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OFFICIAL Winter Q&A 2021

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iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Will there be isometric support for tile layers? Unity and Godot have it and they're more generaliized engines rather than just 2d.
ATM trying to create something isometric in GM is harder than 3d and people actually default to 3D with orthographic projection to save their sanity as depth sorting gets mad. It's kinda broken in both Unity and Godot so it would be a great area to develop.
We have discussed this and something that we would like to implement but we have higher priorities just now and not in the 2.x timeframe...

Ever considered letting people setup external sprite editor by default as most people prefer to use Aseprite or Photoshop.
Yes, https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/winter-q-a-2021.90862/post-545095

A lot of people try making rhythm games using GM and it's a pain. Any improvements coming in that area? Also running audio effects like filters etc using buffers on the same thread using GML is too slow.
Yes, complete audio overhaul is on the cards
More details: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/winter-q-a-2021.90862/post-544932

Will you ever bring back Steam Achievements like they were in GMS1? Would GM appear on other platforms?
Not planning on adding these in.

Will you add goto to GML?
No

Any plans on phasing out old JSON functions and DS structures at some point?
Not in the 2.x timeframe but they will only be compatibility functions beyond that.
 
Any plans on improving network multiplayer or making it easier to set up (ex: construct 3 has a signaling server that they provide that helps connect peers directly to each other over the internet)
Any plans on providing some sort of easier to use lighting system so that users don't have to build one from scratch for themselves?

Any discussions internally about supporting VR headsets in some way maybe? Im guessing not since VR kind of implies you would be dealing with 3D graphics.

Any plans on adding new event types to the already existing list (not that its needed as I cant think of anything else that would need to be included)

Someone may have asked this already but are there any plans to implement a shader creator similar to the way that materials can be created in blender/UE4.

If/when GMS3 comes into existence; will you be taking the same approach that you did from 1.4 to 2. That is to say will you make it possible for people to import there projects from 2 to 3 by keeping old/deprecated functions/functionality or are you more likely to wipe the slate clean and start fresh in that regard?
 

rIKmAN

Member
Our ultimate goal is to be the best 2D development environment that is recommended by all as the go to tool for making a 2D game.
Given this goal it's a shame proper isometric support seems to be so low down on the priority list, it's been something missing from the engine for so long and although I realise it's still possible it's quite a cumbersome process and it seems things like Filters/Effects are aiming to make things that are already possible easier - proper isometric support fits that description perfectly for the "go to tool for 2D game dev".

Everything else is sounding good but yeah - please don't ever add emoji-coding. 😄

Also thanks to all involved for doing this Q&A.
 
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Cpaz

Member
At the risk of potentially beating a dead horse, are there any plans for more generalized asynchronous functionality?

Be it multithreading, multiprocessing, or whatever form GM would opt to take it in?
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
As you have plans for updating shader support and with them, add compute shaders, I would like to know general gist how one would use compute shaders in GMS2?

For example, would you set a normal buffer as a target, or do you need to use surfaces? Do you set up compute shader like other shaders, staging buffers (or surfaces) as inputs and setting uniforms?
We are not in a position to talk about this just yet. Stay tuned...

On the sidenote, do you have plans for supporting 3D textures/surfaces and floating point textures?
These might be things that we look into in the future but right now we are focusing on 2D.

I would like to see shader resources became bit like scripts in 2.3.: instead script being the function, it declares functions within. Similarly shader resource could define several shaders, not just the single shader.
(Well actually scripts now executes all code within it, and function declarations are just globally scoped. But you get the point I meant ;) )


We have no plans along these lines, as we look to support industry standards for these and that is not how they are handled in other tools.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
The IDE and runtime extension points are limited, which means most of the features improvement comes from YY.
What drives the features priorisation? (User voice? Surveys? Highest bidder in commercial space? a barometer?)
There are several factors that affect the prioritisation of features, bug fixes etc. We do take into account user suggestions while we work towards our goals of making game development easier to do. In the long term we are looking to open our toolchain to make it easier to support other libraries and technologies, so we can remove ourselves as the limiting factor for many of these.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
For the future GUI updates I am curious if there will be a new resource (GUI Resource) where you can design the GUI visually and call the resource for display/interaction at will?
Nothing to announce just now.. Stay tuned...

