YYG 2010 Review, 2011's Plans



YoYo Games Glog — Well, 2010 has been a big year for YoYo Games. They made a "glog" post about what they've done this past year, achievements, and their goals for 2011. LOTS has happened, and here's a summary of it all:

YoYo Games has started working with the iOS platform. Simply put, iOS is the operating system (in smaller words, the programming inside the device) that both the iPod Touch and iPad use to run their apps. So, if you put all this together, it means YYG has started porting some of the Game Maker games to the iPod/iTouch/iPad devices.

YoYo Games had competitions 5 and 6, which both focused on a "PSP theme", due to them working on the PSP runner for Game Maker. So that's two new platforms they've been trying to get working this year. So far, only the iOS games have been released, no GM-PSP games are out yet. Not much has been heard about it yet, but in a comment on the glog there's a little info about it.

sandy Says (comment on the glog post):
@Mister L … and others

It will take a long time to rewrite the “Maker” part of Game Maker as we will not be doing this in Delphi. We will most likely use the C++ runner at that stage, possibly before then, but we haven’t decided yet. We will NOT be using the C++ runner in GM 8.1....

...Re PSP we’ll publish our first tow PSP games after Xmas. We definitely refocused our efforts last September on IOS, so PSP got left behind a bit. The Runner wasn’t the issue, it was finished in September, Sony make the process of getting a game published difficult compared with Apple.

@SunnyKatt We’ll start using the C++ runner in games we put up for sale at some point. At the moment it doesn’t have all of the GM8 functionality built in since we’ve spent all of our time porting it to other platforms rather than adding full GM8 feature support. One of the things we’ll do with GM8.1 is try to make sure that “joining” the C++ runner to your game is at least easy for us to do manually. You will most likely see the C++ runner as part of GM8 sometime next year, but probably not in time for 8.1.

At the end of the comment, Sandy mentions Game Maker 8.1. 8.1? We'll have to wait until we get to that part of the story, we're still in 2010. Just hang in for a little bit, it's in a few paragraphs.

Game Maker (the program itself) was ported to Mac this year. The version ported is 7.0, so some features in the PC version have not yet been added to Mac. Originally, the Mac port was a 10 hour demo of GM 7.0 Pro. The 10 hour demo wasn't 10 hours after installing, it was 10 hours of use. So, it only counted down while you had it open. Just recently, they released GM4Mac Lite, which is the standard version of GM 7.0. Hopefully they'll put the demo of Pro for PC users soon!

iOS games have been being sold on the iTunes market, and YYG has a special way of making money for you. Every games submitted gets a certain percentage of the revenue, so you can make money by submitting your games. There is a HUGE collection of rules and guidelines to uploading, getting your game submitted, and making money on the GM Wiki. Go there if your interested. These rules don't just apply for iOS, but to PSP and any other mobile platforms they will be releasing in the future.

That leads us to another big point in 2010, the GM Android Runner that was released days before the glog post. Game Maker [games] are now running on Android. You cannot make them run yourself, YYG has not yet made it public, just like the iOS and PSP runners. Something to look forward to in 2011, I guess.

We're almost to the 2011 section, but one last thing that will tie in with it. GMIndie (now dead) and GMVision produced a special GM Survey 2010 about Game Maker user's thought, opinions, complaints, and complements about GM. Some sections told you to rate certain features, some sections asked you what you would like to see in future versions. YoYo Games has been given the results and they have actually planned to use some of the ideas. Wait, did I just say plan? Well, get ready for more plans, as we're now entering the 2011 section!

WHOO HOO! Future plans! Gossip! Things to be looking forward to (and possibly be disappointed when they don't come true)! PSP games are planned to be released next year (possibly this year, as they talk about how it's going to be after Christmas). This is exciting! It will help YoYo Games get even more publicity. The iOS games have already boost popularity of Game Maker and YoYo Games, and I'm sure the PSP runner will enhance these statistics even more!

The Mac App Store will be open January 6th. This store is for Mac apps, much like iPod/iPad apps. They will run on the Mac computers, and YoYo Games plans on making it another platform for the Game Maker games to run on. YoYo Games also hopes GM4Mac is released on there the day it launches, so cross your fingers! Actually, don't, I've heard it's bad luck!

Some of the current iOS games will be released on the Mac App Store when it launches, so for you Mac users, look out for some fun games such as They Need To Be Fed and SkyDiver on the Mac!

YoYo Games will also be adding a section for PC games. Now, they already do PC games, right? Well, this section will be a special section for those superb GM games. What makes this section so important? It will be another store, where you can upload your GM games and have them sold by YoYo Games! Now if you want to sell GM games you don't have to make it for a PSP, iPod/iPad, the Mac, or Android. You can sell it on PC as well! How exciting!

YoYo Games mentions a new major version of Game Maker (that would be GM9, just in case you weren't sure) being STARTED next year. That means they will start developing it next year. They also told about how it most likely will not be released by the end of 2011, so it's something to look forward to in 2012. But...

Game Maker 8.1 will be released in January 2011. WHOO HOO! Not only that, YoYo Games wants to have more "regular updates" released, so once a month or more there will be a new minor version of Game Maker released! Now, don't be thinking "it's never gonna happen", because they've already started working on it.

Finally, we want to do a much better job of updating Game Maker and distributing regular updates to you in 2011. We discovered how to do this effectively with GM4Mac earlier this year and in the early part of 2011 we want to get this built into Game Maker 8. We also want to fix many of the bugs and possibly add some new features. We’ve also identified a few changes we’d like to make to Game Maker that will make it easier for you to submit games to the YoYo Games Store. We have already started work on Game Maker 8.1 and hope to get it out as a Beta in the first few weeks of 2011. This will be a free upgrade for anyone who has a legitimate license for Game Maker 8.

That is most of what is going on, you can read more at the YoYo Games Glog. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from both YoYo Games and the Game Maker Gazette!
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Gazette is a blog focusing on Game Maker related content like product news, YoYo Games news, Game Maker media, gossip, competitions and more.

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