Game Maker and HTML5...

So we've sprung a little surprise on folks by releasing a video of a Poker Squares playing directly inside a browser using HTML5, but how was this done, and what does this mean?

Well, first... we've made NO decision as to how this will be used. That is if it'll be available to the public, if we'll sell an exporter, or if we'll use it to publish stuff ourselves. This was done in such quick order that we really don't know where it'll lead to, but you can be sure we're now thinking about it. We obviously realise that everyone would simply want it as a free part of Game Maker, but that's unlikely to happen as it'll take time and money to make. Aside from that... we simply have no idea, so don't ask because we simply don't know yet.

Now... as to the tech demo itself. This was a lot of fun to do. I'd never touched Javascript before so I hard to learn Javascript and HTML5 programming while writing this, and while some of it was a little odd for me, it actually went pretty smoothly. In fact, far smoother than any of us thought it would. The project took a week and a half of Russell's and my time; pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. But even with that, a week and a half to produce what we did is an amazing result.

Before I go any further, I should stress this is a standard Game Maker game converted "automatically" into HTML5. We didn't rewrite Poke Squares to make it look good on the web, it IS the iPad version of the game running unchanged inside the browser.

So, there are two main parts to this demo...1st, the runner (or engine), and second the GML conversion. Now this is the first time we've attempted to write a Game Maker runner from scratch. When Russell and I first started we had a code base in the form of the C++ runner, and although we hated it, it was what we started with. So writing this version was a particular challenge to me because there were still areas we've never looked at, and this time I would have to understand the flow completely. It's ended up being a great learning experience, because many of these "black holes" have now been clarified. Some have had us rolling our eyes as to why it was implemented in a certain way, and others have lead to a deeper understanding as to why something was implemented in a certain way.

So with the runner side progressing, Russell then started on the GML conversion. What's really exciting about this, is that we compile the GML, then output javascript directly. This means that browser will run it as it would any native code (thanks to the Just In Time compiler). Now, while there's lots of padding around it due to the way GML handles certain things, it does mean we have now put the "GML to High Level Language" conversion to the test - and it works!! Boy does it work!! Russell has done a great job of this conversion, so much so that a couple of games convert directly, and are runnable inside the browser WITHOUT ANY GML/GAME MAKER CHANGES AT ALL!!. This is staggering really, that in less than 2 weeks we have produced something that would just convert a game and run it.

Now the runner has some issues to be sure. We are currently using the HTML5 canvas tag, although we may well swap the WebGL at some point because it'll give us everything we need. Currently the Canvas tag is lacking in some key areas; tinting images being one of them. I currently cache a slow conversion of any rendering with a colour tint. It works... but if you changed the colours a lot, it'll grind to a halt. WebGL would fix that, although there is word that canvas may well support this soon anyway.

Now it has to be said that currently, HTML5 isn't the best thing in the world. It's actually pretty slow on most browsers, and although Chrome is pretty good, IE9 blows them all out the water - its amazingly quick. FireFox 3.x is runnable, but slow, Safari is just rubbish, and IE8 doesn't work at all. All this will change over time. HTML5 is the way browsers are heading, and they'll all just get better and better.

That said... the engine, and the GML's javascript conversion runs incredibly quickly. ALL the slowdown is in pixel drawing, where as everything else runs in a few percent of the time. This is great news. Not only does it mean that the way I've rewritten the engine works okay, but for totally unoptimised code, the JIT is doing a great job with it. This is all good for the future.

Now, running this on an iPad or mobile device is still gonna be slow - really slow. These devices aren't optimised for this kind of experience, so don't think that once this is out you can do your own iPad games. It's just a bit pooh. This means our iOS and Android runner still has a place, and is still valuable to us. This also goes for windows and Mac though. Anything that will run in HTML5 should run MUCH faster natively. Soi native runners are still valuable there too.

Lastly... security. Yep. Put a game on the web and everyone will get your source. Not really much that can be done with that. We thinking long and hard about this one, it's nasty to be sure. Leave it with us... we know about it, and we're thinking about it. We do have a few ideas, but need to think about it. We don't actually think putting the "runner" on the web is an issue. All the "smarts" are in the conversion process, and that wouldn't be there. You can also obfuscate the entire code base. Still. We're thinking about it, lets leave it at that for the moment.

