Luminaire

Filed under: Game Maker

Luminaire… The start of the GM lighting era. This was developed shortly after GM6.1 was released with the new surfaces feature which I’ve been hammering mark about. It is old, outdated, and horribly inefficient because I was rushing to release it and show everyone that this can be done. Compared to it’s modern cousins like L3S, it’s not very much, but people have been continuously asking for it regardless. I don’t know why, but here it is.

I wouldn’t recommend using it in a serious game where L3S would really shine , but for smaller ones it should be just fine. The other thing you can learn from it is the way the engine is used to set the mood in a scene. I think the reason people still pick this over modern, better engines is because the demo is gorgeous. The others don’t do too well in this area. So look at the demo and learn how the eyecandy works. Notice how the lights fade in and out, notice the lights overhead, the use of glow. All these things aren’t technically complicated but add up to the ‘wow’ effect.
Look at it and learn from it, but you should really be using L3S or similar if you use a lighting engine. Make no mistake about it, this is a first generation lighting engine. In fact it’s the first lighting engine. It’s really oooooold! We’re now in 3rd gen dynamic soft shadows age!

Game info contains everything you’ll need to know to use this.

Luminaire

Tags: effects, eyecandy, tutorials

External object exporter/loader

Filed under: Game Maker

This is one of my coolest pieces of GM goodness ever. I refused to post it anywhere for nearly a year but now that I’m moving from GM I thought it would be nicer to share. Unfortunately it doesn’t come with a readme. I might write one if I get time but I’ll briefly explain it here.

This is a two piece system that allows to to take ANY object from ANY gm6 game, and load it at runtime into any game that uses the loader system. It’s the result of a several week collaboration between IsmAvatar and me. If you use this, credit is required for us both. The first step is the Object Exporter. It’s a nifty little piece of java code you’ll find in the zip. When you run it, point it at any GM6 game and I’ll bring up a list of objects in that game. You can then select any of those objects and it will export all their code. Note, it does not export and drag and drop actions other than the ‘execute code’ and ‘excecute script’ one. When we designed it, we agreed that anyone using it should only be using scripts. The really cool thing is it’ll automatically pay attention to what scripts your object relies on and export them as well. The result is a GOD file containing all the code required to manifest this object.
The second stage is the loader. It will take the object, and do a crapload of work behind the scenes to bring you one delicious function g_parse(). It loads a .god file and returns the object index which you can then instance as if the object has always been in the game! instance_create(0,0,g_parase(“rah.god”)) it’s as simple as that. Now a lot of the magic it does behind the scenes is about making it run fast. It acts as a primitive compiler and modifies the code going into it so it runs almost as fast as native code. It also does a couple of other things with parsing like allow you to ban certain functions which you’d consider unsafe. Or perhaps redirect one function into another. This is in the demo. Any calls to show_message() get redirected to winlog_post so any .god object attempting to show a message, shows it the way I tell it. Something very useful for serious extension mechanisms.

It does have several bugs, but overall it works. It’s not quite capable of taking an entire complex gm6 game and loading it straight, but for extension and modding purposes, it’s a gold mine.
If you use this or any part of this, be sure to credit both IsmAvatar and me. Also, we’re now living in a sort of GM7 world but on the G-Java foums is a utility capable of loading a gm7 game and saving it as a (corrupted) gm6. To fix the corruption, open game maker 6 with a blank game and merge it with the file this utility spat out. The result is a flawless conversion.

Extobj

Tags: development, tools

Threaded Log Window

Filed under: Game Maker

A little set of scripts to provide a threaded log window to GM. You can write to it in lines or sequentially, which is very useful for messages that have a start and an end like “Loading graphics…Done” where the Done part gets written on completion and stays on the same line.

Because this creature is threaded, it’s especially useful for debugging. When GM gets stuck in a long or endless loop, its output stops responding so it can’t tell you what’s going on. This log window will. When I worked on my more complicated creations, this came in handy countless times.

If anyone gets around to making an extension form it, please send it to me so I can put a link here. I tried to make one with the final version of extension maker and gave up. Frankly, that extension maker is pathetic given that it’s the only way GM7 users can use its most notable feature.

Winlog zip

Arcalyth from 64digits converted this script to extension form, so gm7 users can fetch it here. Threaded Log Extension

Tags: development, tools

Radial

Filed under: Game Maker

This is possibly the closest thing to a finished game I have, but it’s not quite finished. At some point I realized that the concept is too shallow to make a decent game with and dropped it. It’s still a great collection of tricks and effects for you to study.

Note that it was never intended for anyone else to see so it’s a horrible mess. The most horrible mess I ever made probably. You can do anything you want with it, provided that:
You do not use the graphics/music assets in your creations. I -will- enforce that.
You credit me if you work on this and release your own version.
Do not use the boids system in your creations.
Do not hound me with questions about how parts of it work.

Oh yeah, and the highscore server is long since dead so don’t expect your scores to show up

Radial

Tags: games