Grey Alien Framework V1.01 out! (inc. particle fx)
Community Forums/Showcase/Grey Alien Framework V1.01 out! (inc. particle fx)
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| ***THIS THREAD IS NOW OBSOLETE*** Please see the new thread here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=64974 Hi, I'm proud to release V1.01 of the Grey Alien BlitzMax Game Framework. This version compiles in BlitzMax 1.22 and has numerous enhancements including a particle engine (see the AOTMG demo). The framework is already in use by many hobbyists and professionals. Give the mini-game demo a whirl today and find out what all the fuss is about: http://www.greyaliengames.com/aotmg/aotmg041.zip (5.74Mb) Find out more about the framework here: http://www.greyaliengames.com/framework/faq.html Watch a video here: www.greyaliengames.com/aotmg/aotmg.wmv (1.1Mb) (Note: any jerkiness is 100% due to video capture, not the framework.) Why do you need it? Well do you... - want the fun of making games without boring research, technical problems and tons of interface code? - want your game to run on a wide range of PCs using an ultra smooth timing routine? - want your game to have the same functionality as professional commercial games? - want to plug your code straight into an OOP environment with tons of ready-made Types? Then get the Grey Alien BlizMax Game Framework!  How To Play ----------- Just move left and right and shoot the UFOs with Z, that's it for now... Keys ---- Press <Esc> to exit the game. Press <F> to toggle full screen/windowed mode. Press <V> to toggle VSync on/off. Press <G> to toggle DirectX/OpenGL. Press <D> to bring up the debug display Whilst in debug mode, press <J> to jump level. Whilst in debug mode, press <R> to restart level. Whilst in debug mode, press <T> to toggle fast (full speed). Whilst in debug mode, press <L> to toggle slow motion. Whilst in debug mode, press <I> to toggle Flip modes. Whilst in debug mode, press <A> to toggle anti-lag fix. Whilst in debug mode, press <N> to toggle No Timing. Press <P> to pause the game. Press <Q> to quit the game. Press <S> to toggle sound on/off. Press <M> to toggle music on/off. Press <-> and <=> to adjust sound volume. Press <F12> to take a screenshot. Press <Ctrl+X> to exit the game instantly. Summary of features (in no particular order): Smooth Fixed Rate Logic timing. Dynamically change between Full-Screen and Windowed Mode. Dynamically change between DirectX and OpenGL. Windowed mode has working minimise and close buttons. Game and music pauses whenever focus is lost. Full icon support. Ini file to save user settings. Extensive debug suite. Take screenshots with F12. Integrated mouse pointer. Sound and music functions. Particle engine. Sprite type. Button type. Menu type. Font and Label types. Animation type for handling multi-phase animations. Splash screen. Loading screen. Title screen. Fully working options screen. Fully working Player Profile Manager dialog. Dialog type extended to DialogOK, DialogYesNo and DialogTextInput. Load, save and enter High Scores. Other example screens such as Level Complete, Game Complete, Game Over, and Credits. Select Level Map which zooms and scrolls. Example types such as Player (with shield, lives, target, and level), Bullet, Alien etc. Fast fade. Manage multiple game screens easily. Event-based input instead of PolledInput. BlitzMax fixes and workarounds. And more! (For a full list of features, please see the FAQ.) ********************************************************* The Game Framework (Windows only) is a collection of files that you can use to make a professional quality game. It also comes with an example mini-game called Attack of the Mutant Greys. You can buy it for £29.95, €43.50 or $54.95 (please ask for prices in other currencies). This gives you a royalty free licence to use the code for freeware and commercial projects. You will receive FREE updates as and when they become available. To buy it, please go here: http://www.greyaliengames.com/contact.php and use the Paypal donate button (this is my preferred method). Or use Share-it! https://secure.shareit.com/shareit/checkout.html?PRODUCT[300072102]=1 If you are based in the U.K. and want to pay by cheque or postal order, please email me (my email address is in my blitz profile and on my website). ********************************************************* Thanks to everyone on the forums who has offered advice and helped with testing. Also ULTRA thanks go out to all my loyal customers for your continued support :-) ********************************************************* NEWS: One of my framework customers, Gellyware, has released a game made with the framework on Real Arcade! Check it out... http://www.realarcade.com/game?tps=ambient_&gameid=sudokumayagold&src=ggpg Also, I will be releasing my next game, which uses the framework, later this month. Some other customers have also got things waiting in the wings too. Viva la framework! |
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| Looks cool, can you post more detail about the particle engine. For example, does it integrate with the sound, sprite and animation functions? PS. Man I wish I had more time to make games :( |
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| My framework has a TSprite type which is comprehensive. From this I've extended TParticle which has some other useful fields and methods, then I've made a TParticleList for managing a whole load of particles. You can make several particle lists e.g. one for explosions, one for floating scores etc. Each particle can rotate, scale, move with/without user-defined gravity, be drawn with different colours, have lightblend on/off etc and be animated. With rotation/scaling/movement you just set an initial value and a speed (positive or negative) and off it goes on it's own. Or you can override the list and do you own movement/transformation routines. You'll still have to make your own particle graphics and decide on the path that you want them to follow, but the structure is in place for you to make cool/fast particle effects very easily. Also I wish *I* had more time to make games, family takes a LOT of time and Callum woke me up at 4am this morning, nice...so I read wikipedia on the laptop for hours whilst looking after him. Also I still have to earn money part-time in a conventional way to paying the big fat bills, whilst I keep going with the game development. Then there's home/car chores, business admin etc etc I'm sure you get the picture ;-) |