So there are two big lessons I'll take from this. First, I now have a much better idea on how to manage the C++ runner, and how to rewrite the bits I hate that are slowing everything else down (the events being the main thing for me). Second, we now also know we can do some amazing things with GML, from optimise the interpreter, to convert it to a whole new language to get it compiled - or even compile it natively ourselves. This is all pretty exciting stuff to us as it's not JUST about how well the HML5 port went, it's also how we can now use this invaluable information to make future versions of Game Maker and it's runner better for everyone! So while these aren't quick fixes or changes, we are now armed better for the future, so when we do a rewrite, we'll know exactly what we need to do to make it fly!

EDIT: Theres a discussion about this here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=501194 in the Game Maker Community Forums (GMC), feel free to join in there.

Goodbye 2010. Hello 2011.

I feel in the mood to ramble, so stay with me here :)

First... 2010. Been an odd year for me. Start of the year was pretty bad for me, I was having massive disagreements with the heads of the My World project. I felt they were killing it, making stupid short term decisions, and were letting a bunch of juniors who didn't know what the hell they were doing, redesign everything. I started this project; all on my own. There's been a load of posts about the rise and fall of Realtime Worlds, but I think the real crime (money aside), was that they just didn't listen. Over the years, I told them over and over; Don't do this or that, you'll regret it. But no... they knew better. Yet, years later, they realised over and over that they had been wrong. You hire experienced people for a reason, you should really listen to them.

So this was the start of the year. They drove me out far earlier than I would have liked, but then in stepped Sandy and YoYo Games. Having been working freelance for them for quite some time, I was able to just jump right in and get going. Working from home was hard at times, but then again... it was also a joy! With Russell starting just a few weeks before me, we were in a real comfort zone, and worked well together, using Skype to discuss the hard bits. The real long term plans were finally kicking off. After about 3 months of this, we were ready to look of offices, both in terms of needing a place for new hires, and the fact that Russ and I had about exhausted the ability to work at home.

After looking at lots of places, we got a great deal from Abertay that we just couldn't say no too, and we moved in. Starting up, getting an office and moving in is always a great time. You feel like everything is on the up and are extremely motivated, so we ploughed through the work. Kirsty and Andrew obviously joined us about this point, and the feeling of growth continued. Much fun and joy ensued.

We plodded along like this for a little then we heard a loud bang from across road. Realtime Worlds had imploded. While it wasn't a huge surprise, it was a shock that it went down so quickly. Still, every cloud and all that... we picked up a few great guys from Realtime Worlds, Stuart, Lee and later Malcolm. Geoff also joined us as we shifted focus from PSP to iOS.

The iOS port was done very quickly, and so in less than a month we hard ported the Win32/PSP version of the runner over to iOS and had submitted our fist App. The long term dream of Sandy's was now a reality. Games running on multiple devices. Community games being sold on other devices. Getting Stuart from the ruins of RTW was a godsend, he jumped head first into production and started to formulate the pipeline, and we soon had several games lined up, and were pumping them out at the rate of about one a week.

Abertay also came into it's own. A huge pot of student artists, testers and musicians ready to help us, and this was all very welcome.

Sandy then wanted to release a free game, something to raise our profile a little in the iPhone/iPad world, and decided a little Solitaire game would be nice. So Andrew started work on this little game. But it actually turned into a monster. Lots of little niggles and bugs were causing Andrew to pull his hair out, so I took a little break from the platform side, and gave him a hand. This was the first time I had really used Game Maker in anger, so it took some time for me to get my head around it. It's a totally different way of doing things (from my perspective). Still, I took Solitaire apart, and put it all back together, and we were finally able to submit it to Apple. Little did we know that it would cause such a stir!

Now.. Christmas is a unique day in app-store time. Downloads are huge for everything as everyone gets apps for their new devices, and even though Solitaire had been doing great already, it stunned us on Christmas day. 75,000 downloads in a single day! Of course... we didn't find this out right away; no. The Apple site was down for a week over Christmas, so late on the 28th December when we got the weeks numbers, we were ecstatic!

So... all in all, a good year, with a bad start. But a good year never the less. So what's next? Well, Sandy has already said we're now working on Gamer Maker 8.1, and I've been doing just that over Christmas. I've been itching to get my hands on it, and improve Marks already damn fine program. I'm currently adding the much asked for ZOOM feature to the room editor. Ever since I started playing around with Game Maker, I felt this was missing. I've never written a modern tile editor that didn't have a zoom. Simply put: you need it. Moving back from my test version to the 8.0 is now hard going! The lack of ZOOM in there is even more apparent, so it's great to finally get it in.