I saw multiplayer was going to be made simpler, which is awesome (Making things easier/nicer to use is always a good thing), but I am curious if there will be a better input management system down the line as well? I know some engines handle it nicely with a configuration in the UI (UE handles this very nicely, for instance).
For input see Actions mentioned in the Winter update
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Sequences are definitely the best addition to GM (in my opinion of course)
My question is: Do you plan to continue developing it more and more (and make it more convenient and fix those bad bugs)?
Or has it reached a stable point for now and you aren't going to improve it drastically?
Yes
 please file bugs if there is anything going wrong. We prioritise the sequence bugs so there should not be any really bad ones just now, if something has been forgotten then let us know (with ticket number preferably).
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
1. I know Audio Engine improvements have already been mentioned, but can we take these amazing things into consideration? 🙏
  • FFT algorithm (Fast Fourier transform, the best thing ever, especially for rhythmic games);
  • Audio effects (like: reverb, echo, flanger and others).
And in such a way that it works on all platforms, especially Android/iOS and HTML5, and others.
If you’ve not already added feature requests for these then please do so (each as a separate one please). Audio will be getting an overhaul.

2. It will be possible update the OpenGL version to 3.0 or higher?
Which include improvements to arrays and others.
Not in the 2.x runtime timeframe but we have plans beyond that
 stay tuned...

3. Will we have class system in GML?
We already do as objects can have parents and inherit functionality from them, currently we have no plans to announce anything about enhancing GML further.

4. In the future it will be possible to no longer use the object editor and do something like this?
Example:
GML:
class obj_controller : Object
{
    #define solid false
    #define visible true
    #define use_physics false

    void Create()
    {
        score_variable = 100;
        some_text = "";
    }

    void Step()
    {
        score_variable++;
    }

    void DrawGUI()
    {
        draw_text(10, 10, score_variable);
    }
}
Obviously to make it easier:
  • When creating an object, automatically insert the example code above.
  • You can add Code Blocks with all predefined events in the code editor:
The Object Editor is getting an overhaul next year, we’ll be releasing more information on this nearer the time.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Question 1:
Can we expect support for isometric and hexagonal grids tiles in the 2.x lifetime?
This has been discussed internally and is something that we would like to add, however it won't be in the 2.x lifetime

Question 2:
Can we expect to eventually have IDE plugins in the 2.x lifetime?
We are looking to improve the IDE and its functionality but a lot of this may not be available in the 2.x timeline.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
1) Will GMS ever natively support webcams and built-in video cameras? Many of the platforms (mobile & desktop) have these as standard built-in now. Possible popular use for party games and to increase player interaction for younger players.
This is why we added extensions
.

2) When will GMS2 have audio recording functions fixed and functioning again?
File bugs with projects to show the problem, we are improving the functionality.

3) Why was video playback support never integrated into GMS? Would this be possible further down the GMS2 roadmap? (Partially answered earlier)
Cross platform video support is something that we are considering but it has not been high priority as it can be done via extensions

4) Any chance of an Intellivision Amico target in the future? Tommy seems very approachable!
Not a priority for us.

5) Would YoYo Game ever hire people to generate video tutorials again like they did when they hired Shaun Spalding?
We already do.

6) Why was XML left out of the possible data formats? Would XML become a part of the various other data save/load functions considering it's popularity?
XML is a complicated standard and not something we are looking to support. Again it could be supported via extensions.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
1. Any plan to add SVG sprites (please I will love you forever if you add it)?
This is something that we have discussed and would like to add to GameMaker
2. Any plans to add the ability to run code in separate threads?
Not in 2.x lifetime but something we have plans for going forward
 stay tuned...
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
What are YoYo Games and Opera doing to reduce the carbon footprint of their products, services and wider business activities?
Please refer to the Opera corporate press office for more information as we are not setting policy on this.

With the question above in mind, will GameMaker products ever utilize or actively promote blockchain currencies / NFTs?
Current NFT technology isn’t something that we are planning on utilising or promoting for GameMaker. Users are free to explore all options available to them and we are not (and should not) preventing them from doing so.
 

gnysek

Member
You can already do this in Sequences
 you really should look at them. And you can have them within the room editor already.
nah, I can scale, rotate and change position, but not morph/disort - I'm rather talking about freely dragging every corner of sprite, or sth similar:

1636467667339.png
 

poliver

Member
I know it's just a synthactic sugar but template literals like in js would be nice.
Something about being able to embed variables and expression right into strings feels really satisfying .
stringySting = "balbalblabl ${expression} balbalbalba"
I'll submit a feature request.

