EDIT: Hurrah!  I managed to get all my files back (and the 4 hours worth of work).  It turns out that while Offline Files synchronization will work on multiple users (the laptop was logged into another user at the time of synchronization), if the synchronized folder is actually mapped as a network drive, it will treat the network drive as a different set of files (i.e. since the files are under X:\ and not \\roket-james\C$\Server Storage\Roket3D), even though when synchronizing they both display the full network path.  In any case, I know have my 4 hours worth of work back + the new zoom re...

Today I'm releasing a new automatic software update service called RoketPack.  This service provides automatic updates to software such as Game Integration and Roket3D.

All of the links to Game Integration and Roket3D should be directed to the new http://pack.roket-enterprises.com/ site, if they are not, let me know.

Just in case you are wondering, installers for the individual components without RoketPack are available on the site (in case you don't want to install RoketPack or can't install .NET 2.0, which the RoketPack updater requires).

Remember Roket3D?  That 3D game engine with integrated physics I was working on a while back?  Well now it's open source.

With my time focused towards RoketGames, Roket3D has gone neglected for over a year now, and considering that Unity has made available their Indie version for free, it's no longer a commercially viable product.  So it was decided that offering it as open source software was the best option.

The open source repository is hosted on http://code.google.com/p/roket3d/.  Included in the repository are all of the dependencies (such as Lua, Irrlicht and Newton) and the modif...

I'd like to officially announce that the first beta for Version 2 is now available. Version 2 is 3x faster (and in some places, depending on your distance to the server, can be even faster) than any HTTP-based Highscores and Achievements library and also now contains Tracer Tables; asynchronous SQL databases that you can use.

Timed with this release is the reimplementation of the the Game Integration dashboard on RoketGames, so you can now manage highscore lists, achievements and the new tracer tables from your game's dashboard on the site.

V1's documentation was pretty shoddy, so for thi...

Once again the site has undergone some optimization.  This includes changing stylesheets around and reducing the number of DNS requests, so if anything looks out of whack, please let me know.

Game submissions are back and operation.  Head to the Developer tab at the top and click the link under How do I upload a game? OR you can access the submit game from your dashboard (click Users).  The new uploading system is a much better process than the old one and allows you to provide commercial game details (such as price and paypal address) in the process if you are submitting a commercial game.  Note: You will still need to goto the Commercial Dashboard and request evaluation!

I'd also like to point out that uprating other games in attempts to remove popular games from the front pa...

Okay, blog entry submission is back.  You can add entries and edit entries, but you still can't delete them (not that I'm sure anyone really uses that feature :P).

This will be the last update until Monday afternoon since I have to go camping with my family :( and won't be able to work on RoketGames during that time.  It will however give me a chance to read the last Artemis Fowl book which I've been wanting to read for quite some time now.. :P

Oh, and you will need to set your avatars again - I'm not sure how, but during development of V2 I must have accidentally wiped them.  Note that y...

Just to let you all know, there is a fairly big "something" coming to RoketGames soon and I don't want to ruin the surprise of it for those of you that don't know about it.  If you are on my MSN list and I've told you, or if you already know, don't go around telling people ;P  It'll make it so much more awesome when it's finished.

I can tell you that the new front page is part of it, but any other details might give it away.  In any case, you'll enjoy it :)

You'd expect with the lack of school I'd have more time for blog entries, but I'm finding that's not really the case.  Don't worry, I have been working on Fusion.  I also created and released gmPython which lets you put Python into your Game Maker games, so check that out at the GMC.

Planet Attack II is back on the list of games to finish (hence the gmPython).  I must also finish Faulty Towers (which is pretty close to completion).

I'm also absolutely busting to release RoketGames Game Integration version 2, but I know it can't happen until Fusion is completed, so please be patient for that...

First, the good news.  The multimedia library I'm using for the Fusion desktop client, SFML, has a built-in demo of voice communication, so you can expect that to be in the first edition of Fusion.

Now, the bad news.  My computer has decided to hate me and as such, I've just spent the last >6 hours backing up files and now I'm just getting to the point where I'm reinstalling Windows.

UPDATE: Worse news.  Windows install has resulted in a corrupt partition table.

UPDATE: My computer is back again.  I'm going to need to reload all of my development software (such as Visual Studio C++), but on...

WOO! No more exams.  Ever.

Now for a celebratory emoticon from a forum I visit:  (5 brownie points to whoever can work it out, except for the people I already know are members).

