Russell’s Quarterly & Wiki-GM-Pedia

Tom Russel released the 4th issue of his well known GM Magazine today. Compared to previous editions, this release is visually friendly, but don’t be fooled – it is still heavy on the text. With an almost unbelieveable 90 pages of a content, the magazine is almost like a book.. so you will likely need to schedule some time off if you want to read through the whole thing.

Nevertheless, the magazine is still interesting and even includes an interview with former GMNews writer, Mark Carroll. The PDF of the magazine can be downloaded here. In my opinion, it is quite amazing how just one person is able to put together something of this magnitude and quality and I think Russell deserves a pat on the back for that.

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Also in the news (although slightly dated news); YoYo Games has announced that it will merge its Wiki with the more content full GMPedia operated by the GMKing team. This will no doubt improve the exising Wiki which is almost hanging on by a thread and until now hasn’t had many updates since its first appearance.

Compeition 03 – The results are in!

YoYo Games announced the winners of the recent co-operation competition today.

Congratulations to Erik Leppen, who was awarded first place for his game ‘ByteAlity Tower Defense‘.
As a first place winner, Erik will receive a well deserved $1000 from YoYo Games.

Earning a genorous $500, Rotten_tater was awarded second place for the game ‘Visit 2‘.

Last but certainly not least, YoMamasMama took third place and earned himself a modest $250 for the game ‘Jumper Three’.

The YoYo Games team were also nice enough to include a list of runner-ups (in no particular order):

Techno-drone: Alliance – A unique challenge, an excellent update to the series.
Kuroshiro – A really interesting puzzle platformer, excellent use of the theme.
Eggs with Legs – Nice graphical style, great gameplay, but no sound.
Karoshi factory – Co-op theme expertly incorporated to spice up this epic series.
Lost snowmen – Probably the best looking game in the competition.
Red n Blue – Good looking, well planned platformer – too short!
Agalag – A great concept makes this one of the most original games on YYG.
The Eyeballs – Well rounded platformer, with a good story.
Wootman – Great game in 2-player, although furiously hard – awesome retro graphics.
A Square Shaped Adventure – Good polish, interesting co-op dynamic.
Timewave – An excellent little game, brilliant use of the theme.

GMNews – Writers, Prizes & Info

Firstly I would like to formally welcome Qwertyman (Brian) and Broxter (Jack) to the Scorptek team. They are here to help improve the GMNews site and keep a regular flow of articles going to ensure you have all the up-to-date Game Maker and related news every day. Please give them a warm welcome and make sure you continue to send in news tips as you come across something you think will be interesting to write about.

Secondly, I just wanted to make a small apology for the lack of news articles this month (meaning September). Trust me, we’re all quite busy, Scorptek has big plans ahead and many of our team members are still settling into their school, college and university schedules (including myself). We really appreciate the time and effort Qwertyman and Broxter have and will be putting in in the upcoming months to make sure GMNews continues to be the best source of Game Maker news available. Our goal this month is to keep this site up to date with news posts at least every 2 days, and hopefully every day.

Thirdly, the September GMNews prize has been postponed or rather combined with the month of October’s prize. Due to the lack of articles this month, we don’t feel there was enough opportunity available for users to make contributions through comments and discussion and therefore the October prize will be awarded based on the combined contributions of September and October. Thank you for your understanding.

I just want to say thanks to our loyal readers who have stuck around and sent in news tips even when the site appeared to die-down a bit. We appreciate your effort to help the GMNews community, and be assured we will be ‘reviving’ the site this month.

Co-op Comp Results to be Revealed

Sandy Duncan of YoYo Games revealed yesterday that the results of the third YoYo Games competition would be revealed in the next 48 hours. Before 5pm BST on Thursday, to be precise.

 

The results to this competition have been anticipated greatly and it’s good to hear that YoYo Games will have finally come up with a winner by tomorrow, after keeping many people waiting for over a month. Sandy said that the winners for this competition were harder to choose than ever before, because of the good range of good, quality games; he said that there were three times as many games on the shortlist than in previous competitions. Both previous competition winners have created a game for the contest and it appears that it will be one of the tightest and most unpredictable results so far. It will certainly be interesting.

 

Competition 4 (Save the Planet) Underway

As per the announcement by YoYoJim on the GMC, The Yoyo Games 4th game making competition has officially begun.  The theme this time around is green – and not just because of the $1000 US prize still being offered. The “Save the Planet” theme capitalizes on the controversy regarding global climate change, acid rain, overcrowding or any other problem that has the capacity to wipe out global civilization as we know it.

Tree-haters are welcome, as any viewpoint regarding this controversy is encouraged.  “Feel free to make a game where the world must be saved from a bunch of crack-pot environmentalists,” explains the YYG team.

The same old competition rules apply. So get cracking, creators!  The competition ends January 4, 2009.