Whilst it may widely be considered that releasing a second issue is the biggest hurdle when producing a Game Maker magazine, even successful magazines such as GMTech and MarkUp took 2 months to release their second issue, GMWeekly proved many of its critics wrong by realising 12-weekly issues to (or close to) schedule.

The magazine is different from more traditional Game Maker periodicals as its primary focus is on community news with little focus given to game development advice, although game reviews are now included.

Although I am not superstitious you may care to know that the thirteenth issue of MarkUp was the first of that publication to be released late after a string of 11 back-to-back monthly issues following the pilot edition.

Actual figures are higher as files are mirrored at a different host

GMWeekly or not so is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The irrelevant, pointless, space fillers that they have become. How are we meant to complete a crossword on a static pdf? Screenshot it and draw on it in paint? Print it out?

I do not wish to single out any particular magazine for the puzzles they contain but below is a screenshot of a puzzle included in a recently released GameMaker magazine – a crossword/wordfill with 5 answers.

A bit of fun – possibly, but do we really need GameMaker themed puzzles?

I await the first GameMaker themed Sudoku with anticipation.

Persistence presence of puzzles perplexes me is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The cover feature this time around, “God Games”, is not in reference to the popular genre but to a decidedly less-popular one: games about religion and faith. The cover thought piece not only discusses some religious games and profiles the prominent Christian game developer Wisdom Tree, but also uses that as a spring-board to exploring thornier questions about the problems of deeply meaningful expression in a highly external art form.

There are also a number of other articles this time around, in marked contrast to last issue’s All-RPG Extravaganza. I look at some keyboard control schemes for platformers’ I discuss the shortcomings of a certain game in a piece I had to call “My Wife Asked Me to Write This”‘ and reknown game balancer and designer David Sirlin rethinks story games. This issue also marks the introduction of our letters page, a redesign of the magazine’s font and a slight tweak on the format, as well as featuring the inaugural entry into our Fiction section with August Poole’s story “Paper Games”.

All this, plus some in-depth reviews of Immortal Defense, The Power, Viking Bazooka Bloodbath Reloaded, and Elements of Escape.

Once again Russell has succeeded in providing an entertaining and educational read of considerable length.  If you haven’t had a look at one of the previous issues I recommend you examine this new release at a time when all the more traditional Game Maker magazines appear to be taking a break.

You can download the issue here (left click).

Russell’s Quarterly – Issue 3 is taken from: GameMaker Blog

GameMakerTech Issue 12 was released on May 29th – for details and to download click here.

Following the much improved magazine design introduced for issue 11 GameMaker Tech was looking the slickest of all GameMaker magazines. However I think that this, the second issue to have this new layout, is more important as it will better reflect the progress made at GameMaker Tech.

The template for this issue is the same as the previous issue, and as before it looks clean and fresh. The cover, as I feel is so often the case with GameMaker magazines, could be better. There is no major headline advertising a particular article or exclusive but I screenshot which I assume is from the Spirits of Metropolis game. Obviously the cover is not as important in a print magazine though, and is really a minor irritant in what is, once again, a well-written issue that covers a wide range of topics.

I thought the “Starting a Team” article by RedChu was rather brief as although it covered some good points it appeared to miss out issues such as communication between team members and team motivation – however I then realised that this was only part 1 so I look forward to reading the next installment in GameMaker Tech 13.

Tom Russell from Russell’s Quarterly [issue 1 | issue 2] has a talkative piece on the importance that good sound effects can have in improving the overall apperance of your games.

ESA has an interesting game development article about Retro Games and more specifically how to make a game appear “Old School” through the use of graphics, sound and gameplay techniques commonly found in older computer games.

I am not particularly knowledgeable about the technical side of GameMaker so I will pass by the articles by bendodge, Timothy Sassone, gmjab and Schyler as well as the tutorials from Calle Ekdahl’s gmtutorials.com.

Pixel Art is back! After its absence last issue I am pleased to see the reintroduction of another high quality pixel art tutorial by RoboBOT on how to create an animated running man – something which is present in varying degrees (or at least should be!) in a large number of games.

For gamers there is an insight into and preview of the new Spirits of Metropolis puzzle game by Mr. Chubigans as well as insights into a couple more games.

When it comes to the previews and reviews section I am a bit confused. Both seem to follow the same format, and both include links to download the game so I am unsure how/why two separate categories were used to separate the games.

YoYo’s apparently-disappearing-into-thin-air Ancient Civilisation Competition is still yet to announce its results but Timoi & Nal take a look at some of their favourite entries into the competition – their highest rated entries getting just 3/5, but this the kind of article I like to see.

The ways in which several games utilise the excellent GMPhysics DLL are briefly examined however there appears to be no link mentioned between this on page 44 and the interview with the DLL’s creator, Chris Giles, on page 23 which mystifies me.

All in all this is an excellent publication with a clutter-free design and high quality content from a variety of writers covering a wide-range of topics that will be of interest to Game Maker users.

GMTech 12: The Review is taken from: GameMaker Blog

They are arrogant – slogganing their magazine with the phrase “Its not about beating the competition – because we’ve already won”, which they also managed to mis-quote on their blog.

The issue is poorly laid out. Making terrible use of empty space, with large borders and cramped text.

They take digs at Game Maker Magazine, “I ain’t gonna steal GMT’s design like GMM”, after the issue had been resolved between Game Maker Magazine and Game Maker Tech.

Sure, these issues are probably similar to those faced by every Game Maker magazine that starts out, and will probably improve with time.

But, to top it all, it appears anonymouss joined the magazine team after the release of the first issue. I haven’t mentioned my view on anonymouss publicly before – but I’m sure some of you know that he irritates me. Anonymouss takes every available opportunity to promote his site. If this was only done at relevant times then fair play, but he will find any reason to include a link from the GMC to iWannaPlay. Take for example this rather blatent attempt.

I don’t want to read what looks like it is turning into yet another advert for iWannaPlay, as seen in this screenshot released of Issue 2:

Why I dislike GM Fetch is taken from: GameMaker Blog