Game-Maker


Game-Maker is an MS-DOS-based suite of game design tools, accompanied by demonstration games, produced between 1991 and 1995 by the Amherst, New Hampshire based Recreational Software Designs and sold through direct mail in the US by KD Software. Game-Maker also was sold under various names by licensed distributors in the UK, Korea, and other territories including Captain GameMaker and Create Your Own Games With GameMaker!. Game-Maker is notable as one of the first complete game design packages for DOS-based PCs, for its fully mouse-driven graphical interface, and for its early support for VGA graphics, Sound Blaster sound, and full-screen four-way scrolling.
Primary distribution for Game-Maker was through advertisements in the back of PC and game magazines such as Computer Gaming World and VideoGames & Computer Entertainment. At release Game-Maker was priced at $89, and shipped on 5.25" diskette with seven or eight demonstration or tutorial games. Later releases were less expensive, and shipped on CD-ROM with dozens of sample games and a large selection of extra tools and resources.
After some consultation with the user base, on 12 July 2014 original coder Andy Stone released the Game-Maker 3.0 source code on GitHub, under the MIT license.

Construction

Game-Maker consists of a text-mode wrapper, tying together a collection of WYSIWYG design tools. The tools produce proprietary resources that are compiled together and parsed with RSD's custom XFERPLAY game engine. The design tools include:
  • Palette Designer – for designing and editing custom 256-color.PAL palette files
  • Block Designer – for designing 20x20 pixel.BBL background tiles and.CBL/.MBL animation frames for characters and monsters
  • Character Maker – for animating and sequencing.CHR character sprites
  • Monster Maker – for animating and sequencing.MON "monster" sprites
  • Map Maker – for designing 100x100 tile.MAP files
  • Graphics Image Reader – for importing visuals from.GIF files, produced with external painting programs
  • Sound Designer – for designing PC speaker.SND files, assigning Sound Blaster.VOC samples, and formatting.CMF music files
  • Integrator – for compiling and organizing resources together into a playable.GAM file
Game-Maker involves no scripting language; all design tools use a mouse-driven 320x200 VGA display, with a shared logic and visual theme. Users draw background tiles pixel-by-pixel in an enlarged window, and can pull tiles from the palette to arrange in a "sandbox" area. A further menu allows users to set physical properties—solidity, gravity, animation, various counter values—for each block. The user draws maps by pulling blocks from the palette and painting with them using simple paintbrush, line, shape, and fill tools.
Characters can have up to 15 keyboard commands, plus idle, death, and injury animations. They can hold an inventory and money, earn score, gain and lose hit points and lives, and track several counters—often used for keys and similar functions. Monsters have simple animations and movements, and can also change behavior in response to the player.
Playable games can be exported complete with a portable version of the XFERPLAY engine, sound drivers, and configuration files. All games record high scores and attract mode replays. All games also feature instant save and load, and support standard PC joysticks.
In later versions of the software, games also can incorporate several formats including ASCII text data, CompuServe.GIF files, and Autodesk Animator.FLI animations into multimedia presentations during menus and between levels. Although Game-Maker includes no tools for developing these files, the formats are standardized enough to allow the user a choice of standalone utilities. In addition, image data produced with outside programs such as Deluxe Paint is easily imported and split into background tiles or sprites.

Game engine

Through RSD's proprietary XFERPLAY engine, all Game-Maker games run in 256-color full-screen VGA, at an eccentric 312x196 resolution. Game-Maker games are also distinguished by their eccentric 20x20 tile and sprite size, populating a standard 100x100 tile map size. Transition between scenes is achieved through a slow fade to or from black.
All games share a common interface, with a menu screen offering six options: Play, Read Instructions, Read Storyline, See Credits, See Highest Scores, and Quit. Pressing F2 brings up an inventory screen, while F5 and F6 bring up save and load screens. Although most of these menus can be customized with.GIF backgrounds, their basic layout, labeling, and content are constant across all games.
All games track player score and display a high score table upon the game's end. Later versions of Game-Maker allow multimedia sequences between levels, including.GIF images,.FLI animations, and ASCII text files.
The engine allows one player at a time, with the screen automatically scrolling in any of the four cardinal directions when the character comes within 1/3 screen width or height of the screen's edge. All Game-Maker games lack an on-screen display, though much of this information can be tracked in the inventory screen.

