GameMaker 7 due to launch
I believe GameMaker is most probably the greatest RAD (Rapid Application Development) game development tool available today. It has an easy and understandable interface for beginners (even children can use it) and a scripting language that exposes powerful functionality for advanced users. It also has huge support across dozens of communities in different countries and speaking different languages. And what’s best is that it’s free! GameMaker is free to use and produce games with and has a paid-for registered version which includes some helper functions.
The best news is that GameMaker 7 is due to be released on the 28 February 2007 and a lot of changes are taking place around the development and exposure of the product.
Mark Overmars (the developer of GameMaker; the professor at Utrecht University and not the soccer player) has partnered with YoYo Games to continue the development and distribution of GameMaker.
“YoYo Games is a new company based in the UK, setup by a group of former and current game industry execs, including Sandy Duncan, former head of Xbox in Europe†- GameMaker website
Mark is also a director at YoYo games and the company is looking to create a host of online services built on the existing community, including a developer profile portal where developers can publish their games at no cost for free download by the public.
GameMaker 7 features include:
- Windows Vista compatibility
- Animated splash screens
- Same hardware requirements at GameMaker 6
- Backwards compatibility with GameMaker 6.x files
- New extension mechanism for extending the functionality of GameMaker
- Save to disk surface resources
- sprite_save and background_save to save bitmaps from the resources
- Printing extension to print shapes, texts, screenshots, etc
- Various bugs and security issues resolved from GameMaker 6.x
I’m excited about the Windows Vista compatibility because it makes getting Vista for the home viable.
GameMaker 7 will use a different registration mechanism from previous versions and existing registered users will get a free license when GameMaker 7 comes out. I have a registered copy and looking forward to downloading the tool tomorrow and getting myself onto Pro (no longer called registered).
When I first read Mark Overmars my mind started racing and then you said not the soccer player, damn he was good. anyways, thanks for the tip! I’ll see if I can get a bud to download it tomorrow, should be interesting!