The GameMaker Community (GMC) have their 3rd GMC Summer Jam this weekend, 30th July 2011.

For those of you that are new to this, a brief explanation and rules are as follows : 

WHAT IS IT?
The Jam is a community event that we organise to encourage people to experiment with GM and make something that will be interesting or entertaining within the limited timescale of 72 hours. The rules are pretty simple...

WHEN

• Starts Saturday 30th July (This is not fixed!!! See the top vote...)
  
• 72 hours long from 00:01 AM GMT Saturday ...to... 23:59 PM GMT Monday

THEME

• Each Jam has a theme, and participants are encouraged to use it.
• Using the theme is NOT obligatory, but will be valued when voting.
• To encourage use of theme, the highest-voted theme-based game gets to choose the theme for next Jam.
• The theme will not be revealed until just before the start of the Jam to prevent any advantages

The YoYo office is getting a bit cramped these days. We just got a delivery of more desks and chairs in the lower, unused, part of the office. A stark contrast from the empty office a year ago, we'll be needing a bigger boat soon... :)

Sandy will be talking at Protoplay next week http://www.daretobedigital.com/protoplay/ Protoplay is the culmination of the whole Dare to be Digital competition.  It’s a three day celebration of games, gaming and creativity. In previous years, ProtoPlay has featured many of the world’s leading developers showing off their new games, workshops, lectures and talks on everything from getting into videogames, through to new technologies and games. Previously hosted in the Scottish Capital Edinburgh, this is now being held in Dundee. 

Pic of some of those involved for the launch above.

YoYo are going to this years Games Developer Conference (GDC) http://www.gdceurope.com/ in Cologne, Germany in a few weeks time. We're going to be meeting with other developers to discuss games, ideas, and future plans. GameMaker is being featured in a Dutch magazine (in English) that will be given out free to all attending GDC. More to follow on this as and when it happens.

Quick updates

We will be introducing a 'Tech blog' part to the site any day now which will contain technical progress on GameMaker, problem solving issues and musings from Russell and Mike. 

Our new HTML5 GameMaker animation is now up on the homepage, made with GameMaker of course!

GameMaker 8.1.120 is out now with a new MiniMap on the Room Editor and choice of Stable or Beta Channel for future updates.

YY Forum is still being updated, GMC re-skinning is almost complete and hope to have this rolled out next week(ish) :)

GameMaker

GameMaker Standard version 8.1.113 came out this week. This contains changes to the Room Editor with the scrollbars removed so you can now navigate holding down the middle mouse button and moving the mouse (or holding space bar+left mouse button and moving the mouse). Improvements to multi-language support are better and there is a host of bug fixes.

Mike Dailly has been working on a new animation for the homepage screen of the scrolling GameMaker logos created in GameMaker to replace the Flash one. Keep your eyes peeled for this appearing on the site within the week.

HTML5

Jesse Venbrux is in Seattle this week to give his first presentation on his game at Casual Connect http://seattle.casualconnect.org/index.html called ‘Creating addictive gameplay in They Need To Be Fed’.

He will be talking about how he designed the game, his decision-making process and what he learnt from it.  He will also be showing an exclusive demo of They Need To Be Fed in GameMaker HTML5! We’ll pop this up for you to look at very soon afterwards. Good luck Jesse!

In the same vein, we now have a closed Alpha for GameMaker HTML5 where we have a selected group of seasoned industry developers working with us. We have included selected GMC mods in this for their critical input to bring us a step closer to releasing this exciting tool. We’ll keep you updated on developments along the way.

Community Games

Vertigo Games (GreenTech+) have been working on a cool looking game called Neptune Gasoline made in GameMaker with plans to release this year on PC http://www.vertigogaming.net/index.php Very nice indeed! We look forward to hearing a lot more on this.

Cinders by MoaCube is a game of  high visual quality with an edgy modern twist, it has to have special recognition. YoYo are happily helping out with some performance issues as it is made in GameMaker. You have to agree, it does look rather unique and we are rather excited about it’s release!

Cinders is available on pre-order for Mac and PC, check the trailer here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h0dQH_M5R-I

More info from http://moacube.com/

To see more games that deserve recognition, go to http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showforum=72 where the most popular games are being reviewed by the GameMaker Community and the Sandbox http://sandbox.yoyogames.com where there is over 43,000 reviews on members games.

