We’re all familiar these days with how computers and devices work. You can’t really function in the world unless you have the digital side of your life in order. As of March 2021 there were 5.17 billion active internet users worldwide, compared to just 16 million back in December 1995.

The next digital shift is rumoured to be the Metaverse with big companies such as Facebook and Epic Games investing and speculating as to what this will mean in reality. It’s likely to happen at some point in the future and there will be early adopters who jump straight in to this new and exciting place.

Let’s just hope the lessons of the past 25 years are considered to ensure it’s safe and considerate to its users!

The recent  AppGameKit Studio update seems to have gone down well the community after a few smaller updates and it now allows users to export their games to Android with App Bundle Support.

A BIG thank you to all the users who helped us nail this area of the export system. We will be releasing the next version of AppGameKit Studio in early December.

For those that aren’t familiar with AppGameKit Studio, it gives you everything you need to take your idea from concept to finished game – that’s all you need to know ? and it’s on offer at the moment so it’s a great time to dive in and give it a go!

In early October we rolled out a new version of AppGameKit Classic for all users. The focus for the build was the support for Android Google Play App Bundles. The update also fixed a number of other issues and you can read up in full about all the changes here.

The next update for AppGameKit Classic will be in early December. If you have any issues you would like the development team to consider for this update then please post details into the official AppGameKit issues board.

If you’re not yet an AppGameKit convert, then now is a great time to grab the AppGameKit Classic Bumper Pack

The AppGameKit Classic Bumper Pack is a massive pack with a big discount ending shortly!

The pack includes AppGameKit Classic, Giant Asset Pack 1, Giant Asset Pack 2, AppGameKit for Raspberry Pi, Games Pack 1, a stack of educational material and the 3D Asset Pack!

Our dev team have been thundering along adding lots of new features to get GameGuru MAX shipshape and ready for the early access launch at the end of this month, and boy have there been some reveals in our weekly live broadcasts!

In the last four weeks we demonstrated the new sculpting and painting features of the brand-new terrain system, unveiled the new game project storyboard system which turns GameGuru MAX from a smart level editor to a full-blown game maker. Plus, we’ve added small logic for keys, doors, switches & lights, and large logic for zombie and soldier AI, including allegiance settings so any character can be an enemy, an ally, or a neutral character.

Speaking of characters, we also improved the Character Creator so each base model now has their own locker room, and behind the scenes we continue to add character parts so you can make the characters you want.

If you cast your eye over the product, you will see we are blocking off most of the functionality required now and will shortly enter an iterative and testing phase.

If you’re pre-order user we would encourage you to grab the Friday builds as we release them and let us know if you find any showstoppers. We have plenty more features planned for release after November, but we want our Early Access version to be solid and capable, and as always, your help is key to making sure we get it right.

Want to know more? Take a look at our latest update video to see the latest on the GameGuru MAX development front.

We are almost at that time when we turn our development eye to the next round of GameGuru Classic bug fixes for our December update, the last of 2021. It's amazing to think we pledged almost 2 years ago to keep maintaining Classic and fixing all reported bugs, back when we had hundreds of outstanding bugs on the issues board. Having just run a recent count, we now have only 6 bugs reported since our July fixes update and we should have no problems squashing those in time for December.

As always, if you have reported an issue, we may ask for more information as this will help us reproduce and fix the issue much quicker, so please do keep your issue active so we have everything we need for when we go in and fix it. If you do find something you would like fixed just post your issue to the GitHub issues board

Finally, for the bargain hunters amongst you.....

GameGuru Premium Pack, which includes GameGuru Classic, Mega Pack 1, Mega Pack 2, Buildings Pack and Death Valley Pack is on SPECIAL PROMOTION from today!

This month we interview David Carr, aka apocolyp4 on the TGC forums, a freelance software developer from Scotland.

David started programming when he was 7 on the ZX Spectrum and has been programming ever since!

In the early 2000’s he started using Dark Basic (the predecessor to AppGameKit) after reading about it in a PC magazine. David went on to use it to develop his final project for his University Honours degree, which was an audio-only version of the game Asteroids for people with impaired vision. He now boasts a Master of Science in Advance Computing as well as a Bachelor of Science in Computing with Artificial Intelligence!

David tells us more about his history with TheGameCreators, “When AppGameKit was released I jumped at the chance to develop mobile apps. I must have been doing something right as I ended up working on apps for TheGameCreators. This included their #1 selling Driving Test Success range of mobile apps through to my most recent AppGameKit Mobile (which is built using tier 1 Basic). I also built mobile apps for multiple departments at Glasgow Caledonian University using AppGameKit.”

He continues, “One thing I always wanted to do was to release my AppGameKit-built games on game consoles such as Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Since these are not supported by AppGameKit I decided to build my own AppGameKit player to do just that. Starting with a focus on the Xbox series X/S consoles I have been working on a Universal Windows Platform (UWP)-based version of the AppGameKit player that uses the C# programming language and the Monogame game library."

"It’s still in the early stages of development, but currently it can run most of the 2D examples that come with AppGameKit as well as a good number of my own apps and games."

The screenshots above are examples taken from games running on a Xbox Series X console using David’s Xbox version of AppGameKit. 

David continues, "The plan is to get the 2D commands supported before moving onto the 3D commands. I have also added in extra commands so people can have access to Xbox features such as full control over the Xbox controllers rumble motors. If this is a success, I will move on to porting this to both PlayStation and Nintendo consoles – watch this space!”

Check out David’s YouTube channel to see his apps and games ?