Andrew Natoli » Programming

Two New GM Services in the Works

Andrew — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:08:51 +0000

I would like to announce I’m starting work on two new resources that will soon be available to GM7 developers probably towards the end of this week. The first will be an online high score service, similar to the one I used in “Cookz It – Chowder Time.” Users will be able to register for their own unique key to put into their games which will set them up with an online high score system. Secondly will be an online error logging service, as I built myself for Spherack Reloaded, which will automatically log any game errors to a webpage so you don’t need to force your users to report them manually.

Spherack 3 Promotional Video

Andrew — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:05:13 +0000

Presenting the first official Spherack Online 3 promotional video! It’s filled with awesome, beginning with me and my friend Mike jumping around like the characters in the game do, except with Nerf dart guns in the middle of no-where by a frozen pond which we walked across prior to and survived. Anyway, HERE IT IS:

Spherack 3 Now Available at YoYoGames!

Andrew — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:10:34 +0000

Spherack Online…
Added: 25 January 2009
By: Zappix

I just released Spherack 3 at the official Game Maker Community; YoYoGames! Hopefully this will lead to an uprising in the game’s popularity and we’ll have more players and servers available. Additionally maybe I can get some feedback and suggestions now as to what to change in the game, as well as further bug reports so I can keep making it better.

I’ve also just released GML Patch 2009 there as well, and also have updated the Spherack Online 2 download with the latest installer… even though most likely nobody will use it, at least they can if they must. =]

“GML Patch 2009 Edition” Released!

Andrew — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:48:25 +0000

Despite being miserable and sick with a sore throat that makes it nearly impossible to swallow my own saliva, I’ve released the first new version of GML Patch in nearly two years! Branded as “2009 Edition,” this new version adds support for updates packaged in compressed ZIP Archives, meaning it can update far more than its predecessor!

Roll on over to its page for more information and to download.

Enjoy!

Great Performance with a Lower FPS

Andrew — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:16:04 +0000

Probably the biggest problem and set-back in Spherack Reloaded’s progress so far is the amount of lag that occurs while playing online with multiple players. Tons of information processing contributes to a significant drop in frames-per-second and the game becomes basically unplayable. However, after thinking for a bit, the idea hit me. What if I could make the game run a few calculations to adjust the speeds of objects to how they’ll normally appear at a full FPS? Simple really, all I had to do was divide the max FPS of the room by the current FPS. Looks like this:

speed = 5*(60/fps)

In the above scenario, 5 is the current speed of the object, 60 is the maximum frame-rate of the room (adjust to match yours or you’ll have weird results) and fps is the current FPS.

Seems to be working fine for me so far.

Projectile Speed on Mouse Position

Andrew — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:45:23 +0000

Something I’ve been working on lately in one of my games is working in dynamic projectile speeds so players can strategically toss grenades to where they need to go rather than having to find some way to make the default speed work for them. So in my case, a player wants to throw a grenade to where their cursor is positioned. What I did was set up the angle calculations which is the easy part, though then there’s speed afterwards.

var mspd; //Creates the temporary value, mspd mspd =(point_distance(x,y,mouse_x,mouse_y)/16); //Sets mspd to our needed speed

The above GML finds the distance between the source of the projectile and your mouse cursor, then divides by 16 to adjust the returned value to a usable speed (otherwise it’d go quite fast) This is how I used the code in my game:

var plyspd, gspd; plyspd = o_player.hsp //Horizontal Speed of My Character if plyspd < 0 { plyspd=plyspd*-1; } //If player is moving backwards, switch negative speed to positive gspd = plyspd+(point_distance(x,y,mouse_x,mouse_y)/16) //Speed will be the calculated speed PLUS the speed the player is moving at if gspd > (18.92)+plyspd { gspd = (18.92)+plyspd; } //Keeps the projectile from going rediculously fast by setting a limit plus the player's current speed

Questions? Comments? Feel free to use this any way you may need to.