Scrolling Game Development Kit / News: Recent posts

If the tutorial included with The Scrolling Game Development Kit is just too much, check out the new Quick Start Tutorial at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=2563&group_id=9970 in the project documentation area. It'll step you through creating about the simplest game possible with GameDev.

Having heard no problem reports and encountering no further problems myself for the past 4 months, I have taken GameDev out of Beta and recategorized it as stable.

Michael Miller of Fort Worth, Texas has contributed a set of graphics with a Castle theme to the GameDev project. Check out the new Graphics package. Further contributions to the graphics package are welcome!

SourceForge has finally implemented anonymous posting support so "Open Discussion" is now truly open! Please post any news or questions you have about using GameDev there. I'll be happy to respond with detailed information. Anybody with requests for specific information about scripting under GameDev should be able to get their answers there. I'm happy to provide examples.

The project has been out for two months now without any feedback. I know people are downloading it. The download count over 2,000 suggests there must be at least a few people who have tried the program. I will attempt to post a survey. If you don't want to participate in the discussion or the survey, at least an e-mail (BlueMonkMN@email.com) would be nice, just to know if anyone is using it, and if there are any problems or quetions I can resolve.

A newly added patch includes a VBS script that will export an entire game project as an XML file. This should come in handy for those who want to use data created in GameDev in other applications. See http://sourceforge.net/patch/?func=detailpatch&patch_id=101930&group_id=9970 for the patch.

OK, to satisfy requests and requirements coming from a number of directions, there is now a package called "GameDev-InstallNoVBRun" which excludes the Visual Basic runtime files from the installation. It ends up being more than 1 MB (about 25%) smaller... hefty difference.

Release 1.1.0-Beta includes a new sample project with some interesting run-time and design-time scripts. Miscellaneous bugs in GameDev were fixed and features added. See the release notes and change log for details. Both GameDev-Install and GameDev-Source have all the updates and new features including the new sample project and scripts.

I want to make it painfully obvious (since I recently discovered it was painfully un-obvious) that there is a written tutorial in the GameDev HTML help file, mirrored on this web site in the documentation area. The tutorial icons that are installed into the start menu by the install program are only *secondary companions* to the main tutorial in the help file. This problem of being un-obvious will be resolved with the next update hopefully coming up at the end of this month.

It appears some of my ideas for publicity have been taking effect. Page views jumped up above 500 yesterday and downloads jumped up to 90 (1-day statistics). But I still have heard very little feedback. The one comment in the discussion forum is about it. Please, post, e-mail, anything. I'm interested in if and how you find GameDev useful. I'm also willing to answer questions (e-mail me or submit a Tech Support request).
I'm currently working on version 1.1. I had to add to the interface of a few classes, which, according to VB, brings the version of the type library to 1.1, so I figure the version of the program should follow. The changes are to support scriptable map editing and tile editing.
I will upload a new beta when the sample project I'm also working on is in an uploadable state. Hopefully we'll have something by the end of this month.

Todays the day. Finally, all the documentation is finished and connected and the web site is done, and the readme's and packages are are leady, so I'm uploading it all at once.