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You may have noticed in many software tools there are new ‘AI magic’ buttons appearing left, right and centre! Many seem like a great idea until you try them out. The results tend not to match the expectation, and are left unused with old work flows relied on as comfortable, friendly habits. Even eBay has jumped on the AI bandwagon and added an AI helper that can write a description for the item you are selling. It does seem helpful and gives you a start on what you might decide to end up with for your sales pitch, so well-done eBay!
Closer to our own working needs are the new features being added to GitHub. Copilot integration was announced at GitHub Universe 2023. The opening keynote reports gains of 55% in programmer productivity! This piqued our interest and is being researched and tested to see if this can bring big benefits to our own dev team. Early signs are that it’s very impressive and is able to save us a lot of time. This is looking like a great example of how AI can help us with our project goals.
AI is entering the mainstream and is becoming more useful and effective at a rapid pace. It’s a time where we all need to keep up with the ever-changing world around us and embrace effective AI tools which in turn will help us achieve our objectives. Let’s just hope HAL can open the pod bay doors once we give him the keys! ?
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As many of you know we aimed to fix all reported bugs in the GameGuru MAX universe before the end of 2023, and we did it! Naturally, a few days later new reports came in, but it was a great treat for the team to know that almost two years of backdated reports since before leaving Early Access on Steam had been sorted.
The mission for 2024 is to continue to include fixes, and to ramp up our focus on performance, stability, compatibility and providing support for those who are interested in publishing their creations.
Thanks to everyone who helped us through 2023, and we look forward to delivering many more updates in 2024 – and possibly some new features ?
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It has been two years since we handed over the role of adding new features to the GameGuru Classic coding community, and we assumed the role of making sure the product remained bug free.
Well, eight quarterly updates of bug-free freedom later, many of you still vote GameGuru Classic and are having plenty of fun creating cool games.
We continue our pledge in 2024 to provide quarterly bug fixing updates for as long as you need them, and to continue to improve your ability to transition from GameGuru Classic to Gameguru MAX when you are ready.
The next update is scheduled for March so if you are experiencing an issue you would like us to resolve, just post details in our issues board
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As you’ll know AppGameKit Classic and AppGameKit Studio are at a 'feature freeze' stage. We will release occasional updates for AppGameKit Classic, and AppGameKit Studio will soon be moving to a community-based development model, similar to the way we moved GameGuru Classic to a community-based development model hosted on GitHub. We’ll keep you updated as our plans progress!
In the meantime, the games keep coming from AppGameKit developers. The latest release from prolific developer Virtual Nomad is a fast-paced single-screen Platformer called Saga of Song, filled with imagination, complete with competitive Online Hi-Scores, Controller Support and fraught with plenty of flavour and danger for you to explore!
Also released this month is an amazing plugin for AppGameKit Studio that expands controller support and tracks attached devices. ZInput - Comprehensive Game Controller Input System is just that and adds a comprehensive set of commands for tracking game controllers attached to your system. Definitely worth a look!
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In The Game Creator Store news this edition, we're taking a look at a new artist SNIFF, who has created several texture packs, including this desert island pack for GameGuru MAX. The pack contains 42 MAX ready textures to expand your games with.
We're also returning to established artist BSP and looking at one of his older packs, the Trees pack for GameGuru Classic. The well received pack contains 41 trees for various environments and is an ideal start to build your own forests.
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This month’s guest developer is Blood Moon Interactive
Blood Moon Interactive (but let’s call him Tom ?) hails from Arizona in the US and has worked for one of the world’s largest banks for over 14 years. He’s an automation architect, which means he develops web-based systems to automate processes for banking operations. So, whilst game development is a hobby of his, he’s no stranger to the rigors of development and can draw very distinct parallels between the two.
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Tom tells us how he got started with programming – and more!
“Around 2015 I started first with C# and transitioned to Javascript a couple of years later, primarily because it had a more practical application for my career. I dabbled with other game-making software for a while, including Unity and GameMaker Studio 2, but didn’t get much past the YouTube tutorials I watched. I had never heard of any TheGameCreator products until I came across GameGuru Max a couple of months before its EA release. So, I am a fairly recent fan of Lee’s work and describe myself as a GameGuru Max enthusiast.
My primary focus right now is creating GameGuru Max tutorial videos for YouTube. After I helped draft the first version of the user manual, I was looking for a way to continue to help GameGuru MAX users learn the software (whilst learning it myself :-O) and noticed that there was very little helpful information available in this space, so it seemed like the best way to contribute.
My style of teaching is conversational. I try to make each video a conversation with my student, the viewer, and talk to them directly as I would if they were sitting there with me. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback for this approach and I’m very glad it helps.”
Examples of what’s available on Tom’s YouTube channel are:
NPC Control Behavior Explained
Hud Interface Behavior Explained
Game Design Document Explained: Your Roadmap to Game Creation
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We asked Tom what’s next......
“Well, I intend to do a tutorial video for every behavior in GameGuru Max, along with some other content that can help users learn and improve their game making skills. Eventually I’ll do a vlog once I’m ready to start working on a serious project so viewers can follow along in the development process.”
You can catch all of Tom’s video guides on his YouTube Channel
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