Game-Maker

Recreatonal Software Designs' Game-Maker

Game-Maker (AKA RSD Game-Maker, Captain GameMaker, or Create Your Own Games With GameMaker!; not to be mistaken for Garry Kitchen's GameMaker, Al Staffieri Jr.'s GameMaker, or Mark Overmars' Game Maker) is an MS-DOS-based suite of game design tools produced by Recreational Software Designs in the early 1990s. In its time, Game-Maker offered a worldwide pre-Web user base its first taste of game development. And for its era, it was darned powerful: VGA graphics, Sound Blaster sound, and A WYSIWYG GUI allowed users to jump right in and design games of nearly unlimited scale. There were some strict technical and conceptual limitations, but in the midst of the Shareware boom there was little else of the kind — and booting up Map Maker sure beat breaking out Lode Runner for the hundredth time, plus the graph paper and pencil to record your levels.

Domestically, Game-Maker was sold directly by KD Software. In the UK, the software was sold by Screen Entertainment, Ltd. In other markets Game-Maker was distributed by the Canadian company Microforum. It also was distributed in Korea, by an unknown entity.

History

Manual (front)

Game Maker was first released in 1991. Over the years and several versions, Game-Maker grew more sophisticated and polished. The bugs were minimized. It began to support Sound Blaster cards, and .fli animations. It became possible to build bigger, more complex games, and to truss up your old games with nicer wrappers. The final release was version 3.0, which went out on CD — a major, impressive move at the time -- in late 1994.

After that final release, RSD kind of dissolved. From what I recall, the brothers went off to college. Which in retrospect would suggest that they developed Game-Maker and held down its development cycle while still in high school themselves. Maybe I’m misremembering; they might have been undergrads. The way I remember it, they stopped development when they went off to school, leaving their father to see the business off. Last I heard, they still intended to develop Game-Maker during breaks. I guess that never happened, though. And today, despite the once-thriving design community, you can hardly find a thing about the program. There isn’t even a Wikipedia entry, whereas there is an individual Wiki page for each of Johnny Depp’s toes. [citation needed]

Version history

Stuff was gradually added. Sound Blaster support, most significantly. .FLI support. Transitions between levels. Intro became more elaborate. More media was supported on all the menu items. The menu backgrounds became clear. The config menu was added. All the tools became a little beveled and prettier to look at. Monster and Character collisions were adjusted. At some point it was changed so only the clear bits of monsters and the clear bits of characters counted against each other. At some point it came so that monsters could add to a character's stats instead of just injure a character, opening up the door for contact pick-up items. I think more blocks were allowed in a single .CBL or .MBL file. I think animations got a bit longer. Scrolling was constantly being tweaked. Lots of little tweaks; a few huge changes and additions.

Version 1.02 released c1992

Additions and improvements:

• Addition of "Glide" gravity settings

Version 1.04 released November, 1992

Additions and improvements:

• Addition of high level editing tools
• Two-block-tall characters now fully collide with monsters and solid blocks.

Version 1.05 released February, 1993

Additions and improvements:

• Addition of CMF Music
• Addition of monster death sounds
• Special counter improvements (cannot decrease past zero)
• Ability to set multiple shots per keystroke
• Addition of Auto Repeat/Once-per-Keystroke character sequences
• Improved collision for taller characters
• More organized default palette
• Improved visual user interface (Block Designer, Map Maker)
• Improved error messages
• Addition of control over scrolling direction
• Throttled screen scrolling speed
• Addition of joystick toggling
• Improved SVGA support
• Improved Windows 3.1 support

Version 2.0 released August 20, 1993

Additions and improvements:

• All tools are redesigned with new interface and better functionality
• Block designer now displays animation
• Addition of the game configuration screen
• Addition of digitized sound effects
• Character motion expanded to include glide and acceleration
• Sprite flickering eliminated
• Smoother scrolling of in-game scenes
• Scrolling matches the speed of the character
• Top scrolling speed now limited
• Scrolling lets the player look more than a half-screen ahead in the direction of travel
• Improved gameware (upgraded Demo games)

Structure

The text-mode menu wrapper

The program consists of two basic elements: the Game-Maker package itself, which consists of a bunch of design utilities tied together with a text mode wrapper, and the actual executable file that functions as the actual “game”, which calls upon user-specified graphical and sound and design elements to give itself a face. The package also includes with a wealth of demo material, most of it designed by the lead programmer and his brother; some of it public domain material, gathered from who-knows-where. the tools.

In retrospect it's kind of brilliant; from the program’s perspective all of the important information that makes a game unique — visuals, sound, controls, rules, design, structure — is simple window dressing, to call in and process like so many documents. And design is nearly that easy.

Packaging copy

Palette Designer

See: Palette Designer

Block Designer

See: Block Designer

Monster Maker

See: Monster Maker

Map Maker

See: Map Maker

Character Maker

See: Character Maker

Graphics Image Reader

See: Graphics Image Reader

Sound Designer

See: Sound Designer

Integrator

See: Integrator

Xferplay

See: Xferplay

Limitations

Manual (back)

What may have killed Game-Maker in the end was a certain lack of flexibility to the main program on which all the resources hinged. Although by the final release the scrolling had improved tremendously, the screen’s tracking of on-screen avatars was always strange at best. The character never quite stayed centered; the screen would move in fits and jerks. Sprites flickered and disappeared at the edges of screen, and had real problems with collision.