History

Game-Maker developed from a series of modification tools for a top-down competitive maze game called Labyrinth, designed by Andrew Stone in January 1991. Although the engine is different, Labyrinth shared code and file formats with the later XFERPLAY engine and graphical resources with several later first-party games.
Whereas Labyrinth grew out of Andrew's interest in NetHack and Piers Anthony novels, one of Andrew's first goals was to expand his tools and engine to permit side-scrolling action-adventure games. "In fact, making something like Metroid was sort of the bar I set myself for version 1.0. Which is why I added the secret passage features, and gravity, early on."
In July 1991 Andrew and his father G. Oliver Stone incorporated Recreational Software Designs to pursue Game-Maker as a business venture—with Oliver as president and Andrew as CEO. Through Oliver's business acumen RSD made deals with KD Software and GameLynk to distribute Game-Maker and host its online community. Through 1992-1994 RSD placed a series of full-sized ads in major computer magazines, and in 1994 they sub-leased a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
At the time of Game-Maker's release the software was revolutionary both in concept and technology; although there were earlier game creation systems, Game-Maker was the first general-purpose graphical GCS for the dominant DOS/Windows-based PC. Throughout the design process Andrew was adamant that Game-Maker's tools remain entirely visual, involving absolutely no programming from the end user. Its engine also supported full-screen four-way VGA scrolling, and later full-screen double buffered redraws, well before these were the standard.
Several updates followed over the next three years, adding Sound Blaster support, improving the design interface, and refining the game engine—yet many features kept being pushed back. Although his brother Oliver Jr. spent a summer on the project, and wrote the code for the sound and Monster editor, Andrew handled the bulk of the coding and updates – a task that, thanks to the lack of standardized drivers or libraries at that time, became all-encompassing and difficult to maintain. Over the software's lifetime Andrew found himself so "waylaid by video driver and problems" that he was unable to focus as much as he wanted on adding and refining features.
By the mid-1990s the advent of 3D video cards and the introduction of Windows 95 meant that to keep up with the marketplace Game-Maker would need great changes both in concept and in coding. Furthermore, the continued lack of standardization meant a large investment in coding ever more complicated drivers and libraries—work that would be thrown away as soon as standards were established. Despite plans for a radical professional-quality update, RSD ceased support for Game-Maker around 1995.
In a 2011 interview Andrew mused about Game-Maker, stating that by his own principles he was surprised he hadn't released the source code years earlier.
Later, on 1 July 2014, Andrew posted to the Game-Maker Facebook page, asking for community input on releasing the code. On 12 July he posted the Game-Maker 3.0 source to GitHub, under the MIT license, suggesting that although people were free to use the code how they liked, "if there is interest in preserving the old games you guys made then porting Game-Maker to modern OSes is the first step."

Release history

  • Game-Maker 1.0: Includes one 1.44 MB microfloppy disk containing the full set of RSD tools plus the games Sample, Terrain, Houses, Animation, Pipemare, Nebula, and Penguin Pete. Also included, beginning in version 1.04, is a separate diskette containing the GameLynk game Barracuda: Secret Mission 1. All 1.X iterations of Game-Maker include a square-bound 75-page user manual and several leaflets about the use of the software. Later versions also include leaflets explaining recent changes and updating the user manual.
  • Game-Maker 2.0: Includes both 1.2 MB floppy and 1.44 MB microfloppy disks containing the full set of RSD tools plus the games Tutor, Sample, Terrain, Houses, Pipemare, Nebula, and Penguin Pete. Both versions 2.0 and 2.02 include a square-bound 94-page user manual and several leaflets about the use of the software. The latter version also includes a leaflet explaining recent changes and updating the user manual.
  • Game-Maker 3.0, floppy: A three-microfloppy package contains the full set of RSD tools, the in-house developed games Tutor, Sample, and Nebula, and three licensed games developed by the independent designer A-J Games: Zark, The Patchwork Heart, and Peach the Lobster. Both packages of version 3.0 include a square-bound 104-page user manual and several leaflets about the use of the software.
  • Game-Maker 3.0, CD-ROM: this package includes the contents of the floppy package, plus first-party games Pipemare, Penguin Pete, Houses, and Terrain; A-J Games productions Glubada Pond, Crullo: Adventures of a Donut, Cireneg's Rings, and Linear Volume; two games by Sheldon Chase of KD Software, Woman Warrior and the Outer Limits and Woman Warrior and the Attack from Below; and the GameLynk game Barracuda: Secret Mission 1. In addition, the CD-ROM includes a large collection of images, sounds, music, animations, and gameware elements, and a Shareware directory holding demo versions of fourteen games by various independent designers.
  • Create Your Own Games With GameMaker!: In 1995, the Canadian company Microforum rebranded and repackaged the CD-ROM version of Game-Maker 3.0 for release to a worldwide market. This version includes a spiral-bound user manual. The disc contents are the same as the original RSD release.