I’m still plugging away at the programming, but not as much as I was a couple of months ago.  Life and work gets in the way sometimes.  Anyway, the kids have made multiple games with the Game Maker software, in really no time at all.  Although I haven’t played much with Game Maker, I had a feeling that it was analogous to something like MS Front Page, meaning that you can stay with the “drag and drop” tools for everything, or you can actually get in and edit the code.  Well, that appears to be the case.  Game Maker got a mention in this week’s edition of The Escapist (which is a site you really should be reading – it’s one of the best out there!).  Here’s the quote:

“Perfectionism was supposed to be a 1-week prototype. To implement the game, I used Game Maker, and this was my first experience with the tool (I programmed all of my previous games in C++ and used OpenGL or SDL for graphical displays). I was shocked at how much I accomplished in a mere 16-hours of logged development time, and I’ll just state it flat out: Game Maker is an astounding piece of software. Doing simple things in Game Maker is easy, while doing more complicated things is always possible. It’s not that making a game in Game Make involves no programming, since defining object behavior is close to impossible without some sort of program-like construction (albeit a visual, point-and-click kind of programming). It’s that all of the bookkeeping, such as tracking object instances and their states, is handled for you in a very elegant way. The other impressive thing about Game Maker, given its complexity, is that it seems to be bug-free. Everything just works, and it often works in a more intelligent way than you might expect. Now if only Game Maker was open-source, or at least platform independent, I’d be in heaven. Yes, this is a Windows-only game, alas, and the first of its kind to emerge from my stables.”

On the same subject, I came across a couple of other stories that I found very interesting (via the Blog for the Sportsgamer), both from the site DadHacker (a true industry insider).  Those of you in my “middle aged” demographic will find them to be relevant reading, as they deal with development for the Atari 400/800 series of computers.  “DadHacker” actually wrote the Donkey Kong code for the system.  It’s a great read.

Over the years, I have had a few ideas for games.  I had one of my urges to learn programming in the mid-1990′s, and started prototyping a design document for a baseball game that included not only the sport itself, but fan attendance, finances, free agents, trades, contracts, and all sorts of business elements that existed in the world of sports, but not yet in the world of sports video games.  I even compiled some research into team finances and demographics.  My project came to an abrupt halt when I read a review in PC Gamer for the new baseball sim called Baseball Mogul.  I guess Clay and I were thinking alike.  The only difference was that he had the skills, time, and resources to actually put together a great product.  Me; not so much!  For the record, I was going to call mine “$crewball.” 

Right now, I’ve got an idea for an espionage game rolling around in my head.  For you old role-players out there, think of the pen and paper RPG Top Secret.  Maybe I should start by using Game Maker?  I kind of dismissed it as not being that flexible, but maybe there’s more to it…