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| Is it ever going to be multi-platform, or is it Windows only? |
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| Rex. It will work on Max/Linux right now, just about 0.1% of the features are windows-based so won't do anything. However, after I've released my next game it's quite likely we'll do a Mac version and I'll convert the framework then. |
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| Thanks! |
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| you're welcome. Be interested to see some new games made with this soon... |
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| Got my TBricks type doing the bizness - thanks for the support Grey. |
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| you're welcome. I guess TBricks is a list of lots of TBrick? |
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| Bang on - got to develop my TBalls next - however I've got to help my son beat a level on transformers first - priorities you know.... Regards, |
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| is that a new transformers game (I guess so)? Last one I played was on the C64, it wasn't that good... |
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| My guess is the PS2 Transformers Armada game as I am not aware of any others that have been made. Looking forward to Pete Carters G1 game though very much. Jason. |
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| Jake, do you have any plans to add multiplayer support at all ? |
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| SillyPutty: It is something I'd like to do in an ideal world but I'm only going to add it if I find that I need it for one of my own future games. I think multiplayer (via network/Internet) has many different factors and is quite difficult to get working properly + how the hell does delta time work in a multiplayer game which you can't pause etc. If I add it, I may have to charge as a separate thing as it's really a major project. First though is a platform game engine :-) However, I'll add it to my to do list, thanks for the suggestion. |
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| No probs, I understand the complexities of it :) I would like to see a platform engine though first and formost, that would really be awesome. Again, thanks for your great work on this fantastic framework. |
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| SillyPutty: you are welcome, glad you like it. I'm keen to do the platform game engine soon but I've got some other things on my plate first like finishing my current game AND making an Xmas game! |
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| does your framework add anything to handle collisions better than standard bmax? |
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| smilertoo: Not really, because BMax seems to handle them totaly fine if you can figure out the documentation. I do have some example collision code in my AOTMG source code (you bullets on Aliens and Alien bullets on you). This is pixel perfect collion using hte collision layers which is pretty neat. My new game just uses some collide rects type functions (which are included in the framewor) as pixel perfect was not required. What sort of thing were you meaning? What's your main gripe with Bmax collisions? If you can be more specific then maybe I can help more :-) |
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| @Transformers, yep it's the PS2 incarnation, I've only just beat the end of level one decepticon Boss (was proving a tad difficult for my 7 year old son), If I say so myself it isn't a 'bad' game, the graphics are quite well done (www.atari.com). As for my project progress... for the time being have resulted to polishing my original 'working' version whereby I use an app developed with Grey's framework to produce the building blocks to execute a breakout clone based on the excellent tutorial by assari. Seeya, |
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| I must have been using the bmax collisions wrong then, I tried a simple demo where I just wanted to drop boxes and have them stack, it suffered massive slowdown after around 40 boxes. |
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| @smilertoo Do you get the slowdown after checking this ? |
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| tonyG: Are you refering to the tutorial? Smilertoo: My demo collides many objects and seems fine... |
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| yes |
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| Not sure what the recent threads are about... however I'd like to say that without Grey's framework I wouldn't have an application that is functioning reliably to the extent that it is being used regularly as an education tool. I would not have achieved this level of functionality without the Grey Alien Framework. Thanks again for sustaining my interest in coding...... just gotta kick my 'habit' of wanting to take it that one step further. |
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| I wouldn't have an application that is functioning reliably to the extent that it is being used regularly as an education tool That's great news, and thanks for the support. Of course it's good to want to take things one step further but only when you've finished the current app, then it can be expanded. Most people try to cram in everything at the start, get disheartended and never finish. |
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| Fixed a memory leak with the music. If you want the new code before I do an official release, please email me. |
