MyGameBuilder.com Blog

Activity has really  moved to the forums: http://myGameBuilder.com/forums

 There have been a lot of changes lately in MGB, see the forum thread for details: http://mygamebuilder.com/forum/index.php?topic=34.0

We just added a new game mechanic -  a ‘can’t be killed’ powerup item that player can pick up and use immediately. It can last for up to 30 seconds (or less if teh game designer wishes).

A very simple example is at the end of the ‘Game Mechanics’ demo (which is the last game in the ’top games’ list).

More soon

- MGBees

We finally got the “top games’ list done - later on we’ll redo it so it’s some kind of voting scheme, but for the next few weeks it’ll just be us MGB tyrants deciding who should be on the top list

I’m kind of getting bored now of just one sound effect in the entire game, I think I’d like to do something about that next…?

KMGB

Enemies can now shoot back!!!!  This is very similar to how players shoot.. you need to:

1. Create an actor that is an enemy
2. Change the ’shot count’ to be more than zero
3. Change the shot range (the default of 1 is pretty low)
4. Choose an actor for the shot (this should be an actor of type ’shot’… Doh!)
5. (Optionally) change the shot accuracy - these aren’t very different currently, will improve later…

Happy hunting

MGBzzzzzz

A few changes this weekend…

• If you refresh/close/back from the MGB page, there’s a warning that checks if you really want to exit MGB. Phew!
• Fixed the bug with the missing avatars on the Browse accounts page.
• You can jump straight to loading & running a game from the “Browse Users” page. This is sweet! …much better than clicking through projects and map choices. This is also teh base for the ‘embed’ mode I’ve been working on - that should allow you to put your game in your own web page.
• Import is back. It’s not ideal, but it’ll work now for the people that really want it.

Import’s quite tricky… The key here is that Flash apps need permission from a site before they can load stuf from that site.. that permission is defined using a crossdomain.xml file - see http://www.crossdomainxml.org/ for details. At sometime later I’ll look to add a way around this using a host-based proxy (if anyone knows of a canned one that’ll be much appreciated). In theory the other approach hack would be to download the .SWF file for MGB and run it locally but I haven’t tried that.

- The MGBeasts

Well, it was a suprise, but we found a suprisingly large proportion of our early users have 800 x 600 displays. We just made life much nicer for these folks.

Top Tip: if you are using IE as your browser, hit F11 to go full screen. You can claim even more space back by autohiding the top toolbar (move your mouse to the top of the screen, right-click the mouse and select the ‘auto-hide’ option. If the grey IE status bar is wasting space at the bottom of the screen, you can get rid of that to from the ALT+V “view’ menu.

Firstly, it’s not finished - not even close, but it is started, and that’s even more important!

MyGameBuilder is a website that allows users to create, play and share their own games – all using tools that operate within their web browser. Games can be developed either alone or in a team with other users.

Users can also just browse and play games, and will be able to give feedback on games and game assets. The experience from sites such as YouTube is that there are often far more viewers than creators, and so MyGameBuilder will provide a great explore -> play -> explore cycle using established techniques such as tagging, collaborative filtering and ‘similar games’ links.

The kinds of games created by MyGameBuilder will be simple in scope – this is not an environment for building the next 3D blockbuster game. It is instead an environment that helps people enjoy creating hobbyist-level games, either alone, or in a team with people of complementary skills. The initial game engine is switch based, but we do plan to embed a scripting language to allow very flexible game development.

The site is currently running in a ‘preview’ state that allows users to create and play games online, but there’s a lot more in store. We’re having a blast building and tinkering with this site, we hope you enjoy it too! We want to hear what you think you’d like to see us add…

The MGBists

Some more updates. The focus has been on some usability tweaks based on feedback from our early users, and a big scenario here is the game screenshot view in the main browsing page - it really looks much nice and less cluttered now.

I heard that a lot of folks are keen to have tile “import” working.. We hope to get that finished at the weekend…

The MGBsters

We just fixed the logic around shoot & push..

Try it!

There’s a kind of actor called a ’sliding block’ that wasn’t working correctly. The idea is that a player who has the ‘can push pushable items’ flag set can, well, push pushable items. Naturally a sliding block is a pushable item, and moreover, you can set them up so they can ’squish’ enemies.  However.. before tonight the squishing only happened if they were moving towards you.  Now you can squish ‘em even if they’re running away

Shots are implemented just like sliding blocks - they just spawn and later disappear instaed of staying around. So that got fixed at the same time.

So a few games are working better.. wish_team’s ‘Icarro style’ project is now happily sliming the poor wittle bunnies and foo’s Pengo project is now pushing the solid blocks around to squish those nasty Sno Bees. I still need to add some more behaviours to make the Pengo really Pengo-like, but that shouldn’t be too hard now.

Happy Building!

MGB-oid..

PS: Also, publish map is now disabled for guests (duh!), and the zoom button in Tile Maker is now also in the main cluster of tools on the left. Also, fixed some wierd collision logic bugs. If you see any bugs report em here or in the forum.. Thanks!

What’s new today? Hey, lots of small but important kaizen and bugfixes

• Shots are working again!!! Yeah 
• Browse Users had another facelift - graphical view of skills, hints, etc
• In ‘guest mode view’ we now correctly read in the profile information - mottos/messages, status, colors etc.
• When a game jumps between maps, fixed the bug which mean the keys were ’stuck’ until you pushed them again
• When starting a game for the first time (each login session) we explain that the arrow keys are used to play the game
• When playing a game on a small window (less than 16 rows/columns), the scrolling would ‘vibrate’. This should be less likely now, but still need to do a better fix

More coming later…

MGB team