Has regex functionality been considered?

Thank you for awesome replies!
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
IMHO their hekpdesk works a little like mail app - I've noticed that all my unanswered tickets seems to have "last update time" few days later than report times so for sure somebody looked into it, but didn't answered (maybe wanted to pass it to someone else), and it seems to be not displaying for hekpdesk staff on unreaded/awaiting list anymore. I may be wrong, but for me it looks that they are only checking "unreaded" tickets, cause I'm either getting answer in 24-48h, or I'm seeing "update time" changed in that period, and nothing happens for weeks.
Thats not how it works at all, the last updated has no effect on how visible a ticket is. Frequently a ticket will be updated with internal comments when QA are working on verifying them and there are even some automations that will cause the last updated to change. If a ticket has been waiting for a longer time it generally means that taking longer to verify. Anything that doesn't have a high reproduction rate, clear steps to reproduce, and attached (small and isolated) sample/log will be lower in the priority list as it ties up someone time to deal with.
 

Posh Indie

That Guy
2. Any plans to add the ability to run code in separate threads?
Not in 2.x lifetime but something we have plans for going forward
 stay tuned...
Oh. My. Goodness. Pretty sure the whole community knows how I feel about this.

A few more questions:

Threading/Processing - The above covers threads, but what about multiple processors?

Networking/Multiplayer - I know there are wonky ways to do this now, but will there ever be support for a proper headless export for game servers? (With the above Threading/Processing capabilities, this could end up being very powerful)

If the above get implemented, that will end my 4-5ish years of "Meme Requesting". Not that that matters so much, but I got so used to asking for these things that I won't know what to ask for anymore (And I'm okay with this. Just saying.)! I may suffer from "Feature Request Trauma", though, so if any of these get added and I continue to request them, just pass it off as a long-standing habit.

You mentioned Threads would not be in the 2.x lifetime, which is cool. So when is the planned "Next" release? I want to leave 2.x behind now and get the good stuff already.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
How do you market game maker? Like how do you get it out there for random gamedevs to use?
It is a complex process that involves arcane rituals and hope..
But seriously, we’ve asked our marketing chap Sam Roads to take a break from drinking Lattes or whatever marketers do and come give an answer:
“We do a tonne of things to market GameMaker, so the quick answer is:
* Pay Per Click adverts on Facebook and on Google Search
* Search Engine Optimisation - so we turn up on search engines
* Conversion Rate Optimisation - so people who come to www.yoyogames.com try GameMaker and enjoy their visit
* Customer Relationship Management - stuff like this!

I used to be a game developer myself. If you’d like advice on marketing your games, maybe in future they’ll let me out of the marketing cave to answer your questions on things like Kickstarters, Patreon, using Social Media and even the dreaded Pay Per Click.”
 

Posh Indie

That Guy
It is a complex process that involves arcane rituals and hope..
But seriously, we’ve asked our marketing chap Sam Roads to take a break from drinking Lattes or whatever marketers do and come give an answer:
Game Marketing is always a moving target, so letting him out of the cave from time to time to give a recurring "GMS Community: Marketing your game" series would be awesome, actually.

I will even send him a Latte.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Filters are cool but a built shader editor with multiple layers would be cooler? Any thoughts on this coming?
A visual shader editor is something that has been discussed internally and would be an awesome addition to GameMaker, if we do make one then it won’t be in the 2.x lifetime.

Speaking of built in editors, is there a plan to develop a built in particle editor?
Yes, it’s on the roadmap

What about true isometric grid support and easily configurable depth sorting using the doeth buffer (maybe this is a dream)?
Isometric is something that we would like to add. Depth is enabled by default now so you should be able to do anything you want via that.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Any plans on improving network multiplayer or making it easier to set up (ex: construct 3 has a signaling server that they provide that helps connect peers directly to each other over the internet)
Yes, not much information yet but see our Winter Check-In post for info: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/gamemaker-winter-check-in-updates.90863/

Any plans on providing some sort of easier to use lighting system so that users don't have to build one from scratch for themselves?
Yes but not in the 2.x lifetime

Any discussions internally about supporting VR headsets in some way maybe? Im guessing not since VR kind of implies you would be dealing with 3D graphics.
As you’ve pointed out it’s not something that many 2D games/engines would be focused on but we will always strive to push the boundaries of what is possible with GameMaker so it might be a thing one day.