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| Keep up the good work Grey :) |
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| I would just like to say this is a great framework, really. I certainly spend two or three month to make stuff cool like that with particle fx, pause when you leave the game, fullscreen, directx to opengl, ... I can only work on my game by night and with this game framework I have made a first version in only one week. It's puzzle game, see my picture but be cool ;-) I have a lot of code to write for the official release. http://dubbros.chez-alice.fr/puzzle/pic1.jpg http://dubbros.chez-alice.fr/puzzle/pic2.jpg Thanks Grey for your Framework C-Ya A french developper |
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| Thanks guys! Dwarf: Thanks very much :-) Hey neat screenshots, the graphics look good and I recognise some of the AOTMG still in there. Good luck with this! |
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| I have search font for making graphics and use it as embedded ressource in my game but for the copyright, I need to buy a oem license or non-exclusive license. Does anyone know cheap font to buy as embedded ressource? Or what kind of font can I use ? |
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| Basically try to find a totally free font, one which has a license doc that says free for personal AND commericial use. Then you can include the font file OK, otherwise I wouldn't bother. Try posting on the general discussion forum for some links to free font sites. Also soon I'll be adding Bitmap Font support so you can convert ANY font to a bitmap font and then legally use it in the game because images of fonts aren't copyright, only the original source code is (the .ttf file). |
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| Dwarf, There are (approximately) seventeen gazillion free fonts out there that can be used in commercial projects. I tend to use those and then make a donation to the foundry/author. Check out http://www.freewarefonts.com/ Be sure to read the terms for any font you download. SpaceAce |
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| Thanks a lot guys for your explanation :-) |
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| yeah always read the reame carefully. I'm very particular about what fonts/graphics/sounds I use in my stuff so no one can sue me. |
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| http://ww.aenigmafonts.com has a ton of totally free ones, including commercial use. Be careful of generic 'free' fonts sites, because many of them are (sometimes fairly obviously) ripped elsewhere, and despite claims of them being free using them can still get you in hot water with the real creators. |
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| Remember, you can use the framework dependent on your needs. Using the full framework will enable you to quickly produce a game - but if you (like me) want to use a small part or adapt the framework to your own needs, that is also possible. Also, customer service is second to none in my experience. |
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| Heh Gray, I am reading the faq over and over. I have reached a point where I want some type of interface in my game, including graphic displays to the user and clickable buttons. been looking at high gui3 for this. however, your framework seems invaluable. I guess like steve said, there are parts of it i can use for my purposes, even if i dont use it in its entirety, since im pretty far along in my own "framework" but that only includes, combat, flight, etc... not that plethora of types and features your framework has. I want to buy it but i am just concerned that i won't understand your code. I hate reading others code sometimes, they use terrible variables and write so bad you have to study it hard to see what they are doing. and then the intergration, im hoping that i wont have to rewrite massive amount of code, if i want to use a section of your code, or rename a massive amount of variables... |
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| Cruis.In: yes to both. Have you tried the demo? All the code to make the title menu, options page, and in-game menu is available to you. Also on the demo I have a HUD showing energy, score, level etc which is laid on top. In my new game the HUD is on a panel and contains a HINT button and a MENU button, this is all using the framework code. |
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| "Also, customer service is second to none in my experience. " i second this, grey has replied to all my inquiries very quickly and most importantly, with great details and thorough explanations. |
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| thanks guys, appreciate it! Well I ran a business software helpdesk for 9 years so I know that service is extremely important. |
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| ok gray, ill get it monday when it is the week day again. i have the feeling it just might be so good, i throw away some of my own functions. |
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| Cruis.In: That's great news thanks. You might be lucky enough to get V1.02 if I can find the time to release it this weekend or Monday. |
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| Just posted an example title screen with source code here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=64132 It's made using the new V1.02 code but should work in V1.01 (untested). |
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| Well grey, you finnally got me interested.....I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon and see where it goes... ;) Gimme a couple of days though....prolly on thursday or friday.... |
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| Hi Heuro, nice to hear from you again. I look forward to your purchase. I'm sure that you'll find great uses for the framework, which is more stable than ever now plus it has some new examples. Anyway. how's things going? Have you moved to a more "savoury" area yet? |
