Haha...I just realised I joined this site, made some blogs, disappeared for a while and never contributed anything.

Wow, I suck.

I'm not dead though (yet). I'll put together some beginner tutorials and shove those on the site (How to do select-drag, how to do team controls for soldiers, some basic follow AI, and some examples like a gun engine etc. Probably things that most people know, but hopefully newbies to GML will get a better idea of it).

Also, Warhammer 40K Victory or Death is temporarily on the shelf (though, mind you, I haven't been able to make any improvements since the last blog because...well I kinda suck, really) while I do a major project for school. Which is, of course, Game Design related. Me and a couple of friends are making a Star Wars game (we decided an RPG would be illogical considering we only have four weeks), so as lead technical designer, which sounds flashier than it actually is, I'm going to have to do my research on how to convincingly control a lightsabre with a mouse and make it fun, too. Without, of course, doing weird stuff like have the lightsabre pierce through his head (a thing I've occasionally seen on GM star wars games).

Wow, I just noticed the way the box goes larger as you type more text. That's really cool. Kudos to whoever programmed that.

Okay, I worked it out.

I did some investigation into the error, and I found an interesting comment by oOo:

"I have seen this before in GameCaves example and in the Stealth game's source, but this one is good too. This doesn't work in gm7, but its easy to fix. I think all you have to do is remove the d3d functions."

And he was right. Apparently the d3d functions were an exploitable feature, and GM7 fixed this.
Hope this helped someone as much this helped me.

So yeah. The abandoned project has been recovered and I'm starting it again. Hopefully I'll get it somewhere good this time before I have to stop again.

If I get this anywhere, I'll be sure to post at least a good screenshot to show you how it's coming along.

(All hail the Gamecave engine! =D )

Life in itself has been pretty crap, but getting better. Hopefully this sudden inspiration I got to start this project again will hold out.
But for the most part, I've just been playing 360. =P

So yeah, I registered to Game Maker 7.

EDIT: Apparently it's completely my fault that everything's screwed up, so I'll give that another check. I was too hasty to a conclusion, so here is my formal apology to Yoyo Games. I meant no harm by the statement, etc.

So I guess I'll have to spend a lot of time figuring out what it was I did wrong, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't change anything core except for the names...

Edit EDIT: Ah, CRAP...

Sorry everyone, yes, it was my fault. I must have accidentally changed something. I just overwrote the new file with the old one and everything's working. Thanks to Xxypher for alerting me to this grievious error, and I'm sorry for causing confusion etc.

But anyway, now that that's settled, let me reflect my PROPER opinion on GM7:
I like it. I've no idea why there are people who don't like the changes. Unless this is an updated release to the one everyone else got, they've done some interesting things with Game Maker and I like the changes. Definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Sorry again about the confusion earlier. I'll make sure to triple check before I jump to a conclusion again.

By the way, how do you do lighting? Is it shaders or something? Anyone got a tutorial?



THIRD EDIT: After trying out the Gamecave effects engine in Game Maker 7, I seem to be right: When using the motion blur effect, the view is resized to much smaller. So that one wasn't my fault.
Aside from that, all of Gamecave's other effects work.

I'll investigate the matter a little more closely.