Any plans on adding new event types to the already existing list (not that its needed as I cant think of anything else that would need to be included)
If a new event type comes up that we feel like we need to add then we will do so, we don't have any planned right now.

Someone may have asked this already but are there any plans to implement a shader creator similar to the way that materials can be created in blender/UE4.
This has been discussed internally but it will not be in the 2.x lifetime

If/when GMS3 comes into existence; will you be taking the same approach that you did from 1.4 to 2. That is to say will you make it possible for people to import there projects from 2 to 3 by keeping old/deprecated functions/functionality or are you more likely to wipe the slate clean and start fresh in that regard?
Any new version of GameMaker that we do or don’t decide to do in the future will be able to import projects from GMS2. There may need to be some conversion magic that happens in the background but we want to make sure that any sort of transition like that will be as streamlined as possible for users.
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
At the risk of potentially beating a dead horse, are there any plans for more generalized asynchronous functionality?

Be it multithreading, multiprocessing, or whatever form GM would opt to take it in?
Not in the 2.x lifetime, stay tuned for more info
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
I know it's just a synthactic sugar but template literals like in js would be nice.
Something about being able to embed variables and expression right into strings feels really satisfying .
stringySting = "balbalblabl ${expression} balbalbalba"
Not in the 2.x lifetime, stay tuned for more info


Has regex functionality been considered?
Not in the 2.x lifetime, stay tuned for more info
 

iampremo

GameMaker Staff
Admin
Moderator
GameMaker Dev.
Threading/Processing - The above covers threads, but what about multiple processors?
Is there a way of doing multiprocessing without multiple threads in the same process???

Networking/Multiplayer - I know there are wonky ways to do this now, but will there ever be support for a proper headless export for game servers? (With the above Threading/Processing capabilities, this could end up being very powerful)
That is something that we have discussed internally, if we do do it then it won't be in the 2.x lifetime.

You mentioned Threads would not be in the 2.x lifetime, which is cool. So when is the planned "Next" release? I want to leave 2.x behind now and get the good stuff already.
We don’t have anything to say on this front yet but there is still lots of work to be done before we reach that stage
 
I was wondering which game engines does YYG consider to be its main competition? I know its a bit of an obvious question and people are of course always talking about it but I would like to know from YYGs point of view who they think their main competitor/s is/are?

Does YYG have any plans to bring back the publishing division that used to exists or if not that then maybe something else that might help people market their games?

Thanks for all your quick responses btw.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Just wanted to say I appreciate all the communication taking place here. And also the fact that - aside from audio additions I mentioned earlier - there is SVG support considered too.

Seriously, though, it feels like in this year following Opera acquisition there has already been more communication between core staff and the userbase than in the entire Playtech era.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Not in the 2.x lifetime, stay tuned for more info
The only more info there could be here is that it would be coming outside the 2.x lifetime.

I'm sure you aren't ready to speak of any of this yet. But, how close is/was GMS2 to being the codebase you wish to keep developing long term?
Are there any aspects of GMS2 the team feels needs an new rewrite, be it the runtime, the IDE, asset pipeline, GML etc?
(Whether that means a new product or a new major GMS2 release).
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Is there a way of doing multiprocessing without multiple threads in the same process???
Not multiprocessing strictly speaking, but what about jobs using Fibers or co-routines?

Being able to run a GML job over multiple frames could be very useful.

Perhaps a system whereby we would fire off a function, and either poll for its completion or get an async event.
The runtime could use any left over frame time to run these jobs, or run them in parallel to some other systems like backend rendering.


Definitely out of scope, but would be an interesting way to bring some form of async programming without having to deal with multithreading issues.
 

Dragonite

Member
Speaking of async, any chance of seeing some or all of the Async events replaced with function callbacks now that those are things that we have?