However, because of this... it also needs a little speed boost. So I'll also be speeding up all the drawing code that's in the editor. I was surprised to discover it's not hardware accelerated, so it's actually doing pretty well in it's current state! We will at some point change that, but not just now, that'll take more time, and we simply don't have that just yet. However... once we've done a new release, we'll be able to play with it in the background and make the improvements we need, and you want.

We will also be doing a load of bug fixes. As many simple niggles as we can, along with the more complicated ones that stop folk dead in their tracks - if we can (it's still a new code base to us). I really feel excited to finally be able to extend and improve Game Maker, and although it'll take a little time; it's gonna be great!

So finally... looking forward to 2011. What does it hold for us? Onwards and upwards I hope!!! We're building some real momentum here, and it's looking better and better for all things Game Maker and YoYo! We have big plans for both community games, and Game Maker itself, and I am literary tingling with anticipation! I'm a games coder at heart, and the thought of helping you make more great games is a real buzz.

So lets all hope for a good 2011, and we'll see you all on the flip side!!

Update....

So, it's been sometime since I've posted anything and a lot has changed - well, for me at least. I've left Realtime Worlds after some long term disagreements with how the project I was on was being handled, but I wish them all the best and hope they make a go of it. All I can say about the project is that IF they manage to pull it off, then it's gonna be huge! Good luck to all involved, I spent 5 years of my life on it, so I'm still very keen to see it work.

Still onwards and upwards I guess. I'm currently on gardening leave from RTW and have just over a week left before my official end date. It's nice to be able to kick back and relax a bit, although I have been finishing off some freelance stuff I've been doing on the side. I hope this will be announced soon so I can start blogging a little more about it, because it's really interesting in its own right. With luck, I'll have things sorted out in a couple of weeks and everything will become clear.

Because of all this, my retro projects have obviously taken a back seat, and will remain so for some time to come; and the same goes for my electronics. I'd love to get back into them but I have bills to pay like everyone else so I have to concentrate on other things. I'd love to dabble back with my electronics in particular, but it's going to be a while before I can afford to do that again.

Anyways... I hope to announce some stuff in a couple of weeks, and with any luck, you'll all be interested in that as well!


Oh! And you can follow me on Twitter if you REALLY have no life and nothing else to do... I'm on there as MDF200 (which was my old Visual Sciences login ID!

Windows 7!

I've just installed the windows 7 release candidate and it's all very nice. It has some issues with my 2nd graphics card (I use a small PCI card so I get a 3rd monitor), but aside from that many of the annoying vista-isms are now gone.
However... Because it's a clean install I now need to reinstall everything, including the sub-version server but I hope that since I'm just pointing at a depo it won't take too long this time. If I get a chance tonight I'll try and finish installing everything, then I can (I hope) plod on with more interesting things.

Almost there....

I've just about got my PC setup again, althought theres always going to be apps I've forgotten about and will only rediscover later on. I thought I could get away with just installing the C# Express edition for all my needs, but alas no. I really need macro support and it doesn't have source control built in so I'll have to install the full Visual Studio again. I do hope to do some C# Express projects for the debugger to allow people to write plug-ins without having to buy the full visual studio though.

Speaking of source control... I've reinstalled Visual Source Safe so I can get access to my old repository but I'm thinking I want to install SubVersion. This would bring me upto date a little and allow others to check stuff in/out of my depo. Russell's been moaning at me for months to let him get access to the debugger and so he can keep upto date with the XeO3 source. I have come across a tool which converts VSS databases into subversion ones, so I'll have to give that a go - I like having all the history for them, but as long as I still have to old VSS repository I guess its not a huge issue.

The guys wanting to do a CPC+ version of XeO3 got in touch (again - I missed them 1st time around; my bad), so we'll have to have a chat and see if they meet the criteria for offical developers (Yes, I'm a picky bastard...).

I'm having a slight issue with my new install as it's a 64bit OS, my 32bit apps are struggling to talk to the parallel port. Still, once I get DevStudio installed, I'll see if I can fix all that. It should also mean I can release 32+64 bit versions, or I might take the opportunity to port them to C# and mono.

I've also downloaded a VMPlayer and will get a mono vm image so I can start doing Linux support. This will let me play with Linux without having to dedicate a machine to it, or even reboot into it. (I hope - depends on how the free vm player works.)

