http://atomicgameengine.com/blog/announcement-2/

Features :
http://atomicgameengine.com/features/

I took some courses a few months ago as a front end developer. We had to make a web site. I chose to make one about hiking, named 'Entre terre et ciel' (Between heaven and earth), with some photos i took. Recently i updated the site with the bootstrap framework in order to make it responsive. This means it should work flawlessly on mobile phones. The hikes descriptions are not finished yet, and i've put Lorem Ipsum instead (c.f https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum)
This is the first time i make a web site, so please be indulgent
You can test the site here : http://ateliers.nomades.ch/~depol/

As a teaser, here is a screenshot of the home page:

[The man who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for £2.5 billion says it's made him miserable]

The man who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for £2.5 billion says it's made him miserable

Minecraft creator Markus Persson has posted a series of tweets revealing that he feels deeply lonely.

Persson sold his gaming company Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion almost a year ago.

He spent a reported $70 million on an 8-bedroom, 15-bathroom mansion in Beverley Hills that came complete with a replica James Dean motorbike and a bar stacked with Dom Perignon.

Since, he's been hosting parties attended by Selena Gomez and skateboarder Tony Hawk and had Skrillex DJ a pool party for guests in his infinity pool, which has panoramic views across LA. So many parties, that he was surprised recently to discover a huge pile of lost and found items left by guests in his garage.

So it's surprising to learn that the video game programmer has never felt more alone. "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance," he tweeted.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-man-who-sold-minecraft-to-microsoft-for-25-billion-says-its-made-him-miserable-10479865.html


I think developers here should be careful if they don't want to follow the same path ! 
More seriously, i am sure that to be very wealthy don't make you happy. If you are a billionaire, you will be surrounded by people who are only interested only by your money ! Fortunately, i don't have this problem ! 

I wanted to fix the instability problem of LateralGM, but there are others problems to fix before that. Robert worked last year on Joshedit, and he made some pull requests which were not merged : https://github.com/JoshDreamland/JoshEdit/pulls
The problem is that the version of LateralGM on github uses the latest modifications made by Robert, and it's not possible to compile right now the project, even with his fork (I tried to use also his different branches) Of course there is the possibility to remove the new functions in LateralGM, which is not a big deal. But another possibility is to accept the pull requests. Josh, is there a particular problem for merging the pull requests made by Robert ?

Enigma-Dev is a fully featured game engine that compiles natively for Linux!

Enigma is completely compatible with GML (the GameMaker Language), as well as C and C++. It is developed and written in Java, and can cross-compile to Linux, Mac, and Windows. It is a "work in progress" currently, but can compile full games. There are several bug in the engine, but most of them you can just bypass.



Pros
- Full Box-2d implementation
- Game controller support
- Open Source
- Can open and edit most GameMaker 6 through to GM Studio files

Cons
- Many bugs currently, mainly a startup error (can be bypassed)
- No built-in image editor, but GIMP works great!
- Does crash occasionally
- Can take a bit to get set up and running

Once this is in a more stable state, I am sure it can be a giant competitor to GameMaker. It's also funny to see the community bring a GameMaker compatible editor to Linux.

You can find the package in the Arch User Repository, but not in Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
http://enigma-dev.org/

Tip: If you don't use a Arch based distro, you have to open the lateralgm.jar file through the terminal with java -jar ./lateralgm If you don't the program will not be able to locate a few files.

This article was submitted by a guest, we encourage anyone to submit their own articles.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/enigmadev-a-linux-game-engine-compatible-with-gamemaker-scripting.4793

http://kotaku.com/5961994/what-skyrim-looks-like-when-youre-running-100-mods-at-once

It's really amazing ! 

If there is an object whose size is bigger than the size of a grid's cell (e.g instance size is 32, and cell's size is 16) :



If you select it with the mouse with a position which is not near the left top corner of the object, at first it will be shifted :



This means it looks a little bit jerky when you start to move the object. I propose to remove this effect (the same as GM Studio). If you select the object in the middle, for instance, the mouse cursor will stay in the middle of the object.

I propose to add two new icons in the rooms editor : a selection toggle button and a paint bucket button. When the selection button is pressed, the user can draw a rectangle in the room and select a region. With the selected region, it is possible with the bucket button to fill it with an object or a tile. By pressing the delete key or by clicking on the delete button, the objects or the tiles in the selected region are deleted. It will be also possible to do a cut/copy, move the region and do paste. As far as i know, these functions are not available in GM studio. To give an idea, here is a screenshot, where a region has been filled with an object :

Currently, in the rooms editor when you want to edit a tile in the 'Modify' tab, you have to go to the 'Add' tile and specify the tile's layer with the depth field. If you load for instance a GM project, by default the depth is 100000. If you want to move a tile, first you have to go the add tile and set the depth to 100000. I think this is not intuitive. I propose to move this field and to put it above the tabs. This field is used both in the add and modify tabs. Also when a room is loaded i will test if there are already tiles in the room and put into this field the depth of the first tile.

Last year, i took courses in Adobe tools : Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. We had to present a work made with these tools. I chose the topic of video games. Here is a few examples i did :

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/microsoft-open-sources-net-says-will-run-linux-mac/

[Summary]

By chance, i just found a book about the architecture of games engines. I guess some people here would be interested :

Summary

Hailed as a "must-have textbook" (CHOICE, January 2010), the first edition of Game Engine Architecture provided readers with a complete guide to the theory and practice of game engine software development. Updating the content to match today's landscape of game engine architecture, this second edition continues to thoroughly cover the major components that make up a typical commercial game engine.

