GMking Audcast 3


 * Get the original podcast audio: MP3 / OGG

Robin Monks: Welcome to GMPod, GMKing's Game Maker podcast. I'm Robin Monks and joining me this week once again is...

Eyas Sharaiha: Eyas Sharaiha.

Robin Monks: We've got some great topics lined up. And I think we got five or six things to talk about and I think you've got the first one.

Intro Music

C++ Runner
Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. So one of the most important recent topics in the Game Maker world is, I guess, European's plans to rewrite the Runner in C++. And Sandy mentioned that the writing of the Runner is underway and better testing should come soon. And they mentioned that there will be information on the glogs about how to sign up for that actually.

Robin Monks: Okay. Don't you just hate that word, 'glog.'

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. Well, one of the main things that the Runner does and I think it's really exciting is the cross-compatibility. So we have more chances of having games on other platforms, which is really good. Although I don't really think that would be happening anytime soon to tell you the truth. I mean, we have the Mac version. But I don't know because there's a lot of dependencies, you know.

Robin Monks: Oh, yeah.

Eyas Sharaiha: There's a lot of dependencies on things like Direct X and it might be difficult, you know.

Robin Monks: Yeah. There's an RTF reader, dependencies and all kinds of junk in there, but I don't actually think that Delphi is any more or less cross-compatible than C++. It just depends on how you compile it.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. It's mainly the compiler. When it comes to Pascal, I think there's a lot of good compilers that can work on other operating systems. But other advantages for the Runner include maybe slightly smaller file sizes since Delphi executes files are much larger than C++.

And when it comes to speed, it's actually really exciting in some way. First, C++ is slightly a lower-level language than Delphi is. But also since the Runner is being rewritten from scratch, whoever's programing has the opportunity to do much greater optimization and recoding and make it faster and more resource-efficient.

Robin Monks: Yeah.

Eyas Sharaiha: So, you know, that might make a big difference in the games and the performance.

Game Maker (in)Security
Robin Monks: And of course, in the meantime, the current version of GM is also insecure.

Eyas Sharaiha: So we have lots of problems obviously with the security of Game Maker. One of the attempts that I find interesting is the Game Maker obfuscator.

Basically, it tries to change variables and do other sorts of obfuscation like removing comments, white spaces and inserting some nonsense in between the code to make a decompiled game harder to read.

Robin Monks: Kind of make it not worthwhile really?

Eyas Sharaiha: Exactly. So I don't know if this is really effective. I think it might slow down the process of decompiling. Well, the decompilation itself won't change a lot, but making use of the decompiled game or understanding the game, changing the game; that will certainly slow the process down, but I'm not sure about any true change that would come out of it.

Robin Monks: Because I remember when I first seen this come up on Phil Gamble's Game Maker blog, the first thing I commented on it was it's the way it is only obfuscating the scripts in the game. It wasn't an obfuscating resources. Nor drag-and-drop actions on the objects or anything. And since, for example, the Dex series which was created entirely drag and drop, games like that wouldn't be secured at all by an obfuscator because I used no scripting.

Eyas Sharaiha: Well, actually, when it comes to obfuscating, it does do some things on the drag-and-drop side like changing variable names or removing drag-and-drop comments. But in comparison to what it does on the script side, it's certainly not as effective. 05:02

But it doesn't completely ignore the drag and drop. But still when it comes to the resources, as you said, sprites, background sounds, the obfuscator isn't doing anything.

Robin Monks: And in many cases, those really are the most important part of the actual game.

Eyas Sharaiha: Exactly. I mean, Yourself mentioned on the topic. I'm not sure if it was the obfuscator topic or another topic related to the security of games. Yourself asked if we really have a game in Game Maker that is worth or the security that people are looking for? Is there really a game worth that much protection? It's certainly interesting because when you think about it, many games, the security they might need could be, as you just said, the graphics or sounds, etc. And not in the value of the code itself.

Robin Monks: Exactly.

Robin Monks: And not only that, a lot of the other games being made in Game Maker right now are either really cheap or ,in most cases, free; so all those people make one game. They don't really care if people take it or not. Just as long as they made that game and they got their name for it and they just move on.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah.

YoYo Ancient Civilization Competition Results
Robin Monks: Of course, maybe the top three games in this latest competition will want to have some protection. Because they also do not want their game's ripped off. I assume now that after winning a big competition, they'll want to follow up on some of that attention.

So what about this competition here? I actually didn't follow it close.

Eyas Sharaiha: It's interesting to me. I found this theme on ancient civilization a bit challenging to the creativity, I guess, of the community. I'm still not sure how I feel about this entire competition thing.

I think it's a good thing that they're maybe sharing a bit of revenue with the community and maybe pushing the developers to make more games. But it's also interesting to see the talent of many of the Game Maker developers which we do not see too often. The competition's first place winner was "Ancient Ants Adventure" by Red System and it won the first place prize, which is a thousand dollars.

