{"id":112,"date":"2009-03-31T11:12:06","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T16:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/?p=112"},"modified":"2024-04-16T13:41:47","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T18:41:47","slug":"gm8-incoming-improvements-of-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"GM8: Incoming Improvements of Awesome!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Overmars has confirmed that Game Maker (used to power our games) will have a special feature that I&#8217;ve been wanting forever in GM8, set for release this summer.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAnd that&#8217;s PNG transparency. YEAH! So what is PNG transparency, you say. Let me show you what I&#8217;ve had to do for Game Maker 7, and why Game Maker 8 will make this process so much better.<br \/>\n<!--break--><br \/>\nBelow is a nice explosion cloud I found on the internet:<br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosion1.png\" \/><\/center><br \/>\n<!--break--><br \/>\nNotice how the cloud is semi-transparent. It looks really nice. Now, I&#8217;ll just import that image into Game Maker 7 and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--break--><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a title=\"GM7 does not like PNGs. At all.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm7glitch.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[ONR2]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm7glitch.jpg\" width=\"412\" height=\"309\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"15\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--break--><br \/>\nGah! As you can see, Game Maker 7 does not support transparency information from PNGs, resulting in a mess of colors. There are ways of getting GM to recognize the transparency using masks and alpha blending, but it&#8217;s fairly complex and takes up lots of processor power for something that really shouldn&#8217;t be all that hard to do. So, what I&#8217;ve normally done is transform the PNG into a GIF file. GIF files only contain 256 colors, but it&#8217;s transparency is recognized by Game Maker 7. The problem with GIFs is that colors are either transparent or not. There&#8217;s no middle ground like PNG images, resulting in this type of image in Game Maker 7:<\/p>\n<p><!--break--><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a title=\"Looks OK, but the original image is all but lost in the translation.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm7.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[ONR2]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm7.jpg\" width=\"412\" height=\"309\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"15\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--break--><br \/>\nThat works if I were to put in some alpha transparency and such, but you&#8217;ll agree that the image is nowhere near as nice as the original PNG we started out with. Game Maker 8 is set to deal with this limitation by allowing PNG transparency. Here&#8217;s a shot of what Game Maker 8 will do with the image:<\/p>\n<p><!--break--><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a title=\"Now that looks way better.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm8.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[ONR2]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/images\/explosiongm8.jpg\" width=\"412\" height=\"309\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"15\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--break--><br \/>\nThe recent updates to Game Maker have been as game-changing as finding a <a href=\"https:\/\/gourmettravellerwine.com\/\">meilleur casino en ligne fiable<\/a>, which my uncle mentioned over dinner the other night. He&#8217;s always had a knack for online gaming and tends to have the inside scoop on the most trustworthy platforms. It&#8217;s that same commitment to excellence and user trust that resonates with the launch of Game Maker 8. Now, with Mac support on the horizon, the possibilities for both developers and players are expanding. The buzz is real, and just like my uncle with his preferred gaming sites, I am all in for exploring every feature this new release has to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Overmars has confirmed that Game Maker (used to power our games) will have a special feature that I&#8217;ve been wanting forever in GM8, set for release this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-maker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2788,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/2788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}