By the way, what would people think of microblogging on RoketGames?  It's way better for announcing statuses..

Good news everyone!  My exams are going swimmingly and on Wednesday I'll be able to start developing RoketGames again :)

I'm pretty happy with how the exams have gone so far, English was good, Specialist Maths was so friggin hard no-one finished it :P, Accounting had a few questions that caught me out and the Methods No Tech was incredibly easy.

I've only got Methods Tech on Monday and Physics on Wednesday and then you can all bring out the whip and chains and get me back to work. :P

EDIT: By the way, has anyone else been logged out randomly.  It's starting to annoy me and I'm not sure whet...

You may have noticed that there is now a search feature on the main page.  This will be the last update until the end of my exams (once my exams are over, well, GameJolt better be ready for some asskicking :P).

The search can only currently direct you to an exact result, however, even this has a few limitations.  Exact result means that your search only returns 1 record from the database.  It's case-insensitive and does partial matching, so some games (such as EGE) can't be found right now as the sequence 'ege' appears in other game names (meaning >1 result).

Thank you all, and wish me best...

PM spam is very annoying (and I'm talking about the GMC here, I don't think anyone would be silly enough to send PM spam to an administrator of RoketGames :P).  It also is one sure-fire way to make everyone hate your website, like so:

*big spammy message about GMToychest*

  -Wes

Me: Spamming people via PM will not get you visitors; it will do the reverse.

Wes: Sorry definitely not intended as spam. I thought I've seen you around these forums in the graphics section so i was just asking for some help.

Me: Lol, in the graphics forums? See, now I know your lying. I haven't visited the G...

Okay, I've finally got together a plan on how commercial game support will operate.  All of this is entirely possible and can be implemented by me as soon as I've finished my exams:

1. Game purchases will be done through PayPal (PayPal supports Express Checkout to my account; the issue was then automatically forwarding this off to the game author)
2. The site will record the purchase and how much the author is now owed.  It will keep track of payments that need to be made to authors in the MySQL database, on the filesystem and will email me a copy of the current state of the pending transactions...

I've given up on PayPal.  Apparently I'd have to pay $300 AUD in Australia to get the same functionality I can get in the US for free and of course, that is unacceptable.

I'm now looking into Credit Card payment solutions, so unfortunately you won't be able to pay via your PayPal account but hopefully the people at Camtech can help me get the commercial game system operational as soon as possible.

I have a friend on MSN who is always telling me that Python and Ruby are better for web development than PHP.  Most often he says that PHP's function naming scheme is a mess, and that I can't disagree with.  But on a whole, in my opinion, PHP is still a better for web development than either of those two languages.

The main reason which I believe for PHP's success is it's integration and easy installation with Apache.  When you install PHP, you need no more than a few linux packages, a few apache configuration settings (sometimes handled by your linux configuration tool) and you're all set ...

Just to let you all know, I'm not dead.

But I do have less than 6 weeks of school left.. ever.  This means that I'm going to be studying hard for my exams and you probably won't hear from me or see any updates on RoketGames for a while.

The advantage of this is that once my exams are over, I'm going to have an entire year off between school and uni to finish off everything, including RoketGames, Roket3D, Fusion, etc..

You'll have to wait just a little bit longer, and then updates for my projects will be pouring out the wazoo! :D

In other news...

• I'm setting up a home server, which means I'...

I'm not talking about Firefox's extensions, I'm talking about the reviewal process at the Mozilla Addons site.  I submitted Yet Another Instant Play Plugin on January 24th 2009, that is the last updated version (one that I updated at their request).

It's now August 31st 2009 and I just got my reviewal notice back.  It tells me they need to review the source code for StartGame.exe (is used to search for the game's executable file).

6 months to review an addon is pathetic, especially when it was around about 100th in the queue.

Now I really have to decide whether or not I want to use my time ...

I've decided to release what I've currently got running as V0.3 since development is a little sporadic now that I have exams approaching. The new version contains:

• Improved border style / login effect
• Minimize to system tray when X is pressed (right-click on icon in system tray -> Close Fusion to shutdown Fusion)
• Game page when you double-click on a game with basic information (shown if the game isn't installed)

Unfortunately, it still doesn't fetch a list of games from the internet.

Download V0.3 for Windows

P.S. Did you know you can get my blog (or anyone else's) in RSS format?  http:/...

