Sheep O' Faith

You thought I’d abandoned it, didn’t you?!

Don’t worry I’ll forgive you; after all, it’s been a very loooooong time since the last update. There’s a very good reason for the break however. Y’see, I halted development after hearing all the talk regarding Gamemaker Studio being released ‘very soon’.

 Well, let’s just say those folk over at YoYo Games were a little optimistic about their release schedule and ‘very soon’ turned into ‘rather a while’. Anyhoo, they’re back on track; this evening I downloaded the beta, and started playing…

I’ve just opened GM4Mac to a brand new update in which big graphical speed improvements are promised.

“Huh…”, I say dismissively, “we’ll see about that…”

The update installs and I immediately open a prior project that has, thus far, chugged along like a 19th Century steam locomotive that’s run out of water. Skeptical as always, I run the game in full-screen mode with all the particle options ramped to the max.

First three levels go by with their usual flair and up springs the fourth; it’s this stage I’m interested in. It’s this baby that can kill CPUs and tear any GPU in half! I launch my projectile and await the ‘less-than-stellar’ 3 fps firework display as always…

… However, much to my amazement and extreme pleasure, it kicks out a solid stream of graphical fun at a stable 30 fps with no slowdown! Whooah! Well done GM4Mac team!

As soon as I’m done with S’o’F, I’ll be revisiting that project for sure.

So - to recap - everything developmentwise came to a halt around the end of spring as my day job began picking up pace. The project has sat on the shelf until quite recently when I’ve started adding a few ‘bits n pieces’ including a new level and connecting sequences between the “worlds”.

‘Sheepy’ has a name (finally) iiiiiiiit’s …. Baabara

Now all I need is a surname for her and we’ll be away ;-)

The upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard went okay, so I’m now on 10.7. Huzzah! Had nice moment during the summer where someone who’d seen an early build of the game suddenly asked me, “Whatever happened to that sheep game you were doing? That looked pretty cool at the time…”

Which brings us up to date.

…as I’m currently working flat-out on half a dozen other projects all at once. Fear not! I haven’t abandoned lil’ sheepy - she’s just taking the summer off to relax in the meadow.

The real reason for this post is to point out that the (surely now ‘world famous’?) Humble Indie Bundle is back for a third (well…technically fourth) time. Grab your PayPal and GoogleCheckout accounts and get donating and downloading DRM-free games!

So a really quick little update.

Firstly, lots going on at the moment outside of S’o’F, so there’s not really been a lot of time for in-depth development. Secondly, I’ve been mainly focusing on collision detection; it’s definitely where most of the glitches seem to be located in the game. I think it’ll involve an awfully large level of tweaking over the coming weeks, so that’ll slow down progression somewhat.

In terms of levels; done a couple more, but I’m totally junking one and starting again - it’s just too lazy and doesn’t feel structured enough to warrant further development.

Until next time…

…PEACE OUT!