Progress of Blazing Mobian Masters

A fanmade S***c game I've been developing ever since two years ago with Game Maker Studio. It was originally planned to be a remake of S**** Runners which was discontinued two years ago but in the end, it is a whole lot different. The only thing that fulfilled that original plan was the Endless Mode but that's not the only game modes I implemented so far. The other modes include Arcade Mode and Course Mode.

Arcade Mode

Formerly known as the Intensive Mode, the mode is said to be as intensive as possible while making things not too difficult. Each Episodic Act is planned to have 8 bosses so the mode is more like the Boss Rush Mode than the Arcade Mode. The proper Arcade Mode for this is to have those enemies and r***s approaching before the boss appears after a period of time but this implementation is done on Endless and Course Modes.
There are super attacks that do or do not involve Wi**s at all depending on the characters and the Instant Kill attacks require the maximum of 200 Wi** points. There's also the Overdrive feature. To increase the W**p points, simply collect sufficient amount of r**gs and to increase the Overdrive points, simply hit the enemies.

Course Mode

An experimental game mode that mashes things up according to the sources.

Endless Mode

This is one difficult feat for me but I did manage to find some game for reference although the implementation isn't that good. The patterns of r***s are implemented in proper ways and so are the patterns of enemies but to implement the platforming is a total pain. Instead, I went for Jetpack Joyride style concept for Endless Mode gameplay in which there's no platforming whatsoever. You just need to collect the items and take out the enemies while avoiding enemy attacks and other enemy obstacles. Needless to say, other things like the Large Passthrough R***s, Spikes and even Springs are not implemented at all. Bosses appear after a period of time and after defeating them, things return to normal again but what I didn't implement is the speed increase of the objects and backgrounds just like in the S**** Runners. Unlike the other modes, the W**p attacks are not available.

Versus Mode

Game session check and implementation were new challenges for me. It's to see if there are two players entering the game session which make something equal to 2. If the number of players is 1 for starting the game session, it's essentially the Single Player session but anyone joining in will activate the Versus Mode session. At the end of the match, if one of the player wins and the session knows that they have not gone to whatever game mode, they will be in Mode Select screen. Otherwise, they will go back to whichever mode they come from. I might have tested the former condition but not the other as of this writing.
Supposedly, the mode is planned to be like the Endless Mode but then, I didn't have sufficient ideas. Maybe, this is one of the game modes that may flop or something in people's opinion.

Cast

So far, there are six playable characters with additional two planned but I couldn't find the portraits for the additional two characters. Plus, the characters' names are planned to be deconstructed as I've had enough of the laughing stock and toxic state of the S**** franchise. What made it a laughing stock was the fact that it was notorious for having the games with most negative reception according to the Wikipedia list and it looks like there were two games from this franchise in that list so far, one that is S**** 06 and the other is S**** B*** for Wii U. There may be people that tend to defend the abomination but there's no way to know if the defense is real or not. Also, we had already moved on to other things but somehow, we even had the guts to come back to this franchise for whatever reason we had. In fact, there was even a criminal case that occurred back in December 4 years ago over S**** B***, probably because of the fact that the titular character's arms were blue although that game was more or less a spinoff kind or something and its sequel for 3DS only was okay enough. The cartoon show of the same name is said to be good or something. Well, just because of one particular fact that someone didn't like, it didn't mean that he could go out to various stores and ruin the product displays like that. As a result, he was already banned for causing public troubles there but again, he denied the fact and then played victim like he pushed the blame to the store employees and manager like an immature person. This is how things became too toxic and that's not the state of the S***c franchise I wanted but I found the S***c franchise to be a serious mistake. To find the mature portion of the fanbase is a bigger challenge but some of the fans had become the professional indie game developers like Stealth, Taxman, Tee Lopes, etc.

Assets

It consists of the ones I did using Inkscape as well as the resources taken from The Spriters Resource & The Sounds Resource websites. It's okay to use the resources from those sites for whatever project of yours as long as you don't profit it whatsoever. Plus, I think it cannot be commercialized and published to the app stores. For whatever content you've taken from those two sites, crediting is mostly required. There are other sound effect sources I used as well like those from freesfx.co.uk & various Japanese sound effect sources. Indeed, there are non-Japanese indie game developers who use those music and sound effects from various Japanese sources like Dova Syndrome, Musmus, etc. and Muse Dash is one of those games made by the non-Japanese indie game developers. Lastly, the music consists of my arrangements while the Game Over track is taken from Pocket-Se website.

