The speed of technological innovation now is almost overtaking itself! This can be attributed in no small measure to the improvements in communications technology. From pony express and telegraph wires, all the way through to wired and wireless transmissions, we can easily correlate the speed of technological progress with the speed at which we communicate with each other. Not content with keeping our conversations terrestrial, we're now seeing the rapid expansion of satellite internet to take the exchange of data to a whole new height.

With the relatively recent roll out of Konnect in Europe and the high profile launches of the Star Link global internet satellite system, not to mention the rollout of 6G by 2030, we are looking at a future that makes today's internet speeds look positively prehistoric.

It will be interesting to see what new innovations are conceived as a result of this massive increase in speed. Faster rockets took us to the moon. Exciting to see where faster internet takes us!

Take a look at the great March deals on these AppGameKit Classic DLCs:

And in case you missed it we released a maintenance build for AppGameKit Classic at the end of last month. Check out what was new in the build here!

Last month we also released a maintenance build for AppGameKit Studio - check out what’s new in the build here!

And if you’re looking for a great DLC deal check out the Mega Media Pack this month ?

If you’ve not yet tried AppGameKit Studio get the true feel of this great piece of software with the 14-day Free Trial version which lets you code and compile projects and even save them!

You can try out the Scene Editor, the Media Browser and the Debugger – all for FREE

New users will be able to get a good feel for how AppGameKit Studio works and the benefits it brings over the older 'Classic' version – try it here for free

As was our custom in 2020, and as being continued in 2021, we are almost ready to release the March Fixes update for GameGuru Classic, which means hitting every confirmed bug report on our Issues Board and fixing them all. When we started our ambitious task of hitting zero bug count back at start of 2020, we had a build-up of hundreds of bugs. Now we have only a handful of them, and all marked for annihilation every quarter.

As a result, we have seen some great reviews on Steam as new users encounter less issues and can enjoy the simple craft of making their first games. We are determined to continue this effort, and make sure Classic is a worthy companion to MAX on the Steam store.

If you find the Gigabytes of game assets that come with GameGuru Classic are falling short for your next game idea, we are happy to put some of our DLCs on promotion to get you a great deal on adding to your collection. Here are the promotions we are running in March:

We hope you have enjoyed the regular Wednesday broadcasts of GameGuru MAX development progress and live chat sessions so far. It is true the revelations have been a little thin on the ground this past month, mainly centred around the installer, updater and some UI elements. However, we are looking forward to sharing more eye candy and features in the weeks and months to come and giving you something substantial to get your teeth into for our regular Friday builds. Read on!

It was important we established a strong system for getting new builds to you easily, and to ensure we have in place a good mechanism for collecting bug reports and acting on them quickly - we are almost at the point where everything is set up and ready to go!

We have some exciting updates on the horizon, including an improved lighting model, battle tested import capabilities, new object management system and a whole new way to generate large swathes of terrain with a few easy clicks.

All of these features have been extensively designed and planned for 2021 and we intend to announce and release them in small, completed, and fully tested, sections each Friday. As such there will be no big monster updates, just regular and consistent progress each week as we provide the functionality you need to make games.

We think you are going to really enjoy the next few months of progress!

This month we’re featuring the game development exploits of Indie developer David Mack. Like many in the 80s and early 90s, David cut his teeth on home computer programming. His computer of choice was the highly popular Commodore Amiga and he was one of the many thousands who used AMOS Basic to code games and demos. He wrote his first platform game using AMOS and has fond memories of those pre-Internet days.

Life then got in the way for 25 years until he came to buy AppGameKit for his son’s Christmas present. David found himself using AppGameKit more than his son, which reignited his passion for coding. Back in the AMOS days he could only have 20 or so sprites moving around but now with faster PC CPUs and AppGameKit’s sprites engine he could have thousands flying around.

With a skip in his step and a rekindled zest for coding he began work on a new platformer game for the PC and Aquillanto was born – a 2D side scrolling platformer inspired by the games he played on his Amiga a quarter of a century ago.

The development is a labour of love and the game has been in production for seven years already. Finding time between normal work time and family time, Aquillanto is now reaching completion and ready for release onto Steam.

David says his game is different to the myriad of other platformers, it does not rely heavily on timed events and you needing to predict when monsters and platforms will be in a certain location. With Aquillanto there is some of that; for example timing it right to jump onto a moving platform, but there's also a lot of reactive play. He’s designed the monsters and platforms to have lots of different and reactive behaviours (about 40+) - some monsters charge or shoot if you are in their line of sight (sneak up on them perhaps), some turn and fight if you deal a blow to them, some drop from the ceilings to get you, others hone in on you based on an aggression setting, some swoop to attack making them harder to hit back at, there are numerous platforms that you can guide one way or another. It all leads to a more reactive kind of play which brings something fun to the table. He’s really hoping it hits the spot for gameplayers on Steam.

We asked David why he chose to use AppGameKit to develop his game. David by his own admission says he’s not super techy and not a fan of the simplified drag-and-drop style of game making. He wanted the full flexibility that coding brings but without having to learn a more complex language. AppGameKit fits the bill perfectly – and it’s like his old AMOS on the Amiga but on steroids! He’s been super impressed with the performance – he says it really is possible to code full on games with AppGameKit. Aquillanto renders in full HD (1920x1080), has multiple layers of parallax scrolling, hundreds of monsters with custom behaviours, moving platforms, modulated sound effects for everything, hundreds of ink droplets (bullets) all being coloured on the fly and more.... and all running at well over 60fps on a regular PC.

There were a few hurdles to jump during his long development cycle, the biggest of which was the main character controller. He was super keen to have the character really responsive, with no hint of floaty-ness so you can really throw him around the screen with accuracy. It took a lot of tweaking to get a really good feel. He also needed a few tools such as a tile map editor and a way of getting the hundreds of individual map tiles (created in a 3D application) into single atlas images. He wanted something that would fit his needs exactly so in the end he wrote his own in AppGameKit.

Aquillanto is due for release early 2022. The game is 85% the way through now with some techie challenges to overcome before it’s ready for release.

With some parting advice, David recommends any budding game developers don’t make their first project a massive one like he has. Start with small game ideas and complete them. It's better to have a small, finished game than a massive never-to-be-completed one. Whilst he’s still loving developing Aquillanto, he is aware that seven plus years leaves less time for other projects.

Big thanks to the folks on the forums – they have sent lots of help and advice to David on his Aquillanto journey to date, he really appreciates it and says it's this great community which makes all the difference.

We wish David well on the final leg of his game development and we’ll feature Aquillanto again once it’s released ?