Sneak Peek - Multi-Device Deployment Using GBS from Lavon Woods on Vimeo.

I’ve recorded a short clip of the Asteroids demo game running on the iPad, Blackberry Playbook, and on the desktop. If I had more devices at hand I would have included them all in the video. But this is just a little teaser of what you will be able to do with GameBuilder Studio soon. No one has made this an easy process until now! You can even deploy to iOS from a Windows computer :). No need to buy a 2k Mac computer.

A Visual Developer Workflow Using GBS from Lavon Woods on Vimeo.

In the last post i showed how to create a game with GameBuilder Studio (GBS) without writing one line of code. Now, the beauty of GBS is the fact that we are lowering the barrier by removing a lot of the technical challenges involved with building a game, however we wanted to make sure that we build a tool that developers could also leverage allowing them to write completely custom code in a number of ways. You can build your own custom plugin and you can write custom code on top of the exported GBS project for a seamless integration. I explain this workflow in the video above.

If you are not familiar with the underlying open source game engine (PushButton Engine Fork Source) that GBS is built on top of please visit the support site and review the video tutorials under, “Understanding The Underlying Game Engine”

Currently the screen management and ui controls are not built into GBS, its currently being worked on. So for those that are not developers don’t worry you will be able to add touch interface controls and manage the screen flow of your game very soon.

If you are a developer and you want a little bit more flexibility with GBS you can build a custom plugin. The plugin SDK is now available for v0.4.1. You can write your own custom plugin for GameBuilder Studio by downloading the required libs and following the tutorial on our support site. Eventually you will be able to take your plugins and package them up for resale on our marketplace when it launches.

Setting Up Your Environment
Building Your First Plugin
Setting Up Your Plugin Descriptor

 

A lot of work went into this release. It is the LARGEST update to date! You can download the latest version of GameBuilder Studio from the new beta area dashboard if you are currently apart of the private beta. The main improvements are the one click play testing, game logic components, trigger-able actions, dynamic expressions, and a physics engine with collision detection.

View full rundown of the update.

Today marks the release of the newly updated AIR runtime for Adobe flash development across multiple devices. Adobe showcased a game maker running their game, which is built using AIR, on over 5 different devices and screen sizes. You can see the remarkable performance increase that comes with the new AIR 2.6 update. We are working on our mobile deployment for GameBuilder Studio so that anyone can create their game once with GBS and deploy to all the different devices you see in the video below.

3D Hardware Acceleration Finally Available For the Flash Platform

Molehill according to the Adobe site, “is the code name for a new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that will enable advanced 3D experiences across screens through the Adobe® Flash® Platform runtimes. These new low-level APIs will provide advanced 3D and 3D engine developers the flexibility to leverage GPU hardware acceleration for significant performance gains.”

But What About 2D, “Molehill”?

Although 3D is currently the priority for Molehill there are tons of flash developers out their that would love the ability to accelerate their 2D games using the GPU, so we have been working on support for rendering 2D graphics using the low level Molehill API. This is especially important for mobile performance. The plan is to start by integrating the Isometric Component with Molehill. So stay tuned…
Make no mistake about it, this move by Adobe, is a game changer! Signup for the private beta waiting list today.

The latest update (v0.2.1) is now available for download. The main improvement for this release is the PBE exporter where you can build your levels in the editor and export a ready to launch Actionscript project with all your information exported in PBE level files. With this version the exported project defaults to a FlashBuilder project but in a future update there will be an export dialog for you to choose different export settings.
**Note - Make sure to check the release notes for the latest information of improvements

GBS PBE Exporter Part 1

GBS PBE Exporter Part 2

Stanford University is having a 3 week long flash game competition for all to join. It is for charity, with the theme being “BENEVOLENCE”. You can win over $3,000 in prizes which includes the PBE Isometric Component, an invite to our private beta, and a pro license for GameBuilder Studio when we release to the public later this year.
You can find more information on their blog. I look forward to seeing what games are created!

I’ve recorded a little sneak peek into the development of the quick objects on the tool bar which will allow you to quickly place entities in your scene at the exact spot that you would like. Now you will be able to switch to the move tool using the quick key (m) and adjust placement if needed as well. All of this coming in the next update v0.2, Coming Soon… Below is a little video demo of the work in progress.



One of the cool things that will come as a result of the quick objects functionality is the ability to define your own quick objects based on templates so you can do quick placement of your custom objects.