Conspiracy theories (and theorists), the world is absolutely full of them.
JFK assassination, 9/11, moon landing hoax, are probably the most notorious modern day conspiracy theories. They have a lot in common, like most conspiracy theories, they fail Occam’s Razor, they’re not falsifiable, they’re not support by industry experts, they defy logic, they demand too many people stay silent.
They just don’t make sense.
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Yes, I know, I should have dropped the Open Letter thing. And Yes, I probably shouldn’t have created my Open Letter. I definitely shouldn’t be further promoting the insanity further, with this entry.
But hey, at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, isn’t it always about the hits?
A Response was created by the original letter writer. My eyes were immediately drawn to the statement:
I must also commend Benjamin Poole for his response to the letter. Not only did he address it in an unbiased fashion.
What? You’ve got to be kidding.
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An open letter to Connor AKA Dr. Watz0n.
Hi Connor (AKA Dr. Watz0n),
You’re an idiot.
Hugs,
NakedPaulToast
My all time favorite Game Maker created game has been Seiklus, until now.
RhysAndrews, longtime and distinguished GMC member, has teamed up with his brother, TimAndrews, to create Caveman Craig.
Caveman Craig was created as an entry for the YoYoGames’ Ancient Civilisation contest, and I predicted it to be the winner, in my Red Carpet Day entry.
The game is a simulation / strategy game, starting you off in prehistoric times with three caveman credits. There are three flavours of cavemen:
YoYo Games’ Ancient Civilisation contest is now past the submission deadline. While everyone waits in anticipation for the official results, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the winners.
YoYo Games’ Ancient Civilisation competition
Now, I certainly didn’t play all 260 games, but I did spend the whole day playing as many games as I could. I attempted as many as possible, but abandoned many within minutes, when it became obvious that their graphics or game-play were just not award worthy.
I recognise that some might have fallen through the cracks.
It was a bit of a stretch fitting the Ancient Civilisation theme with many games, and others weren’t Instant-Playable, or might have been more of an Epic than YoYo might like. Not knowing the criteria that YoYo is judging by, I don’t expect my picks to match theirs. I do know that my picks are all terrific games, and any one of them can easily be a dark-horse winner.
First the Honourable Mentions (in no particular order):
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Reading GMNews, regarding No GM Patches, left me absolutely dumbfounded at how far off the mark they are regarding their editorial opinion.
For the record, I do prefer editorial opinion, and not just news, when reporting. But, let’s have a little accuracy, thoughtfulness and reason, when publishing our commentaries. This blog post shows none.
An interesting and valid point this issue brings up has to do with YoYo Games’ (and I would say also Mark Overmars’) inability to patch current/previous versions of Game Maker to correct security or performance flaws.
So far YoYo Games has yet to show any evidence of working on a patch for Game Maker 7 that could render the current decompiler tool inoperable or at least help prevent or secure the executables from such exploits.
The GM Decompiler has easily been the the hottest issue in the GM world over the last few months.
Many have attempted partial pseudo solutions, by modifying the final exe with some kind of wrapper, typically compressing as well. These wrappers came up short, they all uncompressed the exe, leaving it in its original form and completely exposed to the decompiler.
Finally, a better solution is available.
Schreib a longtime GMC member, and technically excellent, has created a GM obfuscator.
I have been somewhat outspoken, regarding the previous non-solutions. This is not the case with this project. Obfuscation, has been a practice used heavily with Java programs. And until YoYo Games provides a better solution, this is the best protection for protecting your source files.
As stated in Shreib’s topic, this solution will not prevent decompiling, but it obfuscates the source so its readability is almost non-existent. It should not interfere with the final executable, leaving it in a state that is still YoYo Games Instant Play ready.
So far I have just casually looked at it, my only initial disappointment is it supports GM6, and not GM7’s GMK format. This is understandable, given GM7’s source is heavily encrypted.
Perhaps with enthusiastic support, the project will be continued and expanded to include GM 7 support.
I will be testing it more thoroughly, and comment further. So Far, this is the best solution to the decompiler to date.
YoYo(Hi peeps)Jim announced the YoYo Game’s third competition.
Competition03 will be much like its predecessors, a themed competition with a focus on casual gameplay and replay value. However, in the spirit of user-generation, the theme itself is up to you.
Well, the competition hasn’t really been announced yet. He is seeking the input from the membership about what to theme the contest around. I like that.
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It was bound to happen eventually.
A somewhat, fully featured Game Maker decompiler has been released into the wild. It’s kinda happened before. Other decompilers have been released, but they were limited, didn’t work all that well, basically hacks.
This one is different, it’s well written, decompiles GM 5.x, 6.x and 7, it can also be used to expose extensions. And the GMC community is spooked. Everyone is panicking, and many are trying to be heroes by thwarting the decompiler. Wasted efforts.
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Since Game Maker 4.x, perhaps earlier, Game Maker has had multi-player support. Using a subset of DirectX DirectPlay, Game Maker is capable of using TCP/IP, IPX, Modem or Serial Port to create multi-player games.
Though four connection models are supported, the TCP/IP model is the only one that has any real use within the Game Maker community. The use of Mplay has been wrought with problems.