GML:
buffer_load_async(destination, "data.bin", 0, -1, function(async_buffer) {
    buffer_seek(async_buffer, buffer_seek_start, 0);
    var fileid = buffer_read(async_buffer, buffer_u32);
    ...
});
 

Posh Indie

That Guy
Is there a way of doing multiprocessing without multiple threads in the same process???
I meant more along the lines of, "Let me use ALL of my CPU if I choose to". I would hope it would be configurable to some degree, as well.

To that end, Multithreading != Multiprocessing, but used together (And properly) they can be amazing.
 
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Ricardo

Member
Multiprocessing, multithreading, async functions... Whatever they want to call it. I know it is mostly a legacy issue of the runner, but Game Maker really needs to wake up and catch up on this if they want more studios and talented indies to get on board with more ambitious projects. Basically all the other pro engines out there has support for it and it shows if you look at the kind of games that are made.
 

ShaunJS

Just Another Dev
GMC Elder
Apologies if this has been covered!

Recently when Filters &Effects was announced there was a distinction made between the features that would be available to subscription users, permanent license holders and free users. A negative response to this prompted an adjustment that changed that distinction to be between features made available to Paid users and Free users instead.

First of all this helps the clarity of something that was initially rather confusing, was a positive response to feedback and I especially appreciate Russel's honesty when he explained that the initial approach was designed to make subscription more compelling. So thank you!

Secondly, I notice the original article although edited, still says that "some major features will only be available to subscribers". It is certainly understandable that with the very noticeable increase in development + release pace you want to encourage more people to move to subscriptions to support this. But this leaves a question open about what features will be available to who?

so my questions are:
  1. Will any features in the future make a distinction between permanent users and subscribers and what are they?
  2. Is it possible to get more clarity on what features will not be available to free users going forward?
  3. It is certainly understandable that with the very noticeable increase in development + release pace you want to encourage more people to move to subscriptions to support this. If your position on this holds and you are now reluctant to make a distinction between permanent licenses and subscribers for feature releases, what will you be doing to make subscriptions more appealing to users who already hold licenses and will there ever be a point where "permanent" licenses will realistically have to stop being quite so literally permanent?
My worry is that the highly arbitrary nature of this particular decision around this particular feature is a style that will continue into the future and it will become hard to predict what will be available to who or for how long and any additional clarity on how this will be decided going forwards would be very helpful.

Cheers!
-S
 
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gnysek

Member
There's lot of "not in GMS 2.x" lifetime, is it possible to give us minimal (like: for sure not before year X), or even better maximal dates of 2.x line life (like: no mater what, after year Y there will be next version)?
 

Posh Indie

That Guy
There's lot of "not in GMS 2.x" lifetime, is it possible to give us minimal (like: for sure not before year X), or even better maximal dates of 2.x line life (like: no mater what, after year Y there will be next version)?
This along with

Any new version of GameMaker that we do or don’t decide to do in the future will be able to import projects from GMS2. There may need to be some conversion magic that happens in the background but we want to make sure that any sort of transition like that will be as streamlined as possible for users.
does add some confusion to, "Will any of these, 'Not in 2.x' features even be added ever? Sounds like that's an unknown as well."

If that becomes a, "don't decide to do", then most of the questions/answers in here become irrelevant, haha.
 
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Dragonite

Member
I have a hard time imagining a post GMS2 product ever not happening - technology moves on - but the question is whether that's two years off, or five years off, or "your guess is as good as ours" years off.

(Personally, I'm not expecting to see the runtime overhaul talked about until at least 2023, and even then I don't know if that's something that would be considered "GMS3" or just another iteration on GMS2 the way 2.3 was. I think GMS2 has legs.)
 

Posh Indie

That Guy
I have a hard time imagining a post GMS2 product ever not happening - technology moves on - but the question is whether that's two years off, or five years off, or "your guess is as good as ours" years off.

(Personally, I'm not expecting to see the runtime overhaul talked about until at least 2023, and even then I don't know if that's something that would be considered "GMS3" or just another iteration on GMS2 the way 2.3 was. I think GMS2 has legs.)
The catch being that answers are "Not in 2.x lifetime", so as long as it holds the title of "2.x"... Basically, the longer GMS2 has legs, the longer it takes to get to the "Big Fish".

Puts me in the awkward position of being more excited for GMS2 EOL than GMS2 features, haha.
 

