Earlier today Mark Overmars posted details of how to obtain a copy of Game Maker 8 beta on the YoYo Games blog.  To receive a copy of the beta you will need to register here which also gives you access to the bug reporting facility.

Features that will only be included in the Pro version are present but documentation states that the beta “will stop working at the end of August 2009.  The same applies to all games created with this beta version.”  Hopefully YoYo Games have put steps in action to ensure that this can not be abused.

Details on the new features included in Game Maker 8 can be found here.

The Mozilla Developer Center states in its documentation:

“minVersion and maxVersion should specify the range of versions of the application you have tested with. In particular you should never specify a maxVersion that is larger than the currently available version of the application since you do not know what API and UI changes are just around the corner. With compatibility updating it is not necessary to release a whole new version of the extension just to increase its maxVersion.”

Therefore YoYo Games followed the advice provided when choosing their maxVersion value.

When version 3 of FireFox was released it took almost a month for YoYo Games to release an official solution.  A similar problem occurred when Firefox 3.0.1 was released and Chronic quickly provided a solution.  If you follow that solution and set maxValue to “3.*” the plugin functions in Firefox version 3.5.

You can download a pre-modified version of the extension here.

Published by Course Technology Jerry Lee Ford’s Getting Started With Game Maker will be coming out next month. Ahead of its launch we caught up with Jerry who has previously authored books on programming in languages such as Visual Basic and Scratch.

You have previously written books about programming in several different languages, why did you choose to write about Game Maker?
Learning new programming languages and writing books are hobbies that I am passionate about. Last year one of my son’s friends started talking to me about this great game development tool he had found called Game Maker and he wanted to know if I had written a book about it. Based on this young man’s excitement and enthusiasm I decided to learn more about Game Maker and the rest is history.

Who is the book aimed at?
Its target audience is beginner to intermediate game developers and programmers. It teaches basic game development and programming principles. First timers will find all of the information they require to use Game Maker’s drag-and-drop development approach. More advanced game developers, comfortable with drag-and-drop game development, will benefit from the books almost 100 page review of GML scripting.

What can we learn from reading the book?
Readers will learn how to develop computer games using Game Maker. They will learn how to navigate and configure Game Makers Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and to master its drag-and-drop approach to game development. The last third of the book focuses on GML scripting. By the time the reader finishes the book, he/she will have a good understanding of both drag-and-drop and scripted game development.

Summary of the games made in the book

Do you think that Game Maker is a good starting place for those wanting to go on to more advanced programming?
Absolutely, by starting with its drag-and-drop development approach new programmers can quickly master basic programming concepts and when they are ready they can make their leap to GML. The GML language is robust and powerful and the GML function library is huge. Anyone who puts in the time and effort required to master Game Maker and become a good game developer will find themselves well positioned to make the transition to programming languages like Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Java.

Last year you released Scratch Programming for Teens. How does Scratch compare to Game Maker?
Scratch is a good programming language for children just getting started programming. It lets you create computer programs using drag-and-drop Lego style bricks, where different types of logic blocks snap together and can be configured. However, Scratch does not have any where near the depth of features that Game Maker has. Nor does Scratch support scripting. So you are limited as to what you can do with it. Scratch is a good place for beginners to get started but after a while, most people will outgrow it. Game Maker and its large library of functions, on the other hand, are well suited to meet the needs of both beginner and advanced game developers.

You must have seen the other books written about Game Maker. How is yours different?
I have seen The Game Maker’s Apprentice book. It is a good book though sometimes I felt that the book made too many assumptions about the things the reader should know. In my book I provide additional coverage or Game Maker’s IDE, which is quite extensive. I also delve deeper into GML, dedicating the last third of the book to teaching GML and demonstrating its use. I also place additional emphasis on a lot of other development skills like the creation of customer splash screen, progress bars, and debugging.

Have you got any plans to write about the more advanced aspects of Game Maker?
I would love to write a more advanced book but a lot depends on the success of this book. If it does well, I am sure my publisher would be willing to publish a more advanced Game Maker book.