UPDATE: PayPal has finished changing the account type.  I'm going to run through a few more sandbox tests, then I'll switch to live mode, do a live test, remove the commercial game test and then turn on the system. 

I know you guys can't wait for commercial games, but you'll have to wait a little longer.  It all has to do with PayPal's fee system.

Originally, my account was a standard PayPal account, which is fine when you are selling items directly and don't have to pass any on, and you aren't selling items that have low prices.  Unfortunately, for me, I'm doing both of those things.  Orig...

UPDATE: System is implemented.  Need to contact PayPal to get the features activated on the live account.

Commercial games are almost implemented.  There's only a few things left to do now:

• Implement a moderator approval system
• Automatically transfer money back in the the author's PayPal account on purchase (waiting on PayPal to activate MassPay, system implemented)
• Make changing the commercial game file require a re-evaluation
• Finish the purchases tab
  
• Do extensive testing
• Change PayPal into live mode (currently sandbox)
• Goto private beta
• Goto public mode when ready (e.g. after any bugs ha...

Just a little demo of something I built to show #oauth@freenode.net what I was talking about.  It's a federated login system with the ability to share information about a user between sites.

http://www.gm-resources.com/openaccount/

The problem with current authentication and data sharing between sites is that it isn't simple.  OpenID handles logins, and that's it!  OpenID can't share data between sites, so it's very annoying when all of the sites you use need an avatar, or a website homepage, or a friends list, etc..  oAuth handles authorization, but it does that based two things:

• The user...

Just an update on a few things going on.

First, I've got a security notice dialog for when you are on the advertising section or are going to purchase a game (both features coming soon).  Feedback is appreciated.

That will display a different image at the top depending on the web browser.

Second, game statistics.  This page will let developers see how often their game page has been visited, how often it's downloaded and later on, how often it's been purchased.  It'll also integrate with advertising so you can see how effect your advertising campaigns.  You can see a (randomly generated) ex...

I didn't even realize game submissions weren't working.  Thanks to Kompared for pointing it out.  They should be working again.  I've also added a Delete Game feature, so you can remove your games from RoketGames if you wish.

Remember Fusion?  The desktop client is back (or back in development in any case).  YAIPP and RoketGames Game Integration will also be rebranded under Fusion.  You can find the GMC topic for suggestions, ideas and designs at http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=437827.  There's even a very early downloadable client.

Fusion's focus has changed from a desktop client for RoketGames, to a desktop client for all freeware and indie games.  Hopefully I can convince enough site owners to become part of the network to make the desktop client really useful and widely used.

Have you got prior...

OMG.

OMG.

OMG.

http://www.drwatz0n.com/archives/447

It's Game Maker and it's coming to Linux.

Just OMG.

I want to compile a list of events from Game Maker's history to the present day.  I'm not quite sure yet whether I'll present these as a series of blog posts (1 for each year), or set up a special subdomain on gm-resources.com devoted to listing Game Maker's history.

There's a goldmine of stuff on the Web Archive, but that only goes back to '01.  If you were around before '01 and were using Game Maker, please contact me as your memories of events will be very helpful in compiling this timeline.

Woohoo!

I had the Physics and Accounting exams on Tuesday, both which I did pretty well at (at least, I think I did :P).  Today was the GAT at 10am which is just a general achievement test; it doesn't actually count towards your final mark, but in some cases, e.g. you completely fuck up another exam, they'll use it to adjust your score (only up though).  So I went pretty.... general.. on the GAT and I realised on my way home that I'd forgotten to go back and do one of the multiple choice questions that I skipped.  Lucky for me the GAT doesn't count towards anything :P

Oh noes! It's exams tomorrow!  Luckly, I've studied.

But off the topic of school and onto something most of you will like me talking about more.  Games.

If you've been hanging around, or visited the GMC topic, you'll notice that introduce Brownie Points and the Groups systems a few days ago.  Along with this I promised an update to the RoketGames Game Integration so that you could take advantage of these new features.  Well, you will see it, just not yet.  We're going to be releasing the update at the same time as a new game we're working on (no we haven't forgotten PoP, no we haven't forgo...

I did post this in the forums, but I suppose no-one checks there.  Don't post your comments here, post them in the forum topic!

-------------------------------------------

Thanks to Scoz, we now have new icons for the forums and comments, rather than those huge clunky buttons.  They look like:

If you can't see them, try double-refreshing (refresh twice quickly) to update the stylesheet.  Not all of these are in use yet, as I still haven't implemented some features.