So with any luck... back to normal next week!

It's alive!!!!

I've rebuilt my PC, got a hold of a version of Vista64 and got it all up and running. I've also installed my new copy of office so my email is working fully again, which brings me to another point. If anyones been trying to get in touch and I haven't responded then feel free to ping me again as email should be back to normal.

I now have to reinstall all my normal software again, which will take a couple of evenings I guess, but I hope that by the weekend, I'll be back to normal - but with my fancy new quad core. I have also gotten two new terrabyte drives to try and get rid of all the little drives my PC was using, so with any luck... I shouldn't have to do this again for a long time!

New bits!

My new bits have arrived at last! So I can finally get started on rebuilding my shattered life...err..PC. The motherboard looks pretty good and actually has 4 DIMM slots, not the 2 I thought it had (the picture was pretty small), this means I could go up to 8Gigs of RAM if I want to (thanks to Vista64).

However...first things first. Build and reinstall is the job for tonight, if I get a chance - hope so. I'm gonna go and buy another 1Tb drive though so i can cut down on all the smaller drives I keep having to put it. My old primary was 160Gb, then I had a 240Gb and a 500Gb. So sod that, time to clean up and just get 2 1Tb drives. They're getting pretty cheap now, ebuyer actually had an external 1Tb for only £85(ish). This'll make life much easier and I'm beginning to get retro withdrawal!

Home sweet home....

I'm finally back from Florida and back at work (pooh...), but until I get my main machine fixed I won't be doing much of anything. I just cant work with my laptop, its small keyboard and single screen. I could use its screen and an LCD I suppose, and plug a USB keyboard in, but it just doesnt feel right. I really am an old geezer stuck in his ways - oh well.

If anyone needs any small task done, nows probably the time to ask :)

Disney world fun and games.

Still here having a blast. Kids are loving it of course, and its a shame I'm being forced to relax and have fun too! I've not done anything over here, and I'm not sure I'll manage until I get back home and get my machine rebuilt. I was looking at some off the shelf PC's, but they're so damned expensive I'll probably rebuild it myself; I only really needa CPU+Motherboard I think so...

I got a new camera over here too. A nice Nikon D60, very cool. Piccys are virtually always just brill from it without having to do anything special, and the manual settings are great fun. The piccy on the left was taken with it on auto setting. It just works...fab cam.

Anyway... off to church and then downtown Disney for some more shopping! It's a hard life....

Busy busy busy!

Been busy having some serious family fun so not had much time to do much - well, anything really. Still really needed to chill so here we are!

Kids have been in the pool a lot, and while I've only dangled my feet in, I've been lovin' it!

Still, time to eat I think, it must have been about 30min since I last ate! :)

Orlando!!

I'm currently in orlando having a family break, it's long over due really but I'm loving it!We had a great flight over as the plane had TVs in the back of the seats, so you could pick your own films or TV programs. It also had some good games to play, so Rebecca and I had great fun - I didn't even get my laptop out I was having so much fun!

It's been raining a bit here, usually for about 1/2 hour a day, and it's incredibly heavy (as usual), but because of that, it's not getting as hot as it can get which is great!

We've actually spent more time in walmart than anywhere else just about! The misses is loving it! We spent most of yesterday in the Animal Kingdom and eventually had to leave cause the rain was so heavy we were soaked through. Our clothes dried pretty easily, but our socks/shoes were soaked. I also appear to have killed my iPod, as my bag got soaked through, and the screen is full of watter - bugger.... I'm trying to let it dry out before trying it, but iPods never really switch off so I'm not hopefull. *sniff*

Bloody PC's!!!!

Well, it looks like I've had a hard disk failure, or rather its almost dead (I think). It keeps locking up, and it can take an age to access things sometimes, which is usually a sign your disks on the way out. This is a bugger an no mistake....

It means I've got to buy a new disk, reinstall everything, not to mention try and find all the software I use but forgot about... little utilities I take for granted.

I also have the choice of installing Vista or XP again. I hate vista, so the choice would seem pretty clear.... but that said, I dont really want to have to do this again. The hard disk that failed is about4 years old and its been that long since Ive had to install things again, but I hate doing it - who doesn't.

Anyway, all this means that things will now move pretty slowly as I need to do this before I can get going on my various projects again. Bugger.

I hate PCs.....

You wait. Time passes......