It's an isometric interact and it does involve a lot of strategy, tactics, but it certainly is a shooter. The game received a lot of good feedback when it comes to the graphics, the gameplay, the game's interface, etc.

And I think it's really good. It does deserve the first place prize.

Robin Monks: And the second place winner is "Caveman Craig" and it's a SimLife game. It looks kind of like a standard SimLife game to train other forces and create your own community, but it has this here caveman theme. I'm all with the graphics. That looks quite nice, so I think it's well deserving in it's placed and title.

Eyas Sharaiha: So the third place winner is "Tut's Test." It's a game by KC LC. Well, it's basically a puzzle game where you have to move the blocks to positions with a very small number of moves and to avoid the various types of obstacles.

I guess it's an engaging game, a bit addictive, and it's good overall, yeah.

Robin Monks: Looks interesting.

Eyas Sharaiha: It does.

Robin Monks: I think I might actually grab that one afterwards and take a peek at it. All right. So that takes care of our competition announcing and we can move on to other more important matters.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah, much more important.

Humor Section
Robin Monks: Yeah. In this case, our bit of humor which we are constantly and consistently provided by the majority of the GMC community. So this guy, he's posted a topic. And for those of you that want to take a peek at it, it's 376209. And it's basically someone giving four reasons why not to use Game Maker.

And I guess he's trying to mark Game Maker as an addictive substance of some sort and he's trying to set up a 12-step program for Game Maker addicts.

Eyas Sharaiha: So he says if you have girlfriend, she will not be doubt, be jealous of the time you spend with Game Maker. You will be thinking of GML throughout the day, during your daytime job. You will begin thinking and planning your next games without finishing the current one. And finally, you have to join a 12-step meeting for Game Maker.

Robin Monks: Only number three is true.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. For me at least.

Robin Monks: Yeah.

Eyas Sharaiha: So far.

Shameless Self-Promotion
Robin Monks: So I think, next, was our shameless self-promotion session.

Eyas Sharaiha: Indeed.

Robin Monks: So do you want to go with the first one there?

Eyas Sharaiha: Okay. So one of the things that have been making me pull my hair out in the GMKing.org forums is my attempt at parsing math. And I shared that with the community earlier and we're trying to figure out what's the smartest way to parse mathematical expressions. So if you're an expert at GML or you have any idea, drop by forums.gmking.org. It's topic number 38 and I guess you could help brainstorming.

Robin Monks: That's right. We always like brainstorming help.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah, we do. On the other hand, we have GMpedia.org, the Game Development Wiki. And we are nearly close to 400 articles!

Robin Monks: And we want to get pass that number!

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. So again, if you're interested in reading the 400 article, you could visit GMpedia.org and contribute.

Robin Monks: And maybe you'll get your name with the next Audcast.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah.

Robin Monks: And last but not the least, "Markup Magazine" is coming back again for the summer. A lot of people are quite busy over the winter and spring and everybody gets more free time during the summer. It seems like the summer days goes slower, so everybody is less busy. You especially, Eyas, as I understand.

So we'll all have more free time. We're going to have some great stuff coming up in Game Maker, including the exclusive full preview of 65 million + 1 BC. All right! You can search it up and find it in the next issue of Markup, I suspect, right?

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. So the full version will be exclusively previewed in the next issue. Meanwhile, you can check out the free demo version on YoYo Games. It's currently the top game of the day, so you can see it here.

Game of the Week
Robin Monks: Excellent! And we also have the 'Game of the Week' and it's 'Arcasus' Flight' by L4NT0M. Oh, dear!

Eyas Sharaiha: Which is Lantom.

Robin Monks: Okay. I will take your word for that.

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah, 133t speak.

Robin Monks: Yeah. Do you want to go ahead and read you opinion on this game?

Eyas Sharaiha: Yeah. So it's a third-person game where you control a flying character, which is called 'Icarus.' I think it's rather interesting. It's a cool game and nice idea. The gameplay is interesting.

There's online hi-scores and I tried it. And for maybe half an hour, I couldn't stop. One problem I had with the game was that it's not smooth everywhere. Some sound effects are too subtle, some fonts are out of place, etc. I think the game looks really promising. And with a couple of minor updates, I think we could see something very impressive.

Robin Monks: All right. So that's our pick of the 'Game of the Week.' And if any of our listeners have a better pick of the week for a game, go over and discuss it at the GMKing Forums. It's forums.gmking.org. You can also give your opinions on this week's Audcast; and suggestions, for future topics for Audcasts in the future, we will hopefully do them more often and not leave you dangling for a year and a month.

So I guess that's it for this week. I'm Robin Monks.

Eyas Sharaiha: And I'm Eyas Sharaiha.

Robin Monks: Happy game making. Have a great week. We'll see you, if all goes well, next week.