Enjoy (and a big thanks to Scoz) ;)

A lot less activity going on here than there used to.  That's probably due to my lack of development, caused by a whole bunch of English SACs and exams coming up.

But I've got some spare time now, so I'll go fix a few things up, and maybe implement a few things.

I went Star Trekkin' last night, or to be less cryptic, I saw Star Trek at the movies.  It was absolutely fantastic.  It's the prelude to the Star Trek series, but it's been directed so that even people who haven't seen Star Trek will be able to enjoy it.  I recommend it next time you're thinking of going to the movies.

I finally finished Carmen Sandiego: Math Detective (last night as well).  I must admit, not only did I enjoy playing it, but it's improved my mental calculation skills as well.

Other than that, it's been homework, school and study.  As we're nearing mid-year exam times, ever...

Tonight I got out two of those old classics.  Carmen Sandiego Math Detective and Where in time is Carmen Sandiego? after being reminded that a friend and I were talking about them at school.  Unfortunately, where in time crashes after the first mission, but math detective works okay.  I just spent the last two hours playing math detective, and I must admit, it's pretty fun.  It also shows me just how poor I was at mental arithmetic.

In other exciting news (well okay, maybe not exciting, but it's still news), I almost got Roket3D compiling on Linux tonight.  I just have to get Newton Physics...

As you may have noticed, I redesigned the top right of the header bar into a drop down menu.  It'll show recent pages plus links to the File Manager and your blog.  In the future it'll let you blog about pages and share them across Facebook and email.  Let me know what you guys think ;)

In other news, I've got a stack of homework to do tomorrow, and I'm really not looking forward to it...  It's going to take me at least 5 hours to get through.  At least. :(

Tonight, after decided that Harvey (Sabre070) and I would start iPhone development, we needed to register the actual company name (Roket Productions isn't registered).  Everything was going well until "This name cannot be registered because it is similar to other names."

Crap.

After navigating the Australian Business Name and Victorian Business Name site, I decided to try the name "Roket Enterprises" and thinking that "Roket" was causing the problem, I expected it to also return a fail.  Unexpectedly however, it returned a pass.  Roket Enterprises was both a name that can be registered as a...

Did I ever tell you I absolutely hate 3D real time strategy games?  I mean, absolutely hate them.  Take Red Alert 2 for example: absolutely great game.  The engine is fantastic, the graphics are fantastic, the gameplay is fantastic.

Along comes Red Alert 3.  The story isn't bad in this one (though it isn't as good as RA2), but it's 3D and it just absolutely annoys the crap out of me when I play it.  I've come up with a few reasons as to why I think this might be:

1. The graphics in RA2 are designed for one viewpoint, the graphics (models) in RA3 are designed for multiple viewpoints.  Some may...

Trust me, never ever go hiking/camping.  It's the worst thing ever, well apart from being dead (because that really sucks).  It wasn't all bad (for example, toasted marshmellows), but I certainly won't be doing it again.

Ever.

Again.

Unfortunately, a GMC user called Games recently obtained my account details for the GMC.  I feel like an idiot, and once you read the outline, you'll understand why.

1. I'm told by another user on my MSN list that a user called Games has a GMBot, capable of performing practically any request.
2. Me, being my usual self, set out to prove that it's fake.
3. I change my GMC password to "password", so that my account can't be compromised (in theory of course).
4. Send the details away, and viola, the request to make a post happens.
5. I change my GMC password back to it's original, so that the details I just...

Interview Game Makers, recently interviewed me.  You can find the interview here.

Enjoy :)

Wow, that weekend was more awesome than... well.... I can't think of anything.

LAN Party saturday, and although that did require some reinstalling of Windows on Ben's laptop (though don't they all ^_^), we did manage to fit a few hours of Left 4 Dead and Counter Strike in.  Sunday, movies.  I went and saw Knowing with Matt and Harvey, though the movie in my opinion has a very crap ending.

Best of all, I found out how I can mod Counter Strike: Source.  Right now I've got two mini-games set up where one you have to kill a particular terrorist, and another where people just randomly explode (^...

As you may have noticed, the front page of RoketGames has been rearranged to allow for more information on it.  I'd like your opinions on it if possible.

RoketGames Fusion is also coming along nicely.  I've got the login working and the UI partially working (which I've had to write from scratch to match the theme of the site).  No screenshots as of yet, since they just wouldn't do it justice.

