On July 13th I uploaded a News Article which outlined what to expect from the upcoming Game Maker 8.1 tutorials. Today I write to tell you that everything is on track and although you'll have to wait a little longer for those new tutorials, I can promise the wait will be worth it!
Proper Form
So what have I been doing these past few weeks? Well, I managed to read through the Game Maker's Companion and learn a lot about "proper form". See, Game Maker is very forgiving when it comes to programming. You can leave spaces in resource names, leave your coding un-punctuated and do all sorts of things that are very bad practice. Only with formal game programming education would you ever learn the error of your ways. The Game Maker's Companion gave me that lesson! Seriously, it's a GREAT book, and I'd highly recommend checking it out. From reading it, I was able to pull together a number of tips which you can read about here:
On a related note, I will be restructuring all of my tutorials to make sure they are up to scratch. This way you won't have to fork out $25 to purchase the Game Maker's Companion and you can still learn about proper form!
Download a Library
I've also created a brand new Game Maker Extension, the "BGP Library" which I
can safely say is a vast improvement over the original in every way! I've gotten rid of all the useless Actions so now 23 Actions in the Extension. I've also taken the liberty of separating the "BGP Library" from the "Game Builder" tab, which will be released later as a separate Extension. Why? Well, the "Game Builder" doesn't really have a place outside of a few tutorials. In contrast, the BGP Library can be used in any game, so I figured it would make more sense to separate the two to allow for a greater degree of flexibility.
Plus, now that it takes up less space, it fits nicely and neatly with the other default Game Maker tabs, as if it was always meant to be there!
Most importantly, I've gone over all the programming for these Actions to ensure that they are written in proper form!
I even added a Compiled HTML Help file to this Extension, which was completely missing from the previous one.
To download the BGP Library, click the link below:
Looking Ahead (TL;DR)
So Game Maker 8.1 Tutorials are still on their way, but to tide you over you've got a brand new tutorial to read and an Extension to use. Also, it turns out it's a good thing that I chose to sit on that finished Introduction because with this new Extension there are some changes I've had to make with it.
Good luck Game Making!
~Bluish-Green Productions