Note that many of the stuffs I put in are mostly unoriginal so citing references is a must. As of this time, I still have yet to complete Act 3 for Arcade Mode, make two additional characters playable and make a complete stage background set. Development still continues.

Skycurser

Said to be the indie arcade game, Skycurser is one of those commercialized indie games made with Game Maker Studio by Griffin AeroTech, if the name of that team is correct. In the prototype versions, the game consisted of three playable stages although there were plans to have several stages. The graphics are retro Neo-Geo style in a similar vain to Metal Slug series with creepy creatures that have taken over the whole globe that you have to fight them with the plane that is available in the garage. You get three attacks, the normal shot, sword and the shotgun as well as the bomb attack that is like a wannabe super attack taken from fighting games. I don't know if that is like an Overdrive/Max Mode or perhaps a real super move as it is not supposed to last much longer than usual. When attacking enemies, they splat out blood and they originate from some meteor with green glow and goo from space.
Basically, in the game of Skycurser, most of the places are infected with some plague or something after the meteor crash as indicated with green smoke in some of the stages and it's up to you to pilot the plane from the garage. Unfortunately, as the game is more or less incomplete even in final form, I don't know what the ending is like in terms of game story. All you see after completing the game is the simple game outro or some kind.
Of course, there are flaws. Firstly is the game's intro as if the whole thing is made out of meme GIF images or some kind like everything is quite choppy so to speak. Second is how the flashing HUD messages on top of the screen during the Continue session. Maybe it's a bug or something. Third, the game is more or less incomplete even as an indie arcade game as if the concept of bringing indie games to the arcades is experimental. There might be indie games ported to the arcades via Nesica X Live like Trouble Witches, Exception, etc.
The arcade system is the Linux-PC based hardware called Airframe. It has the 64-Bit CPU and games made using Game Maker Studio or Unity will need to be exported to HTML5, Linux or some other mentioned platform. So, I asked the team behind the game on Twitter about the CPU architecture as Game Maker Studio 2 came out that it wouldn't support 32-Bit CPUs anymore or something and I got the answer saying the the CPU is 64-Bit/X64. This means that games made using Game Maker Studio 2 can also be ported to Airframe as well. I don't know if Construct 2/3 games can be ported to that arcade system as well.
One interesting thing from the developers is that they made the live stream videos of various pure arcade features like the implementation of Arcade Operator Menu where you can adjust settings and perform specific tests, Coin Control System which tells you how many credits are as well as the Copyright Warning Screen for arcade games. I don't know if that looks like a stupid idea to implement those features in a game made using Game Maker Studio/Construct but for Unity, there are ACTUALLY arcade games made with it. I'm not even joking about that like one of Aikatsu games for the arcades is actually made with that. Problem is, the lessons about implementing pure arcade game features are industrial level, not indie-level. Who's going to teach me and others about that for Game Maker Studio then?
To get the game updated, the arcade operators make use of the USB stick or perhaps the wireless network connection to update the game to the newer version if available. Of course, for games made using Game Maker Studio, that may seem to be a problem when it comes to version update as if everything will be reset in the update although some features like external files for game settings, high score tables, will be imported if the game finds them after the update.
There are other arcade games made for the Airframe system as well but the information is scarce at the moment.

