Google has scrapped development of its App Inventor for Android. A rather unexpected development given that Google are getting more involved in social gaming with today’s announcement of Games in Google+. Perhaps a replacement is being lined up?
Scirra last week launched a campaign to get Ogg Vorbis support in Internet Explorer and Safari. The developers of Construct want the browsers to add support for the free to use Ogg Vorbis audio format so that developers have one less compatibility and legal issue to worry about. This is an issue that will effect all HTML5 game creators, regardless of the development environment they use.
Two more GameMaker users have been interviewed at Quote Unquote. Amon26, creator of Au Sable, and Paul Hubans who programmed Madhouse have recently been featured on the blog which profiles indie game developers.
I never checked out App Inventor, but then I’m not really its intended audience. Even though I think its important have those kinds of tools out there to help people get into programming, I don’t think they’re very useful beyond just giving people the most rudimentary introduction.
Like with game maker, I was lured in by the promise of being able to make games without having to write code, but quickly discovered just how limited and clunky the drag and drop stuff was. Of course that did motivate me to learn GML, so it wasn’t all bad.