Yet Another InstantPlay Plugin

James Rhodes from roket-games.com has released a Firefox-only “InstantPlay” plugin much like Yoyogames.com‘s InstantPlay. This one has the capability to run any Windows application (not just Game Maker games) and allows you to embed a play button on any web page.

Installation is quick and smooth, and the progress indicator on ‘buffering’ games far less obnoxious than YYG’s, but one still has to wonder about the security implications of a plugin that allows arbitrary binaries to run with a single click.

A previous InstantPlay alternative is the Java-based GMBed (v2.0 beta released July ’08). Covac Software also published GmX, an ActiveX-based system, which has had no apparent activity since ’07.

YYGlog Followup, GMBed, Ultimate 3D Scrapped

First up on today’s news list is a follow-up on the recently posted articles found on the official YoYo Games glog. The follow-up comments from Sandy confirm that the runner for the next release of Game Maker will be modified to improve security and integrity of the games as to make it much more difficult to decompile them.

Sandy also stated that although the company has looked into making a compiler for GM (i.e. one which can compile Game Maker source files directly into machine code), it is highly unlikely this will happen. Lastly, Sandy mentions the fact that things are moving a bit slow lately because it’s summer, but at the same time hints to several ‘minor things’ that will be announced in the next week or two. Speculation anyone?

—

GMBed was first released a little while back and was an effort to compete with YoYo Games’ iPlay browser plug-in to allow Game Maker made games to run directly from a user’s web browser. The major advantage of using GMBed is the ability for games to be embedded directly into a user’s own webpage without requiring any additional plug-ins to be installed on the end user’s PC for it to work.

Today the team announced a new beta of the Java based software that should improve general performance and stability. It seems however that there are some mixed reports to how well it is working in its beta form.

—

Christoph Peters, creator of Ultimate 3D for Game Maker has decided to discontinue the project after a long four years. The popular DLL that enables better 3D capabilities and performance than Game Maker’s built-in engine has been used by many to give them the extra 3D rendering power they need to create commercial-quality games.

Ultimate 3D isn’t over just yet though. Christoph announced the project will continue as Ultimate 3D 3.0, however will not be built to work with Game Maker. In his deciding letter, Christoph notes the limited power of Game Maker and says “I have told those of you who want to make complex games to stop using Game Maker several times now. Now I am taking this advice myself.”

Hat tip to Elmernite.