Lunar New Year Days 1 to 6

This year may be a different one for sure as if I continued to work on the game development stuff. Until now, things were still incomplete for the upcoming Shoot The Bullet clone I'm working on as started from last year. It had the elements from the previous stuffs I worked on in addition to the newer elements and thankfully, things are workable and there's an option to move on even if you cannot make it in specific scenes as they may be difficult in high difficulty or maybe all difficulties. For sound effects, things may be looking different as I used the sound effects from the various websites Microsoft Virtual Academy brought me to thanks to having attended the previous Jump Starts. The only problems are the lack of music and that each set of boss attacks is somewhat incomplete. There will be like three sets of different boss attacks and each set is divided into 10 scenes playable in four difficulties. That may sound really complex and time consuming in the development like it's going towards Rrootage level. Speaking of that, Rrootage may have like tons of bosses in different gameplay modes to deal with. Thankfully, everything should be like playable by then like there's no restrictions whatsoever. Reason for having no restrictions is that I may want to make things as fair as needed after having known on how terrible that F***** B**d is in my opinion. It's nearly unplayable due to the stupid way the bird flies like it's a freaking bouncing ball in the air and everything you collide with hits you instantly. Not to mention the amount of unoriginality of the contents that the sole creator of that may deserve to be sued or something. Of course, there may be certain stuffs made against that as a way of bashing on it like he doesn't even care and this upcoming Shoot The Bullet clone I'm working on is one of these but then who the hell cares for that as well should it become a next major disaster like I broke the previous clones the last time?
There might be plans to remaster the previous clones but unfortunately, that kind of backfired on me like I broke one of the previous clones like trying to remaster it with superior textures, replaced bosses, newer sound effects and remaining UI changes. Sometime after that, I eventually learnt the lesson from Developing 2D and 3D games with Unity Jump Start in which one of the hosts broke the games he made as well so learn from his mistake. The lesson is that I should make some backups or something in case of a technically broken game and that I should move on to the next parts after knowing that everything is fine like there are no errors in testing the game.
There may be less than several days left before the Know It, Prove It event is over but I'll surely make it on time in the final progression. More information about that event will be talked about in the next blog post while the Lunar New Year event may be ending sometime next month.
You know what's really annoying during this year's Lunar New Year? It's that those cowards at home are getting more idiotic than ever for being the serious nuisance and the lack of eternal knowledge that I've been ignoring them due to their past offenses. I may not be to blame for ignorance if they didn't plan on playing stupidly annoying tricks and getting damn noisy like that and it looked like I was trolled by some of my nieces who are pretty much grown up by then like I couldn't even recognize them anymore.

Creating Your First 2D Game With Game Maker Jump Start

Okay, sure are new tools to learn of and especially for the various basic concepts I had never noticed. The directions in Game Maker are different than the standard mathematical concept and especially for the standard game making process in which the objects move to the right by positive x for example and it may be true. There are various documentations on other game genres and they may seem to be useful for developers in the future. Other tools include Soundation, Sfxr as well as Spine which are kind of new to me. Soundation is like the online version of the other Digital Audio Workstation and it may seem to be different than FL Studio which I have been using for music arrangement. Sfxr is for sound effect creation and Spine is the 2D character animation tool which can be useful for various game genres you may want to use for game development with Game Maker. Unfortunately, Spine is not free that you may need to buy it but there's the trial version of the tool to try out.
Collisions on the other hand, they are what I have been knowing a lot ever since that two objects that overlap by visible pixels may cause collisions and when that happens, the objects perform the various actions based on the collision event. The actions can of course be directed to other events as well in Game Maker which are the techniques I have been using. Not to mention that there are other features like Paths, Timelines, Rooms, Assets and so on.

