Naked Paul Toast’s Insights

In the YoYoGames Competition 4 Glog entry, Sandy Duncan, YYGs CEO, responded:

Comp03 results should be out soon. Can’t give an exact date as MarkO is away till next week and he won’t let us do anything unless he has a vote !! Problem we’re facing is there are a LOT more good games submitted than in previous competitions. Normally by now we would have a shortlist of 10. At the moment it’s still close to 30 !

I expect the following three entries to be shortlisted. At worst make honourable mention in the Competition 3 winner announcements, and probably take home some or all of the prize money.

Drop in the Bucket by KC LC.
Lost Snowmen by RedSystem.
Byteality Tower Defence by Erik Leppen.

What are my predictions based on?
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Earlier, I wrote about Conspiracy theorists and the Downraters. Today we’re going to look at a conspiracy theorist and demonstrate that his claims are manufactured, and could not have happened as he alleged it happened.

[EDIT] Links to GMC topic and YoYogames page intentionally removed, see comment for explanation.

The topic started out as a rant about how the game has been on the top page and then because of a downrater dropped into oblivion. The thing is, it absolutely could not have happened like he said it happened. It’s not feasible mathematically, it’s not feasible time wise, and it’s not feasible that a game that has gotten absolutely zero attention, suddenly got huge negative attention, and then all of a sudden get so much positive attention.

It just doesn’t work.

But I just watched it get continually downrated from a 4.0 to a 3.7 (about 20+ votes) within a matter of seconds

The topic states that he just happened to be on YoYoGames and just happened to witness a downrater downrate his game in a matter of seconds. He said it happened 20+ times, later in the topic claimed 25 to 30 times.
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Often on the GMC, people create topics, wanting to know the best way to automatically update the client for their online game.

It’s a tricky problem. An executable, updating itself is problematic, because while the executable is running, it can’t be overwritten. Suggestions are always cumbersome, awkward and problematic. Typically involving the client downloading the executable, then running another executable, which deletes the original executable, renames the new executable and then runs the freshly updated executable.

Variants of this technique, suggest creating a pause to ensure the original executable has completed before it is deleted, sometimes batch files are involved.
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Where’s the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!

I’ve been busy with a Game Maker project. For the first time, in a long time, I’m somewhat excited about it. I’m proud of a couple components, the User Interface (UI), and a flood-fill type thing. Hopefully by writing about it, I’ll have the motivation to finish it and publish it.

UIs seem to be a glaring Achilles’ Heel in many Game Maker created games. So often, what might be a good game, is often ruined because of ugly, awkward, non-intuitive UIs. It seems people spend a great deal of time with the game play, or graphics or other components, without an equal amount of time on how the player interacts with the game. The end result is a frustrating experience. At least for me anyway.
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You know it doesn’t exactly scream credibility, when you host and judge a contest, on a domain named bart-teunis.eu, and one of the entrant’s name is Bart Teunis.

Just discovered SoulScroll, a blog with a lot of Game Maker content.

Created by SoulRed12, AKA gmXpert2000 on the GMC, I was impressed by his SoulHow tutorials and essays. Easy to read, good background information, examples with GML and actions. A good place for the beginner to intermediate.

I’ll link a few, judge for yourself.

• SoulHow to deal with errors
• SoulHow to actually do stuff with GML: Part 1
• SoulHow to actually do stuff with GML: Part 2
• SoulHow to make two health bars

There’s a lot more.

Definitely worth a Blog-roll.

Often on the GMC, a poster is interested in obtaining a random integer within a certain range.

IE.

How can I get a random number in the range 1-10?

Responses, typically will be:

r_number=floor(random(10)) + 1;
or
r_number=ceil(random(10));

The problem is many do not recognise the dangers of using ceil(), in that context.
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I’ve discovered a number, 649090867, that has significance within Game Maker. I call it NakedPaulToast’s Number. The object is to guess the significant property. A Google search won’t reveal the answer, I’m fairly confident the property, while known to exist, the number until now has been unknown.

I’ll reveal a new clue, everyday, until the property I’m looking for, is revealed.

So, what is the significant property, regarding 649090867?

I picked up the new Caravan today. Love it.

And no, it wasn’t free, it is actually the most, I have ever paid for a vehicle.

I’m using the term free, somewhat loosely. It’s income that I normally would not have had, had it not been for Game Maker and Poker.

I bought it with income that was 100% derived from Game Maker and Poker.

This topic was recently posted on the GMC.

this question is probably really stupid, but i want to know what comes first.
the events in the CREATE event of an object, or the CREATION code of an object(when you CTRL+RightClick an object in the room)

Took about 10 minutes for one responder to post a correct response, though he indicated he wasn’t sure, but had just heard that was the answer.

About 15 minutes later a second poster, quoted the manual, which definitively answered the original question. The original poster acknowledged and thanked the responders over an hour later.

The thing is, this type of question, demonstrates a huge failing on the part, of the original poster. Not necessarily because he didn’t use the manual, but because this is the type of question that can easily be resolved within minutes, by yourself.
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