Ricardo

Member
Puts me in the awkward position of being more excited for GMS2 EOL than GMS2 features, haha.
Same here. For me the roadmap has a few interesting points, but most of them feel like cosmetic props that doesn't address core limitations of the product. Most of the things my studio is interested in are sadly "Not in 2.x lifetime".
 

Cameron

Member
I would like to add to this request. Can we also have the ability to set the built in filters and effects like a shader as well like so:
GML:
shader_set(built_in_filter_effect_x);
//some draw code
shader_reset();
or via specific built in effect functions like so:
GML:
effect_set(built_in_filter_effect_x);
//some draw code
effect_reset();
same thing really but maybe gives some additional control on your side for encapsulation on internal variations of implementation

or even more specific since different effects have different parameters:
GML:
effect_distort_set(parameter args...)
//draw code
effect_reset()
We already have a set of functions for this see the manual https://manual.yoyogames.com/GameMa...ter_Effect_Layers/Filter_Effect_Functions.htm There is one gotcha at the moment which is the filter/effect you want to use has to be referenced in a layer (we will fix this in a future release) it does not have to be visible just referenced.

If you think that we need more functionality then please file a feature request.
I just tested out the functions you linked to and I think it's being misunderstood what I'm requesting. The linked functions seem to apply effects to a single layer still. What I'm requesting is the ability to apply the effects to specific areas of draw code.

For example, you have an object drawing multiple buttons on a GUI and one of them is disabled. One way of user feedback could be to apply a desaturation effect to the button that is disabled. Not applying the effect to the entire layer but instead setting it directly before and after the sprite and text draws for that specific button. In this way it would work like a shader.

Unless I'm missing something here about the documentation you linked to.

Furthermore, I'm not even sure the layer functions you linked to can effect the GUI at all, as they only apply to the depth range of the layer they are setting and the GUI is outside those depth ranges.
 

Lance

Member
We are looking into improving audio in GameMaker across the board, improving it to a level that will provide as many options as possible. We’ll let everyone know more about this once we are ready to talk about it.
We are looking for an dedicated audio programmer
I’ll be honest, this is not going to sound good to any game audio professionals. What GM needs is not for you to put together some new audio tools. What GM needs is professional audio tools. Those already exist. You didn’t attempt to make a Spine clone for your animators. Why? First, because Spine is incredibly complex and you could never achieve what they did without dedicating a sizable team of specialists and animators for years, and second, why would you spend the time trying to when it already exists? Audio middleware is 100% exactly the same here. For some reason it’s easier for non-animator/artist types to understand and be critical about the visual arts and their needs, than it is for non-audio types to understand audio and its tools and needs and be critical about what makes it “good”. Any attempt YoYo could ever make to supply creators with audio tools will always pale in comparison to the deeply-complex, state-of-the-art, developed-over-decades, AAA tools that are already out there and free for most of us in the GM community. Imagine back before Spine integration if you just announced to your artists and animators, “we’re looking into making some new animation tools” — the backlash would have been “my gosh please no, don’t try to make something—it won’t be what we need, we’ve already had a cross-platform/cross-IDE industry standard tool for years that we use, and we don’t need ‘new features’ or a (*cringe*) ‘overhaul’ developed by one ‘dedicated programmer’!”

As a professional in the game audio industry, I can tell you that the we’re not looking for solutions made by programmers for programmers on teams not led by audio professionals. We’re always looking for and developing ways to take audio implementation and designing audio behaviors out of the hands of programmers and IDEs and put it back in the hands of audio professionals to empower them to do more with interactive audio. This is the miracle of audio middleware.

I’m glad YoYo has stated that audio will no longer be neglected, but please please don’t think an “overhaul” done by one or even a small team of programmers will be at all what audio people need. Why spend a lot of money reinventing a wheel that will arrive later? How about spending no money on a perfect AAA solution that we have now? GM needs FMOD support exactly as much as it needed Spine. The tools are there already, they’re free, they’re powerful, widely used, and incredibly easy to use. It’s literally the last gaping hole to fill in GM among the basic disciplines of game development.
 