Developing games with Construct 2 Jump Start

Now, before I may start to talk about the topics from this Jump Start, there may be some controversies involving various origins of the game templates. The only controversial thing that kept me from paying attention was probably the clone of that Floppy Bullshit they were making, only to know the fact that the clones with completely original sounds, music and graphics may seem to be okay compared to the original which was kind of terrible that many people including me may want the original creator to be sued, anyway due to the unoriginal, uncredited and reference-less contents put in there. We already know the classic games and it may be the same for those working at the game companies, Microsoft, the companies behind the game creation tools, etc. So, who's to blame then? Well, that should be Doug Nyugen, the creator of that original bullshit I just talked about and I already had some rants about this on my Twitter account. The talks about this may be everywhere in all the modules but the third module was all about making a clone of that bullshit. Again, having to bounce like that non-stop instead of flying is kind of COMPLETELY BULLSHIT to me! Why can't the bird FLY NORMALLY? When you tap, it should fly up and when you're not tapping, it should FLY DOWN! Have you even seen the way Mario flies or swims? YES, WE FUCKING HAVE EVER SINCE OUR CHILDHOOD!
Negatives aside, there are already positives of this event. The first two modules are fine that they teach you how the game is made with various features that are differently common to the features in Game Maker but certain features are easily implemented unlike Game Maker such as the fact that you can have the enemy weapon to fire bullets from the end of the weapon tip and they will still fire from that even when the weapon rotates. Another cool thing is that you can get transparent sprites and background in multiple ways without having to buy the license unlike Game Maker where you have to do so. The rotation of the background and sprite should be easy without needing so much frames and taking so much memory. Again, it's a common thing between Game Maker and Construct 2 but you will need the full version of Game Maker if you want the easy rotation of the sprites. The layout and events are on the middle panes and are similar to rooms and events in Game Maker but be careful, you need to know the limitations of the number of events and layers in Construct 2 and it can pose a challenge to those developing games using it. Next thing is the amount of variables you can adjust on the left pane and some programming elements are needed when it comes to variables and it's a little bit more challenging than in Game Maker when implementing the text in there. For me, I can use the HUD background and then put in some variables as an example in Construct 2 just like in Game Maker without having to put in the strings in there.
The last module is about publishing your games to Windows Store for Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 that requires Visual Studio but if you're publishing games to other platforms, then I'm afraid that this last module is not for you. Not to mention that Windows Store may be notorious for low-quality apps and games compared to the high-quality ones which are the official ones.

Gaming Engines for Windows 8 Jump Start

OK, another Jump Start I attended with lots of details to explain on what went on in interesting ways. The tools mentioned in the Jump Start were Construct2, Game Maker and Unity 3D. Of course, Unity 3D is probably the most difficult to use as there may be involvement of the 3D graphics and the coding in addition to various useful features which also add to the difficulty as well. From the presentations, there are links to various sources where you can gather the resources/assets from such as the music, sounds, graphics, voices and so on. For Construct 2 and Game Maker Studio, there are already newer features compared to their previous versions. The official opinion stated that the Construct 2 is less difficult than Game Maker to use for game creation. Lastly, there's even the opportunity to publish the games made with one of those tools to the Windows Store but that requires the amount of steps and you may need newer technical knowledge of new technologies as Windows 8 technology contains a number of newer technological features we don't know of in the first place compared to the previous OSes. It's important to know the new technology as things are changing and especially when we take newer Microsoft certified courses at MVA.

Other tools mentioned were Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Inkscape, GIMP and Paint.NET. Of course, the most superior one is the Adobe products but they can be bitches to find and buy so you're better off with the alternatives like GIMP, Inkscape, etc.

For music, I already have the tools like FL Studio and Noteworthy Composer where each stuff is made in both MIDI and MP3 but I don't know when will I post these MIDI files I made with Noteworthy Composer straigtht to vgmusic.com as this may mark a future opportunity as a gamer to post those arranges there. Of course, that website seems to be westernized so I have to follow that style and especially for the 16-Bit arranges I made and posted on YouTube. Note that not all 16-Bit arranges are credited as I fear that TheEightBit will not accept those Japanese like contents I contributed with that soundfont. But enough of these personal stuffs here. For actuality, I already used certain arranges for Game Maker as well, leaving the sound effects to be un-original as I took those sounds from various sources and provided the credits all along. Lastly, before this Jump Start existed, I already have the experience in using Game Maker but it seems that my works using that tool already turned out to be the project catastrophes like things not working well no matter how many improvements and changes I put in and especially when certain parts looked impossible to clear. Not to mention, the over-execution of the contents that caused other bugs on us as well.

