Quote Unquote have published two interviews with former GameMaker users. Charlie Ngo currently attends Digipen College in Washington whilst Noel Berry now focus on Flashpunk development.
Via Paul Eres on the right is an advert for an old and totally unrelated “Game-Maker” which was developed by Recreational Software Designs. DIYGamer has a little history of this product whilst Autofish took a look at the software in 2009 and posted some screenshots of games developed using it.
I so don’t miss the bad old days of unreliable floppy disks and having to order potentially shoddy software sight-unseen off a magazine ad.
Amen.
A couple of years ago a GMC member sold me a boxed copy of Game-Maker (click “xot” to see it). I’ve not used it but I’ve looked through the manual. It’s very simple compared to YoYo’s GameMaker but bears some base similarities. Both include common systems most games require and output an executable as a universal runner with attached game data.
Games are built with a player object; monster objects which can be controlled with simple paths, player-relative movement with or without paths, movement toward or away from the player, or random movement; eight-way gravity per block; collision response to “solid” blocks; score, hit points and “lives” systems; animated sprites for a fixed selection of object states; scrolling playfields; and simple paint and sound tools. There is no form of scripting beyond blocks changing form and/or modifying player properties when touched by the player (with or without the presence of a specific carried object). At first glance it seems geared towards top-down and platform action games, but a creative person could probably get some diverse styles of games out of it.
Games can be exported as stand-alone executables and even sold. However, there is an unfortunate viral royalty license attached to anything you make. For shareware, retail, and promotion purposes, the terms approach rudeness. If you don’t care about money, you may distribute up to TEN copies of your game. Madness.
Xot, can you go more into the circumstances around buying your copy of RSD Game-Maker? How did it come up? What spurred you to buy it? Did the previous owner have any games to show off, finished or otherwise?
That’s a good shot of the package, incidentally. Would you object to its inclusion in the software’s Wikipedia entry?
That $89 was probably the equivalent of $300+ today lol
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