By 1995, several features also began to sting for their absence. The only supported music format was weird and proprietary; there was no custom music editor, and it was difficult to convert anything to the required format. The inventory system was very limited, as was control mapping. If you wanted to allow a character to jump up, left, and right, you had to assign each animation a different key. Characters and monsters could only be of a certain size, and the interaction amongst all in-game elements was never quite flexible enough.

There were other issues of professionalism and tidiness. Every Game-Maker game had essentially the same title menu, with the same options in the same typeface. Also, rather than archiving and compressing content, the exporting tool merely dumped resource files into a directory, for end users and hackers to pick over at will. If you had a written epilogue in a text file, it simply copied the text file into the target directory, for anyone to read.

Still, even the big problems and omissions are tiny compared to the improvements that Game-Maker had seen over its short history. And even in its final form — heck, even in its earliest forms — Game-Maker was a welcoming, powerful, and rather brilliant design tool, well deserving a place in indie game history.

Distribution

See: Availability

Game distribution

Also see: Business models

RSD made available user-generated games through several official channels, including Mark A. Janelle's Night Owl/Frontline BBS, a disk mailing program called the Game-Maker Exchange, and occasionally through downloadable demos and pack-in disks. Additionally, the Game-Maker 3.0 CD-ROM was filled with user-generated shareware, freeware, and demo games.

A pamphlet titled "Distributing Games" and dated June 15, 1993 describes the fluid nature of RSD's plans:

We decided not to establish the "GAME-MAKER EXCHANGE" due to early lack of response, although lately the requests for such an exchange have been increasing quite a bit. Instead, we will distribute games via the Gamelynk BBS. You can use this BBS to freely distribute your games (Freeware or Shareware), or you can have the BBS restrict the down line loading or the shipment of your games to a customer until a payment via credit card is made.

To distribute a game via Shareware, simply place a text file statement along with your files letting the user know your terms. You can find example statements in any Shareware product. For Freeware, include a statement that says that you own the product but will allow others to distribute it freely, or even that users can incorporate your work into their games.

If you choose to distribute your games via retail sales, Mark Janelle, owner of the Gamelynk BBS will pay you a royalty on every game sold via the BBS. If RSD and\or our distributer [sic], KD Software, sell your game, we will also pay you a royalty. We will work with you and the GameLynk Entertainment BBS to set prices and royalty percentages for specific games. We will insure that all games are priced fairly relative to each other. We may also package multiple games together into game packages. You retain the rights to your games.

If you have additional ideas or requests about distributing your games, don't hesitate to write us or to communicate via the BBS with Mark Janelle.

Many user-generated games also wound up on public bulletin boards, and thereby found wide distribution and eventual salvation on shovelware CD-ROMS. RSD's initial terms of use were rather restrictive. To quote from a pamphlet titled "Distributing Your GAME-MAKER Games" and dated May 9, 1993:

Under your Game-Maker license agreement, you may distribute any game you create to up to ten people and your gameware to any number of people. You may not distribute the Game-Maker design tools, but you may include Game-Maker's gameware (picture blocks, monsters, characters, sounds, etc) along with your games or gameware.

Commercial distribution of games is not covered by your license agreement and such distribution requires a commercial distribution license, since games contain valuable software owned by Recreational Software Designs. Several methods that you can use to commercially distribute your games are explained below. Write to RSD to obtain a commercial distribution license.

The pamphlet goes on to detail standalone games, promotional games, and shareware and BBS distribution. For standalone games (which is to say, games that are meant as an end unto themselves), RSD asks a royalty of $500 for the first 200 games sold or distributed, then a small fee for each subsequent copy. The higher the number, the smaller the fee. For promotional software (distributed as part of a promotional kit), RSD asks $1000 for the first 1000 copies and then smaller fees for every copy up to 25,000. Beyond that, RSD asks no additional charge.

Shareware and BBS distribution is a curious case. Although RSD prohibits free distribution, the license does allow a loophole for shareware so long as the author requests the user to pay a minimum registration or license fee of $5.00, then makes a quarterly payment of 10% of all collected fees. These restrictions were rarely enforced; as the "Distributing Games" pamphlet suggests, freeware games were common and tolerated despite the license agreement.

Community

Also see: Community

(Discuss Andy Stone's ideas about collaborative creativity and how they feed into the way that Game-Maker is designed and marketed.)

Links

• RSD GameMaker (EoaSM)
• My RSD Game-Maker Years (Bilou HomeBrew)
• Mazeguy.net
• RSD Game-Maker (autofish.net)
• The Original Game-Maker (DIYGamer)
• Demu entry
• Game-Maker (Personal Computer Museum)

Downloads

• Full Game-Maker 3.0 Demo Package (6.9 MB)
• Game-Maker 3.0 Demonstration Software (870.6 kB)
• Game-Maker 3.0 Slideshow + Peach the Lobster (1.3 MB)
• Game-Maker 2.0 Slideshow + A-J's Quest (443.5 kB)