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| Yep, just pop in 39° 1'3.29"N 77° 6'24.12"W to google earth and see my new place. Much much better than the MS-13 infested area I was before. |
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| great, really pleased for you. Now let's see some decent games :-) |
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| Hail Grey Alien, I just ordered you Game Framework and sent you a couple e-mails to info@... about a possible situation i may have. I can't wait to see the framework work for me! I'm planing on creating a Breakout Remake. I also plan on selling it cheaply($9.95 - $19.95). Although all the details aren't finished yet, i plan on offering an option where you pay by paypal and after your order is checked for verification through a script i bought, you recieve a unquie download link locked to the first part of your IP allowing you to download the full version including updates for a whole year. Sebsequent updates will be be priced accordinly most likely 60% off the full price. Like i said has yet to be determined. I am excited. See ya soon, Space Xscape Development Team |
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| Grey, whatever happen to the Easter Bonus game? Cant seem to download it anymore... |
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| Space: Just sent it. Sorry for the delay, I was away for 2 days. I love breakout games and look forward to seeing yours and I hope you payment scheme works out. Neuro: Good spot! Well Indiepath obviously sold the domain (or it expired) and didn't tell me! That really pisses me off, customer service = 0. Seems like I'll have to wrap it and host it myself and get a shopping engine together sooner than I had planned. Thanks for the heads up. Actually it's on Reflexive Arcade so I could link to that for now. |
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| OK updated the links on my site and in my sig, thanks very much Neuro. |
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| Easter Bonus link points to XMas Bonus. Jason. |
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| ahem, uh thanks dude (fixed) :-) It'll be replaced with my latest game soon anyway. |
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| Grey Alien in response to needing a shopping cart: Try this: http://www.vibralogix.com/linklokipn/ You can set it up so after the purchers buys your product they are taken to the download page instantly. Also the links are sent to their email. The script verified the purchase before it gives the links so no one can "cheat". You can set the link to expire after 24 hours so they can't pass the links on and download pirated copies. Or you can IP Lock the purchase so only the IP where the purchase was made can download it. You can use both of these features at the same time for increased sucurity. If you want you can set a expiration date of 3 years and IP Lock it to the first 2 parts of the IP so they get 3 years of updates for free using the same link they recieved when they purchased it, and since its IP Locked to the first 2 parts of the IP so only the person who purchased it will be able to download it for their "update peroid". This saves you from having to e-mail the updates to everyone everytime you updade the framework, saving you time for other stuff. Plus its very easy to use. You can download the manual for free by visiting the website to see for yourself how easy it is to use! Please let me know what you think of this. Sincerely, Space Xscape Development Team |
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| Space: Thanks for that link, yeah it's pretty interesting and well be something I'll look into as I'm looking at quite a few methods to sell my games (and framework) with in the near future. The expiring download address is good to prevent pirates. Thanks. |
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| linklok works great although it does not verify purchases. You do this with Paypals IPN service and your own custom scripts. |
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| OK thanks for the extra info. |
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| From the manual: Paypal allows you to place buttons or links on your website for each of your products. The buttons can either take the purchaser directly to the checkout where he makes the payment or alternatively adds the product to the Paypal shopping cart allowing further purchases to be made. Either way after payment is completed Paypal can be configured to call a special Instant Payment Notification (IPN) URL to report the products that have been ordered and whether payment was completed. Linklok acts as this IPN handler. When Linklok is called it first authenticates the call to ensure that it was indeed sent from Paypal and has not been tampered with in anyway. Then Linklok will create secure links for each of the products ordered (at least those that you allow to be downloaded) and email them to the purchaser. If required Linklok can also be the return (or thank you) page that the user is sent to after a transaction and in this case display the download links in the browser as well as sending them by email This is the price of the product. Linklok needs to know the price so that it can detect if somebody modified your buy button to try to cheat you. If you sell your products in mutliple currencies then you should set the price for each currency as follows (notice how each currency is separated by a colon) USD=29.95:GBP=17.95:EUR=26.95 Linklok verifies that the total amount paid is at least as high as the total of all downloadable products ordered to stop cheating. If you are selling the product as an auction item on eBay then make sure the price set is the lowest price you will accept (perhaps the reserver price). |
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| Thought I'd make my 9000th post here! |