I will just take a second of my (and your) time to have a shoutout to @iampremo for doing all this. Even when you're getting paid to, being bombarded by questions like Britney Spears caught at the Chippendales is never easy (or fun, really!), so I raise my hat to you and your coworkers, sir.
That said, this is the best hindsight we ever had on what will and will not be part of GMS 2 at the end of it's development cycle and I'm sure I'm not the only one very grateful for that, since it allow us to make better decisions and planning as to what tools we will and won't use.
Soooo... all this to say: if it ever ends up not working out in the future between us, just know it's going to be strictly for technical reasons, and not because I don't love you guys!
Cheers đŸ»
 

poliver

Member
I’ll be honest, this is not going to sound good to any game audio professionals. What GM needs is not for you to put together some new audio tools. What GM needs is professional audio tools. Those already exist. You didn’t attempt to make a Spine clone for your animators. Why? First, because Spine is incredibly complex and you could never achieve what they did without dedicating a sizable team of specialists and animators for years, and second, why would you spend the time trying to when it already exists? Audio middleware is 100% exactly the same here. For some reason it’s easier for non-animator/artist types to understand and be critical about the visual arts and their needs, than it is for non-audio types to understand audio and its tools and needs and be critical about what makes it “good”. Any attempt YoYo could ever make to supply creators with audio tools will always pale in comparison to the deeply-complex, state-of-the-art, developed-over-decades, AAA tools that are already out there and free for most of us in the GM community. Imagine back before Spine integration if you just announced to your artists and animators, “we’re looking into making some new animation tools” — the backlash would have been “my gosh please no, don’t try to make something—it won’t be what we need, we’ve already had a cross-platform/cross-IDE industry standard tool for years that we use, and we don’t need ‘new features’ or a (*cringe*) ‘overhaul’ developed by one ‘dedicated programmer’!”

As a professional in the game audio industry, I can tell you that the we’re not looking for solutions made by programmers for programmers on teams not led by audio professionals. We’re always looking for and developing ways to take audio implementation and designing audio behaviors out of the hands of programmers and IDEs and put it back in the hands of audio professionals to empower them to do more with interactive audio. This is the miracle of audio middleware.

I’m glad YoYo has stated that audio will no longer be neglected, but please please don’t think an “overhaul” done by one or even a small team of programmers will be at all what audio people need. Why spend a lot of money reinventing a wheel that will arrive later? How about spending no money on a perfect AAA solution that we have now? GM needs FMOD support exactly as much as it needed Spine. The tools are there already, they’re free, they’re powerful, widely used, and incredibly easy to use. It’s literally the last gaping hole to fill in GM among the basic disciplines of game development.
I think you're talking about completely different things. Sure better out of the box support for middleware like fmod and wwise would be nice but don't dismiss native audio.
A lot of people just want to have an ability to plug on an EQ on a track without going mad. Not everyone wants to attach fmod to do that.
UEs native audio capabilities is on par and outperform middleware. Why did they bother if it's so useless...
 

Karlstens

Member
Not in the 2.x timeframe but we are looking at better font support going forward.
Cool, I think a lot of good will come from the incorporation of simple emoji usage, as it saves on time for devs who are all about the code and just want to quickly use emoji as art. Allows them to skip time consuming steps of sprite creation.

Unlikely, this sounds like a terrible idea..
Suprisingly, the Egyptian hieroglyphs were in play for thousands of years. 
 but from a professional stance, I’ve been coding emoji through javascript and Airtable projects, and it’s actually a dream as the eye can identify symbols extremely quickly when drowning in a sea of text.

Regarding another q&a question - Can YoYo please engage the community when it comes to improving/replacing all aspects of the particle system? The current particle system falls short in many ways, and there are a lot of people with great ideas that need to be discussed for the systems revamp.
 

Dragonite

Member
Suprisingly, the Egyptian hieroglyphs were in play for thousands of years. 
 but from a professional stance, I’ve been coding emoji through javascript and Airtable projects, and it’s actually a dream as the eye can identify symbols extremely quickly when drowning in a sea of text.
I've been resisting the urge to post this all day, but you've finally forced my hand.

Hover text: "I honestly didn't think you could even USE emoji in variable names. Or that there were so many different crying ones."
 

Karlstens

Member
I've been resisting the urge to post this all day, but you've finally forced my hand.

Hover text: "I honestly didn't think you could even USE emoji in variable names. Or that there were so many different crying ones."
Well, all I can say is...

1636494156387.png

Don't knock it till you try it. 😎
 
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