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Have you noticed a trend in the last few years to add "Plus" to the end of every product or service, then follow that up with a gentle offer to enjoy a premium experience for a small fee? What started as a prudent business model for certain sectors has now become so prolific, it is fast becoming a parody of itself and in clear danger of becoming jaded before the decade is out.
Indeed, for every three articles you start to read, it is not uncommon that one of them stops you mid-read to offer you, the gallant reader, an opportunity to read the remainder of the article as part of its premium features. In this now commonplace dance of bait and switch, it may be compared to an endless sea of highways, saturated with satisfactory signposts, terminating in a tenacious toll. Of course, the phenomena of a free trial or sample tasting is nothing new, but perhaps it was better labelled in days gone by.
In the ecology of software, the early games industry employed every kind of demo to entice a purchase, but it was always a demo, and everyone knew it. Let us hope in the fullness of time, we do not see our favourite games stop mid-play and ask if we would like to enjoy a premium 'plus' experience of say, completing the game you bought and, for an extra dollar, complete it in your own lifetime. Let us hope such a cynical and sinister future does not come to bear, and game developers the world over are able to defend the integrity of their creations and deliver them unfettered to an appreciating and unapprehensive audience.
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Now well out of Early Access, GameGuru MAX V1 has been setting it's stall out for the future, and preparing the ground for greater connection with the community. Work is underway to support the Steam Workshop system that enables users to contribute discrete scripts and media to expand the capabilities of the game maker, the initial phase rolling out to known contributors to test the stability and security of the process.
You may already have enjoyed the frequent updates to the RPG and PUZZLE behaviours far in advance of the official builds, and as the scope of this system encapsulates more contributors, it has every chance of playing a key role in the expansion of GameGuru MAX.
In other news, and as part of the transition, we have moved to a monthly live YouTube broadcast on the last Wednesday of the month (7pm BST) with a new extended Q&A format so that more questions can be asked, and answers can be demonstrated live in the software.
With a combination of bug fixes, small functionality improvements and support for community users who are far along with their GameGuru MAX game projects, the team are busy with moving MAX from a tentative V1 to a solid and robust tool for creating games and shipping them on Steam and other game stores. In a recent YouTube presentation, several commenters asked, "Who is GameGuru MAX created or intended for?" and the answer remains "for those who would like to create a game quickly without the necessity to script, code or create game assets from scratch".
In all walks of life, and in particular those just starting out on their game making careers, this accelerant into creative expression still provides inestimable opportunities to craft and shape a wholly unique game experience, and we look forward to what the community creates with GameGuru MAX this year.
Finally, continuing the momentum of our early DLC releases, we are happy to report that new artists are discovering GameGuru MAX and producing assets across many styles and media types, from small Mini-Kits all the way through to the much larger Booster Packs, covering genres from Fantasy and Modern Day through to Cyberpunk and the Far Future – all available on Steam ?
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As is our custom, we prepared, tested and released our second quarter patch for GameGuru Classic in June and once again reduced the bug reports back down to single digits, ensuring stability for this long-running game-maker. Though not an exhaustive list, we touched on improvements to the 3D model importer, standalone export and third person motion and animation speed. We also performed fixes and small clean-up activities around the User Interface, character reloading, weapon collecting and player health script.
We also had the fortune to welcome contributions from Preben this quarter and we invite anyone with basic C++ knowledge to check out the public repository for GameGuru Classic and see if contributing takes your fancy.
Bug fixes aside, we have not been idle on the DLC front either, with the release of the much applauded CineGuru, a tool for creating cinematics in your game levels, Audio Ambience DLC to add a high quality series of scores and most recently, the Easy Terrain Tool that brings the power of procedural generation to bear on your level terrain, even to the extent of creating entire islands for your games. As always, if you are an artist with a collection of game assets you would like to see made compatible with GameGuru Classic, please do get in touch.
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And remember - if you do find an issue you would like us to fix in Classic, you can post this to our issues board ?
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Our guest dev in this edition is Neil King aka Zappo
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Neil lives and works in the beautiful, innovative and creative county of Staffordshire, UK. He is a full-time software developer with his own companies and now spends most of his time creating cloud-based applications for business and education. After 20 years of working at a College, he decided to focus more time on creating software for use in education including ‘Safeguarding 24’ which is a safeguarding tool used by schools, colleges and universities around the world. He also runs his own programming, design and consultancy business as www.NeilTKing.com and creates mobile applications under the brand WorldByDesign.
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We asked Neil to tell us a bit about his background.
“I've been writing software since the age of about 9 (so a very long ago) when I was first introduced to an Oric 1. I've gone through many computers since then, such as ZX Spectrum's, Commodore's and PC's. Making games is something I have always enjoyed, and I've created them for more platforms than I can remember, including the Nintendo DS, Cybiko (kudos to anyone who has ever heard of one of those) and custom hardware using microcontrollers like the Arduino.
The original DarkBasic from TheGameCreators was introduced to me at a previous place of employment as the IT Services Manager. I bought it, loved it and moved on to DarkBASIC Professional soon after. I purchased AppGameKit when that came out, AppGameKit v2 and then AppGameKit Studio and haven't looked back. I've always loved how you can create great quality games, with so much control, at such a rapid pace with TheGameCreators products. I have always been a programmer at heart so getting game concepts up and running fast is ideal.”
Neil has just released ‘Dungeons & Dice’ for Android (Apple iOS version coming soon) which is a 3D dice simulator for role-playing and board games. It includes dice from D2 up to D20, with a full set available for free, and no adverts. You can currently unlock a total of 93 dice in the full version with a small in-app purchase. You can also add several dice to a "bag" to roll together for RPG quests or multi-dice games. Neil says the feedback from D&D fans who got to test it has been great ?
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Neil tells us more about his projects.
“By far my biggest selling app created with AppGameKit has been Ghostalker. Someone asked if I could build something that worked like a paranormal investigators "spirit box", so I did. It uses every sensor available in the device to detect changes in the environment and converts those readings to spoken words. Ghostalker reached number 1 in the App Store in February 2020 and continues to be a big seller.”
Finally, we asked Neil what’s next?
“Running my businesses takes up a huge amount of time but creating games is a passion so I try to work on new ideas whenever I can. One ongoing project is a platformer called ‘Cogalot’ which has been in development for over a year now for Android, iOS and PC. It is pretty much completed and includes some accessibility features to make it more fun and more inclusive. I'm just waiting for a couple of bug fixes in AppGameKit before I can publish it and let everyone have a play. I'd also like to add more dice designs to ‘Dungeons & Dice’.”
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