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| yay 9000 eh ? think I'm around the three hundred ish mark myself..... |
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| well I was a bit of a forum addict for quite a while but I post loads less now...true. |
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| hey grey, ive havent forgotten you. just been busy coding a GUI into my game with highGui 3. so since I wouldnt have looked at your framework yet, i decided to wait. after my next internal release! the exchange rate will kill me but who cares! |
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| How far are you into the 2d platformer development? Will it support a range of mapeditors, e.g. mappy, fished? |
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| Cruis.In: no worries. I'm gonna hopefully release 1.02 this week anyway. Good luck with your game. North: regretably, not far. I actually made a whole 2D scrolling platform game and editor in BlitzPlus (see IronFist on my website) so it's not going to be hard for me to do it in BMax. But at the moment I have two games to complete by Decemeber, then I can start on it. So I doubt anything will be ready before the new year. Sorry if this isn't what you'd wanted to hear :-( I'd love to be doing it right now as it's my favourite type of game, but I have other commitments. As for map editors, well it would come with one but I could also look into supporting those other ones as they've been mentioned before. Thanks for your interest. |
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| No hurry on my side, just gathering infos and laying out plans. Thanks. |
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| OK great, well keep an eye on my framework anyway. I may have given too many people ideas and someone else will make a platform engine, we'll see...but mine will be the best muhahahaha...;-) |
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| Grey Alien, Do you mind if i use some of your "generic" graphics and sounds, Play, Load, SoundClick, etc. for my game? I will modify the graphics to suit the colors my game uses. Right Now there is alot of code that i would need to change to make it suitable for my game. Will future versions be more friendly(Such as changing all the names of the graphics and sounds in the source code)? |
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| Space: Hi, please contact me about which sounds and graphics you'd like to use specificially as some I won't mind like SoundClick, but others I may want to keep myself. As for code that needs changing, careful not to modify the core CommonCode or CommonTypes files as these will be overwritten with new updates such as V1.02 out soon. As for the other files (AOTMG, GameTypes, ScreenTypes etc) they are just merely examples (of my game) for you to overwrite whatever you want, such as graphics and sounds names etc. Is this what you meant? CommonTypes shouldn't have any hardcoded names at all as it's designed to be generic. Hope this makes sense. |
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| Yes that is what i mean't. |
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| OK cool, so you are supposed to basically change all the names as you see fit and change all the code round as much as you want in the example files, but not in CommonCode and CommonTypes. Good luck. |
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| My framework is one of the prizes in a German coding compo: http://blitzmaker.chat-blitz.de/contest/prize.html |
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| Not surprised Grey. It's a very nice and very comprehensive chunk of code. It's taking me a while to disect the example code (and the CommonCode and CommonTypes) to see how it all works and fits together, but it's all good. |
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| Wellmt: Thanks. I've got a simple example code on the way with V1.02, you may find that easier to get to grips with. There's a lot in there you see. I've covered a lot of things as it's developed. |
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| That's excellent, looking forward to it. |
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| OK, V1.02 is pretty much ready for release now. I just added in some code that detects if OpenGL mode crashed on inadequate PCs and reverts back to DirectX mode. Today I'm going to add in a sliders type (for the options menu) and then I'm ready for a release. However, I've got a deadline to release my game beta by Friday so I may have to do that first and release the framework next week now. Sorry for the delays, but there may yet still be a few more cool things to add, which'll crop up as I finish off my game this week. It's always a tough call of when to release - now or just cram a few more things in and release later... |
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| TSlider is done and is lush. Been adding more stuff including animation support for TButton. Will release week starting Mon 6th Nov. |
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| looking forward to it grey.... |
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| Semi OT: and since its IP Locked to the first 2 parts of the IP so only the person who purchased it will be able to download it for their "update peroid" This thing should be clearly specified before payment. Reason is that otherwise anyone using a notebook and enters INet at different places will have serious problems. I know at least one company that already had to change its security technology because it thought that this kind of lock would be an "intelligent" idea. |
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| ~Yeah I'm not sure too over the top locking is necessary. Basically I want people to be able to buy my games as easily as possible and if some bad eggs pirate it (they will) and spread it, that's a fact of life, plus other new customers may see it and buy it. As long as it's easy for people to buy that's all that matters. |
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