Games:

With help from the team at PocketGamer, The Guardians’ Games Blog has listed the 25 best smartphone games of 2011 (pt 1) and has featured Karoshi.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/12/best-smartphone-games-2011

Originally developed by Dutch coder Jesse Venbrux as a series of Flash puzzlers, Karoshi is now on smartphone, and the excellent conversion retains the central concept: you have to kill your character. Yes, Karoshi is Japanese for 'death from overwork' and the idea is to seek out all the platforming elements you're usually meant to avoid, from rampaging enemies, to deadly spikes and traps. There are also little sequences to work out which will usually end in Mr Karoshi being crushed or electrocuted. "It's all quite breezy and tongue in cheek," says Hearn. " However, the workplace setting and the presence of Mr Karoshi's boss, whose mood determines how high Mr Karoshi can jump, invite more sinister interpretations if you're inclined to make them. The occasional appearance of Mrs Karoshi, who frustrates her husband's suicide attempts by turning spikes into flowers, is a moving touch."

We successfully released NinJammin Beat-Jitsu last week http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ninjammin-beat-jitsu/id431097952?mt=8&ls=1 through YoYo Publishing and we plan to release another NEW game by early August. We hope to fill in all the information on our page for public submissions VERY soon but we would like to get it right first time so this is why it has taken a bit longer.

Community:

We listened to the thread discussions on both forums and while we are NOT changing any the style look and feel we are interested in the feedback to actual improvements. Some of these you might recognize..

We replaced the YY bullet icons with cogs as suggested.

We added the newsfeed onto the front homepage.

Updated the FAQ.

We also noted that some were confused on the small but significant change to the ‘GameMaker’ name itself. Previously it was known as ‘Game Maker’ (two separate words). The ‘Game Maker’ name is cannot be trade marked but we don’t want to change it so we have just had to live with this aspect. We closed this gap so it became ‘GameMaker’ as we believe this is more cohesive for branding.

GameMaker descriptions got tweaked again with the insertion of tick boxes of features to show the main differences between Lite and Standard.

First description on GameMaker for HTML5 now on.

Still on our evergrowing list (but not exhaustive);

• Tweaking the games showcase coverflow and add the authors.
• Putting up developers profiles.
• New resource materials.
• Technical blog page for the techy geeks :)

We are currently underway with re-skinning the GMC in line with the site for consistency. No layout changes will happen but will require new GM logo etc and header links will be moved around. The GMC mods will be in the loop with these changes before being rolled out at the end of the month.

Some of you might have already noticed a few changes to the sandbox (most notably the ability to change your own user names). Expect more exciting changes soon! Yes, we are talking about upgrading and improving the forum software. It won't stop there, the new forum software will make it far easier for continuous improvement and allow us to more easily keep on top of maintenance and bug fixing.

More coming soon!

The YoYo Team

YoYo Games Announces the release of its latest game "Ninjammin Beat-Jitsu"

Available now on Apple's App Store and Google Android Market, YoYo Games Announces the release of it's latest game "Ninjammin Beat-Jitsu".   The latest fast paced action packed game from the home of GameMaker is an unusual fusion of Rhythm Action and Arcade Platforming. 

Yoyo Games is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our FOURTEENTH unique game release on both iOS and Android operating systems,  "Ninjammin Beat-Jitsu"

Created and distributed using YoYo Games "GameMaker" and written by UK resident,  18 year old Liam Barden,  "Ninjammin Beat-Jitsu" defines its own genre in this fusion of Rhythm Action and Arcade Platforming.

In a dystopian future, where being happy is mandatory, a simple dude known only as 8O8 is visited by his late great, great grandfather, Roland - who bestows upon him a great power over an ancient martial art, known only as ‘Beat-jitsu’, but before 8O8 has a chance to understand what’s going on, an elite government robot task force is set after him.

Rhythm and Timing is everything as you tap or swipe to the beats on screen to Jump, Slide, Flip and Fight your way through 6 uniquely styled Episodes.

Features:

• 6 Ninjammin Episodes to complete with multiple routes to find
• 18 Secrets to collect throughout the game
• 15 Challenges to unlock and defeat
• Over 20 achievements 
• Unique style and design by Liam Barden
• Ninja like music by Jono Oliver
• GameCentre Achievements and Leaderboards
• OpenFeint Achievements and Leaderboards

iTunes

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ninjammin-beat-jitsu/id431097952?mt=8

Android Market

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.yoyogames.droidnjbj