What improvements would you make to Game Maker if you were its developer?
I would start by providing it with better documentation. The “Designing Game with Game Maker” PDF file written my Mark Overmars is packed full of information but is not well organized and would benefit from having a lot more code examples. It would be great if more graphic, audio, and midi files were bundled with Game Maker. I would also like to see the MAC version of Game Maker make its debut. An easily accessed library of code snippets would be another helpful add-on.

Getting Started with Game Maker is released in July.
RRPs:  $34.99 (US), £25 (UK), €30 (EU), $41.95 (CA).
Amazon: US $23.09, UK £18.99

A preliminary list of features for Game Maker 8 was only revealed a couple of days ago so the news may come as a surprise to some.

Then again it all depends on your interpretation of ‘far’.  The latest official word on a planned release date is “during or after the summer” given by Mark Overmars in March. Unlike the beta versions of the C++ runner and Game Maker 7 for Mac which were released to a small private group of testers Sandy has said that the Game Maker 8 beta will be public.

If you don’t understand how Twitter works the screenshot above may confuse you.  Either way you can still follow Game Maker Blog on Twitter!

On Sunday 28th Sandy added a message to testers  ”This is much more stable, though not completely bug free.  We REALLY need you to test and provide feedback to the bug testing website.  How much you do will determine whether or not we EVER release this version of Game Maker, so PLEASE HELP !…  if we think the product is stable we will fix the major bugs and release the Mac version, hopefully by the end of the summer.”

He also added that YoYo Games do not plan to synchronise the Apple and PC Versions of Game Maker currently – this means we could see Game Maker 8 for PC released whilst Game Maker Mac remains version 7.

Click to view full-sized image

You can see videos of Game Maker Mac in action in the exclusive look we published last week.

We already knew about the improved image editor with support for alpha transparency, the new bundled resources that YoYo were seeking artists for and GMB had speculated about an object exporter to aid collaboration – today Mark announced a feature that would enable users to import and export  resources to make it “a lot easier to collaborate on games”.

The remainder of the additions are listed below:

Collision checking option
Collision checking options for sprites have changed. You can now e.g. indicate whether sub-images should all have the same or different collision masks. Also you can increase and reduce the mask and use a disk as a mask.

Splash screens that show web sites and html documents
You can now show splash screens in the game that show a website or a local html file. In this way you can incorporate for example very nice help pages in your game. There are new actions to support this. Also splash screens got some additional options.

Time lines
Time lines have been enhanced. They can for example be paused and they can even play backwards.

Trigger events
These are a new type of event that you can define yourself and then use in your objects. For example, you can define events that happen when an object gets close to another object, or when you press a combination of keys, or when you reached a particular score, etc.

A new script/code editor
The built-in script/code editor has been completely rewritten, making it a lot easier to write code. For example there is pop-up function name completion, argument help, matching brackets, improved color coding, line numbers, on-the-fly error checking, and a sophisticated find and replace functionality.

Smaller changes
Some smaller changes include: Game Maker news shown in the program, much faster loading times (also when starting games), better encryption of executables, constant definition in a separate form, and some visual improvements. Also a number of bugs have been corrected.

- Mark Overmars, YoYo Games blog

The three winning games earn their creators a place in the beta of GameJolt’s ad-revenue share system.

Click to view full-sized image

I know this is probably not of interest to the majority of readers, and this is certainly not time sensitive, but it is proof that something was happening and there has been little information posted elsewhere.

Intended for students in ‘Voortgezet onderwijs’ (age group 13 to 17/18) the theme of the competition will be ‘animals’ and prizes will be awarded for the most popular game chosen by the public and also by a Jury.  Full details can be found on the Creative Game Challenge website in Dutch (English translation).

Workshops will be provided by Utrecht University for competing students and those who enter the competition will receive a free registration for the duration of the competition.

You can sign up for the competition from November 2009.  We will let you know when entry opens.

Thanks to Simon Donkers for providing details of the competition.

I may very well turn KwikLook into a blog, so if you care, watch out for that.

Currently featuring 2 posts and an irritating all-bold font selection, the blog is off to a nice start.

Me? At this point, I’m wondering whether the name is Kwiklook or KwikLook.