Oh god, the irony.  This is what happens when you give adspace away for free:

I'm back from the most boring weekend ever.  I didn't have internet access while I was away though, so I didn't get anything useful done this weekend.

It's practically confirmed at this point with Josh Harvey (Sabre070) getting a MacBook soon.  We'll be working on converting some of our existing games such as Circle² to the iPhone as well as starting development on a Roket3D engine for the iPhone.  Along with the Roket3D for iPhone, here's just some of the ideas we've thought of that we'll be investigating/implementing:

• Ability to automatically convert uploaded Roket3D games to iPhone applications and publish them for you.
• Ability to sell your games on RoketGames (also applies price in iPhone App Store).
• Game Developer Center: a much mor...

Schools been back for 4 weeks and I can already feel everything taking about 10 times longer than it should be.  There's been no progress on the Roket3D world editor unfortunately or progress on fixing the Vista physics bug.  Year 12 school is obviously a priority over these things and I haven't had the chance to get back onto them.

Some good news though is that the SWFUpload problem seems to have been fixed by our hoster so you shouldn't get annoying I/O dropouts anymore.  Let me know if it's still a problem for you.

Scoz is working hard on the Planet Attack II planets and I've got a nice ...

Well the YYG competition results are out, and Planet Attack didn't get a best of the rest place so I'm a little disappointed.  Here's a sneak peek at Planet Attack II though. ;)

UPDATE: The extension is now released.  You can play the example at http://www.roket-games.com/games/59 and view the documentation at http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=419993.

I've been working on a Game Maker extension for RoketGames over the past few days, similar to Games for Windows LIVE if you've ever seen it.  Here's a concept demo for you to play around with.  At the moment it does contact the server, but the server just gives it "Hach-Que" and it sets that as the currently logged in user.  Move your mouse to the top of the screen to view the status.

The extension itself d...

I'm thinking of adding a Steam equivilant for RoketGames.  It'll be a seperate program which you download, based on Chromium, that requests pages from RoketGames, but all of the images are cached using Google Gears so that the site only needs to load the content.

For those of you who have no idea what I just said, here's an image to explain what the application will look like:

Most of you won't know, but scoz and I are working on Planet Attack II.  We're going to have lots more stuff for you to play around with including satellites, "god powers" (that won't be their final name).  There is an ever-changing, expanding universe and a single player campaign planned.

That's about as much as I can tell you though, since we don't have anything to show yet :P

Please post any questions, comments or ideas ;)

I don't think there's enough smileys in the world to express how happy and relieved I am right now.

The public beta of Roket3D is finally released with 3 minutes to spare (and I can enjoy the last day of the holidays).  Head over to http://www.roket3d.com/ to download it.

There were a few things that couldn't make it, such as an extension system or the area-based particle system (you can still use point emitters; particles emitting from a single point).  The physics example has varying mileage, though it's on the top of my list (it's going to require some heavy debugging :/ ).

In the meanti...

For those of you waiting for the public beta of Roket3D, you'll be happy to know that all of the features have been implemented into the engine.  The new features for the public beta include a parenting system for both GUI and Scene nodes, mesh physics, terrain physics, particle system, audio support (OGG and WAV) and various other improvements.  There is just a few minor bugs to iron out in the particle system and terrain physics creation, at which point the engine will be good to go.

We're a little behind on the IDE, so we'll be working flat-out trying to get that ready for the public bet...

This blog post is a bit late, but I released the Roket3D Alpha 0.5 yesterday for Windows.  Alpha 0.5 includes an IDE, physics and many major features over the previous versions.  Go download it now if you haven't already.

There's quite a few things missing from the IDE though.  For one, it's all scripting, there's no method of visually planning your game.  Not exactly along the lines of rapid game development which is what Roket3D is all about.

We're working on it though.  We've successfully managed to get a 3D window embedded into the tabs (and it appears correctly in the rearrangement of ...

Oh, I can relate to this so well...

I was talking to someone on MSN recently about a DB-based templating system.

Storing templates in a database is okay, as long as you plug up every security hole that exists. Since this is almost impossible beyond simple applications, you just should not use it.

The lazy template method.

This is the method that the project was using (which has now been updated to use file-based templating). Let's say that our templates are stored in a table called templates, and our software has a mySQL injection vunerability. Our table looks like this:

template_name             | template_data
index     ...