New to the Second Edition

• Information on new topics, including the latest variant of the C++ programming language, C++11, and the architecture of the eighth generation of gaming consoles, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4
• New chapter on audio technology covering the fundamentals of the physics, mathematics, and technology that go into creating an AAA game audio engine
• Updated sections on multicore programming, pipelined CPU architecture and optimization, localization, pseudovectors and Grassman algebra, dual quaternions, SIMD vector math, memory alignment, and anti-aliasing
• Insight into the making of Naughty Dog's latest hit, The Last of Us

The book presents the theory underlying various subsystems that comprise a commercial game engine as well as the data structures, algorithms, and software interfaces that are typically used to implement them. It primarily focuses on the engine itself, including a host of low-level foundation systems, the rendering engine, the collision system, the physics simulation, character animation, and audio. An in-depth discussion on the "gameplay foundation layer" delves into the game's object model, world editor, event system, and scripting system. The text also touches on some aspects of gameplay programming, including player mechanics, cameras, and AI.

An awareness-building tool and a jumping-off point for further learning, Game Engine Architecture, Second Edition gives readers a solid understanding of both the theory and common practices employed within each of the engineering disciplines covered. The book will help readers on their journey through this fascinating and multifaceted field.

You can download here an electronic version : https://1fichier.com/?74x1fc22zf

The website of the book : http://www.gameenginebook.com/

For people who like RPG, and don't know yet this game, i urge them to test this outstanding RPG. It is the story of a castaway on a pirates island. It is one of my favorite RPG, because you feel really immersed in this magnificent world. It has also a very good AI. The game was released on 2009, but it still shines ! You can buy it for a very cheap price on gog : http://www.gog.com/game/risen, or also on the steam platform : http://store.steampowered.com/app/40300/

Here is a few screenshots :

I guess everyone knows that MS bought Minecraft for 2.5 billion. Here is an interesting article about this :

With Minecraft Acquisition, Microsoft Reveals Its Desperation :

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/microsoft-minecraft-mobile/

What i can tell is that MS customers are paying way to much for theirs products, as MS is ready to waste so much money for a simple game. 

I've just found a bug : in the rooms editor, if you set a background to visible, but it's not linked to a background object, the game will not start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBrCZs3_G9k

But let's not forget that the most important is the inner richness ! 

The last step to complete for the new instance's properties is to create a 'pre_creation_code' property for the instance. The question is : how and when do we create this property ? I think the best way is to create this property in the LateralGm plugin. When running the application, the plugin will loop through all instances, check the new properties and create the 'pre_creation_code' property when needed (e.g if scale <> 1, if rotation > 0, etc.) . The other solution, would be to create this property each time a new project is loaded, and to modify it also each time we modify an instance property. I prefer by far the first solution. What do you think ?

As new instance's properties (scale, rotation, color blending) are supported now in the rooms editor, we should add them in egm files too. The problem is that instances data are stored in binary format and sequentially in a file with the rmg extension. This means that currently we have no way of knowing if we are reading an old or new version of egm with these properties. The only solution i see is to add versioning in egm format. What do you think ?

If you open a gmk file, and you want to save the project as a gmx file, you've to specify on the right panel version '1200', otherwise it will never save the project as a gmx file but as a gmk file. This is not user friendly. I think we should change this behavior.

After having finished scaling, rotation and colour blending, i think it would be cool to add copy and paste in the rooms editor. I see two major benefits :
- As the instances will have new properties (scale, rotation,etc), it is useful when you want to copy exactly the same instance. No need to add a new instance and modify its properties
- When you will copy the instance, it will automatically set this instance as the new object type in the objects tab. This means that if you want to copy an object several times, you can copy it, and paste it if you need an instance with the same properties, or directly add it with the left button. In this way, you don't have to select the object time every time you want to copy or add new instances. By the way, as you can have a lot of objects, with many folders, it would be useful when you want to add new object to select the object with a window where all the objects are displayed in a graphical ways, but without folders. Think of file explorers where pictures folders are displayed with big icons. Of course it should be possible to select the 'old way' too.

Another benefit of copy and paste will appear when multi-selection when be added. But that's another story. 

What do you think of my proposal ?

In the rooms editor i want to support the instance's color. I am trying to figure out how the colors are stored in a gmx file. A very common format is ARGB (c.f http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGB). In this format, a 32-bit unsigned integer is used with the highest byte for the Alpha value, and the following bytes for the Red, the Green, and the Blue value. Unfortunately, this is not exactly the same in GM. If the set the alpha value to zero, it seems that the first three lowest bytes are used to store the RGB values. I tried the following colors : (int value and the corresponding binary)

blue : 255 -> 11111111
green : 65280 -> 1111111100000000
red : 16711680 -> 111111110000000000000000

But when i set the alpha value to 255 :

blue : 427819033 -> 11001100000000000000000011001
green : 4278255360 ->11001100000000001100110000000
red : 429490176 -> 11001100110011000000000000000
white : 429496729 -> 11001100110011001100110011001
black : 427819008 -> 11001100000000000000000000000

Does anybody has an idea how the color codes are stored ?

You can put whatever you want in the instance creation code, the compiler will never complain.

I would like to add for each instance the following fields : Scale X, Scale Y, Flip X, Flip Y, Rotation and Alpha. It's the same fields as in GM Studio. I think to add them in the 'Edit instance 'group below the x,y fields. This means i would decrease a little bit the size of the instances list.
TheExDeus said it would be possible to do this in the creation code of the instance. First i want to check if it's possible to do it with EDL methods. I am wondering : would be a lot of work to add these properties directly in ENIGMA, instead of putting them in the creation code ?

in LateralGm, there is currently two sets of icons : Calico and Swing. You can choose the icons set in preferences. The problem is that there is a lot of swing icons who are missing for the current version of LateralGm. (You will see a lot of empty squares if you choose the swing set). Where the swing icons are coming from ? And do we really need to keep the swing icons ?