YoYo Games Grant Details Revealed

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:53:16 -0400

YoYo Games’ grant from the Scottish Government is worth £220,000 (€265,000, $350,000) for the “development and distribution of internet based games”.

The Regional Selective Assistance investment grant funded by Scottish Taxpayers, part of £16m of funding announced for the last quarter, was given on the condition that it would create at least 24 new jobs.

RSA investment grants for small businesses in Dundee can cover upto 35% of capital investment costs.

In October 2009 Sandy revealed that YoYo Games had submitted a grant application to the Scottish Government as YoYo Games looked to open a new office.

In April this year alongside announcing the appointment of Mike Dailly Sandy revealed that they had been offered “considerable support” from Scotland to locate their office in Dundee.

Source: Scottish Enterprise

YoYo Games Grant Details Revealed is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Mid-week Community Links

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:21:12 -0400

Paul Eres’ tower defence game Immortal Defense is now permanently available to buy for any amount over $1.75. Effectively it’s a pay what you want sale but a minimum price has been enforced to ensure some of the money actually gets to Paul. GamePolitics writes that the pay what you like concept “has proven to be a pretty successful model [for indie games] because no matter what people pay for the game, the sales tend to be a lot higher”.

GameJolt are holding their second game Jam this coming weekend. The idea is to spend lots of time working on a new game or existing project over the weekend whilst sharing your progress with other community members either through regular updates or Livestream. 35 people have already registered to take part either independently or as part of a team. The first GameJolt Jam event had eleven entries, eight of which were made using Game Maker.

Mid-week Community Links is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Round-up of other Game Development Tools news

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:35:59 -0400

Time for a quick look at developments taking place to various free Game Maker alternatives which may be of interest to Game Maker users.

Scirra’s open-source game creation software Construct still receives regular updates and version 1 should be out very soon. A brief comparison of Game Maker and Construct which I wrote last year remains one of the most popular articles on GMB. Ashley Gullen from the Construct project recently revealed (in a Russian interview) that they have already decided to plan a complete rewrite for Construct 2 which will have some kind of commercial option and the ability to create games for use on other platforms.

Gendai Games who are behind the GameSalad iPhone Game Maker have recently secured $1M of funding and are currently recruiting. A week after the launch of Apple’s iPad more than 10% of the 100 best selling games were developed using GameSalad. The fact that tools such as GameSalad have been allowed to continue means that there remains a possibility of a future version of Game Maker offering the option to create games for a variety of iDevices.

Stencyl, labelled vapourware by many, is currently promoting the fact that the cross-platform tool can be used to create flash games. I applied to the beta ages ago, heard nothing and now many months on there is still no public version. To be honest I’ve lost all interest in the project though it will be good to see how it compares to Game Maker if a public release ever becomes available.

The Flashpunk ActionScript library has attracted a small following of members of the Game Maker community. Development of the framework which is intended to be used to design 2-dimensional flash games has been ongoing with the latest change made yesterday.

James Garner (interview) from DSGameMaker has a cross-platform easy game creation utility lined up to be his next project after version 5 of DSGM is released.

It will be interesting to see whether these new game development tools take people away from Game Maker or instead draw a new crowd of people to “easy” game development.

Round-up of other Game Development Tools news is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMaker Blog: Game Maker Time Magazine

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:41:30 -0400

Game Maker Community member beeproductions has released a “first issue demo” of a magazine titled Game Maker Time (view PDF).

Explaining the reason for deciding to launch another Game Maker magazine beeproductions writes:

“After reading other issues released by other GMC members I started to realize that we actually need a good issue. Not 20 issues where you can find the old very well known news and to contain 4 little pages and a total of 200 words. I promise that in this issue you will find a very well structured content and some really good articles that I’m sure that will get your interest.”

The content has clearly been written by someone to whom English is not their first language but to be honest the quality of writing is better than that found in many other publications aimed at similar readers.

The theme of the issue is Retro Games and the magazine contains a very brief history of ancient games and some incredibly short ‘reviews’ (in reality more like ‘spotlights’) of 3 retro-themed Game Maker games. No download links though.

There is code for a drag and drop inventory system and links to some photoshop video tutorials which aren’t retro-related and seem out of place.

The fifth page is titled ‘Retro Interview’ but to me appears to contain no text – perhaps this is all part of the ‘demo’ release!? Hopefully it will be proofread by the final release.

Despite the introduction promising something different I thought the magazine was pretty average at best – though thankfully it stuck to its promise of to avoid the plague of weeks old Game Maker news.

Game Maker Time Magazine is taken from: GameMaker Blog

YoYo Games Glog: Game Maker for Mac – Beta Key Revoked… long live the Beta Key

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:07:53 -0400

As part of our testing of Game Maker for Mac I have revoked the previous licence key – but do not despair here is a new one so you can continue testing.

Just select the “Enter Licence Key” button at the initial screen and cut and paste the following information.

Licence Key: 987bef80-5f7b-012d-e0ad-001e4f347ee6
Email Address: beta@yoyogames.com

Do not worry if the licence does not revoke immediately it will take a couple of days before everyone is notified.

If you have any problems with Game Maker for Mac (with the license process or the actual code) then please file bugs at http://gm4mac.yoyogames.com

Bugs will be fixed faster if you include a GMK that illustrates any problems you find, preferably not a game but the minimal GMK needed to illustrate the problem.