Yeah, I've not been doing much past few days. I've got a bit of a cold so I'm feeling a bit pooh, and we've had some birthdays etc. so I've not had much time. I might get a chance to get back into gear over the weekend, but it depends on this cold...*sigh*

Back to work tomorrow....

I've had a reasonably fun week or so off, but it'll be back to the usual grind tomorrow which will mean fewer updates and less playing around. Oh well, its been fun :)

I'm currently playing with lots of different things just now, flicking back and forth as the mood takes me. Currently I've got my SuperCPU hooked up as I was playing with a true dual-playfield system. Its got 2 bitmaps and masks one onto the other if you can believe it! I've said it before but Metal Dust I don't think used the power very well and does look like just a nice C64 game. To my mind the new Enforcer 2 actually looks just as good but is on a stock machine. I think you need to do something really different - something that would be impossible on a stock machine, and I'm still playing around with what that could be.

The problem with TRUE dual playfields is that you can't make best use of colour, in fact your pretty much back to 3 colour displays or you end up with huge colour clash again, and thats not very SUPER. Also to make it simpler, you really need to manually smooth scroll the front layer and that means you can't make them up from a software character map meaning you can't have it all animating away which would also be a shame. Still, I'm working away on it...

On the C64 XeO3 front I've obviously been pluggin in my new multiplexor and speeding that up, although there is one more major speed up needed here and thats when I do the sprite copy to the IRQ buffers, I also copy in the first seven sprites, however these then immediately get copied into the hardware. This means an obvious speed up is to skip that and copy the first seven sprites into the hardware directly. This will slow down the copy a little, but not having to duplicate it will be a big speedup over all - I hope.

PC Engine.... I've almost got my assembler going although I need to add a few more addressing modes to deal with TEST #??,blah types. After that I can start to play properly, however my PC Engine has started to act up and it looks like its dying, so I'll need to find my TG16 in the loft at somepoint.

Lastly... XeO3 on the Plus4... After playing Blood Money a little again, I'm starting to sway towards the player dying but the action keeps on going. You then come back on flickering or something to give you a little bit of a shield and then carry on from there. This means you won't be thrown back to the start of the level, but you WILL lose some weapon power (not all). The reason for my sudden reversal is that after playing and watching Blood Money I realise that its gonna get hard later on anyway, so even if you don't get thrown back to the start, you're not gonna finish is easily anyhow - so what the hell. It will hopefully mean most folk won't get too frustrated early on, but it does mean it'll get pretty hard later on, which was to be expected anyway I guess. I'll try this out and get a few peoples feedback, or we might even release another test although I think that unlikely for now.

Oh... and a quickie. With the C64 codebase getting pretty stable, I think I'll be releasing a framework sooner rather than later. So it won't be the full XeO3 source yet, but it will be a nice framework for starting a game in, complete with a production quality multiplexor. People can then strip it to bits and bend it into thier own idea of a framework and make some toys with it..... we can hope.

And thats where things stand for now! Fun, fun, fun!! Any questions/suggestions/gripes/feedback, please just post a comment.

XeO3: Comments

Its funny reading some of the comments about the video, many of them seem to wonder why I'm doing it - so I thought I'd answer.

When I started coding all those years ago I did it for fun, nothing to do with money or a career (although it was a distant hope), but plain old fun. Years later when I started coding profesionally, I was pretty good at at because I'd spent years getting good at optimising things and making things fun.

Now...fast forward to today. I spend all my profesional time working on high end PC's/Consoles doing the games that these people say we should be playing and something is missing. It's been brought up a couple of times on the DIGG list. Machines are so big and powerful, we just dont need to take the same care and attention that we once did. Microsoft Windows being a case in point; it swallows virtuall all power from the latest processors and we hardly ever feel the upgrade the way we used to. We've lost something.

So, aside from the huge amounts of fun I get from writing of limited systems, and remember that this doesn't JUST mean retro machines that we won't let die but things like mobile phones and whatever the latest limited system is - theres always going to be a new one. I learn lots of new things by working with these systems. If you work on systems that are hardly ever taxed, that are heavying with memory, and have huge resources, then its hard to learn optimisational tricks any more. Working with these smaller machines keeps our minds ticking, thinking and working so that we can use these tricks when we need them on real projects. These days, it doesn't take a programming god to make a game that looks okay, but still you have to be pretty good to push the machine; its just harder to know that you've reached that limit and its not that you've just turned into a lazy coder.

Necessity really is the mother of invention. If you dont really need it, you'll never discover it.