Game Maker Studio for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Game Maker Studio may seem to be multi-platform export compatible and Windows 8, Windows Phone and Steam versions are the next. But for Windows 8, it is going to be a confusing mix when it comes to games and apps used on it.  There may be games that will work on tablet only which is one bullshit factor as they are supposed to have support for multiple controls such as touch, mouse and keyboard, not touch only. Suppose that there’s a racing game to be run on Windows 8, the control concept should support keyboard, game controller and tablet controls which may involve touch and device tilting. That’s how the fairness should be when it comes to Metro games on Windows 8. If that’s the case for Game Maker Studio, games made for tablets and smartphones should have exact controls when ported to these platforms but Windows 8 is going to be an exception, they should support other controls besides touch because it is going to be a waste of people’s money if the games support like one control type only and not the others so what’s the point of getting those anyway? For Windows Phone 8 devices, the resolutions can be identical to certain Android devices but not all Windows Phone 8 devices support that high resolution so the development may be less difficult with common resolutions and less time consuming. But for IOS devices, it is obvious that porting from IOS to Android may take you more time due to different resolutions between the two OSes. For Windows 8 games ported from Android or Windows Phone 8 with 720P as the target resolution, you may expect the graphics to be kind of blur because the tablet resolutions may be somewhat higher than 720P. At least porting HD games from Ipad to Windows 8 may be a little bit challenging due to the fact that Windows 8 tablets are in widescreen. It’s the same deal for Android tablets when porting games from Ipad to Android.

However, how about the games that are going to be developed for all of these mentioned tablet and smartphone platforms? This can make the simultaneous development more challenging and time consuming because you may have to divide the same game into multiple versions. On the computer, the resolution doesn’t matter as much but you may have to tell the resolution requirement under System Requirements for whatever games you have made. If the computer is running the game at lower resolution than the game’s resolution, I can guess that there will be signs of pixel loss but I don’t know if this can pose more problems for running the Game Maker games like that. It’s kind of worse when running in Window Mode because you’re not able to see other parts of the game screen unless the screen resolution is set to the one higher than the game’s resolution.

Even better with Game Maker Studio is that the games can also be made for HTML5 in which games can be played online just like playing Adobe Flash games on the net.

So, you’ve known that Windows 8 had hit RTM stage but the development tool for Windows 8 will soon be out on the Windows Store under Desktop Store. The best platform for developing games with Game Maker Studio will be on the computers and if you want to test your creations that are simply made for tablets, smartphones or both, you can simply export to those platforms and then test it from there.

Non-game software on Steam

Perhaps Steam is the better service to use on desktop and laptop computers than that freaking Windows Store and the non-gaming software store from Steam may be the answer to Windows Store. The software there is interesting to explore but the apps there are seriously costly. Here are the following titles for you to purchase from Steam:

• Game Maker Studio: The latest program in the family that allows people to make their own games for Steam Workshop, IOS, Android, computers and even HTML5. It saves time in development rather than having to code for native languages but depending on the development quality, the development of the game can take up from weeks to months in order to make the creation even better. Optionally, there can be updated versions of the creations perhaps for better features and bug fixes. The only downside of the free version compared to Game Maker Lite is that the resources are very limited.
• 3D Coat: A 3D modeling CGI program that allows you to model the characters and character dresses. There will be layers to paint with, voxel sculpting, UV-Mapping, Retotoplogy and best of all, the linking with Photoshop. You can use this as well as Photoshop for better texturing processes through multiple layers.
• ArtRage Studio: It may be like Photoshop and Illustrator but damn, it looks kind of professional enough to be on par with them. Even better is that you can import and export PSD files which keep layers, layer groups, blend modes and editable text layers.
• CameraBag 2: The photo tweaking and enhancement program that allows you to enhance your photos even further. Choose from 100+ built-in styles and filters or create and share your own. There are full suites of 25+ manual photographic tools including advanced curve editors. Using Analog Engine, it has high-fidelity, 32-bits-per-channel, non-destructive, multi-threaded image processing which can be fast and smooth. Its old-school looks are particularly high tech in recreating the natural blemishes and random variations which may be one of the hardest digital challenges and that’s where the research of the developers of this program is much devoted. With the Analog Engine, even the most heavily-modified photos will retain smooth, film-like colors. The program may be best suited for laptops but you can also use it for the desktop for advanced multimedia purposes.
• Source Filmmaker: The program that is currently in public beta and it is the movie-making tool built and used by Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine. Because it uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie and vice versa. You can get started with this prototype program and see the base game assets from Team Fortress 2 along with assets from some of the first Meet The Team short films. Go use it now, you’re gonna want this for advanced video making.