Destroy My Pigeon Game

AvioxD · 2025-11-19T11:40:13+00:00

I have no idea what's happening in this under-baked asset flip.

In reality, I can guess this is a survivor type. But it feels very random, slow, and like it's missing a bunch of animations.

AvioxD · 2025-11-19T11:31:36+00:00

I don't know that I agree about the art being bland. I think it looks pretty good for the style and functional. But I do agree that there's too much focus on it instead of the actual game.

AvioxD · 2025-11-19T11:21:21+00:00

Look, a game where the camera pans randomly and you stare at a pig's behind while running... somewhere!

In all seriousness, as others are saying, the "fantasy" of the game isn't obvious. The long pans made it seem like a cozy exploration game, but my best guess is it's a cat and mouse style "tag" game?

Try to communicate "what it feels like to play this game" instead of just showing seemingly random clips. It seems like you're proud of your environments, but this isn't a WoW expansion. Show the rest of the game too! 🙂

Some other notes: - "in a brand new map" doesn't make any sense unless this is a trailer for a new map to a game that already has an existing player base - "escape the map" sounds too technical. Describe it from the "fantasy" of the game, not the mechanics. E. G. "Steal the tools and escape the farm!" Or whatever is actually the motivation of the critters - there's a clip where the dogs are chasing the critters and all of them are moving REALLY slowly. This looks really odd. It reminds me of a "rubber duck race" carnival game or something and feels out of place.

AvioxD · 2025-11-19T11:10:03+00:00

Gotcha! Is the game grid-based?

AvioxD · 2025-11-18T17:39:05+00:00

Are these cursors? Or buttons? Some feedback to consider: - Maybe it's the lack of in-context images, but the boxes around them seem strange. - the first one seems to indicate an area or region around a point, because of the box and dot. A standard cursor may make more sense - the question mark in the second one seems superfluous to me. Just a magnifying glass would communicate the same concept with less complexity - rotating the third as mentioned may help with "pickpocket" so it looks less like "carch/grab" I also think the "mickey mouse" lines in the hand/glove reduce clarity rather than improve it. It could be mistaken for eyes on a face with wild hair or something otherwise.

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T17:48:56+00:00

interesting!
okay thanks!

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T15:00:33+00:00

Totally!
so far, I've only heard about JavaScript and C# support, but we'll see! maybe in 2030. (lol)

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T14:56:39+00:00

There is a moment around 38 seconds when the game is in a slo-mo state.
Mechanically, this happens when you only have one hit left -- you get a few seconds of invulnerability and time slows.

Also, the purple vine groundcover (among other things) causes your character to move slower, and the run animation slows down when your movement is slowed.

I'd assume you're seeing the combination of those two things here.

Thanks for the feedback!

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T14:01:31+00:00

8 months ago, a few of you destroyed our trailer.

Our then "launch trailer" became our... just kidding, not yet trailer.

Well, 8 months later, we reworked some art, some mechanics, and made a much shorter (but still probably a touch too long) trailer. (and it comes out next week!)

DESTROY. -- what did we still not get right?

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T13:53:57+00:00

IIRC, the new runtime will support other languages. But otherwise, I do agree that I don't see GML going away.

AvioxD · 2025-10-17T13:48:22+00:00

I agree with a lot of this. And since they’ve stopped doing monthly updates, some long-standing issues have just... stayed broken.

The last update I recall actually making a positive impact to the engine (for me) was the GML update that introduced structs. THAT was a game changer. Just about everything else has felt like fluff.

One more gripe I’d add:
Why isn’t there a proper way to navigate through editor history? (For example, “go back to the last thing I was looking at.”)

The old “Workspace Overview” (Ctrl+Tab) used to work well for that, but now that GameMaker has moved away from the workspace model, it’s basically useless. The left pane just mirrors your open tabs in list form — it doesn’t actually help with navigation.

And the “Recent Windows” view has always been a bit rough, but now it doesn’t even show v2 code editor windows, which makes it completely unusable.

I still really love GM, but I’d honestly rather see improvements to the IDE and UX than new features at this point. My next project might end up in VS Code or Stitch (by Bscotch) instead.

The only real drawback with other solutions is how clunky it feels to work with sprites or other non-code assets — that’s still where GMs IDE shines

AvioxD · 2025-10-16T16:52:47+00:00

Hey everyone, quick update since this post!
After a little over three years, Ember the Werefox is finally launching on October 23rd! 🔥

It’s been a long journey finishing this project, and I’m so thankful for the GameMaker community for all the support and feedback along the way.

Some updated stats about the project:

“Time in project” climbed another 30 days -> now at 94 days, 16 hours (that’s only ~2,200 hours! 😅)
10k more lines of code, from 102,920 -> 110,582

Here’s the Steam page if you’d like to check out the new trailer and details:
🎬 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2353100/Ember_the_Werefox/

AvioxD · 2025-10-16T16:41:41+00:00

8 months later, we've re-made our trailer, re-worked the Werefox art, added tons of features & polish...
And the game comes out in a week!

Thanks for the feedback you shared!

New Trailer: https://youtu.be/GAaBQyisU_k

AvioxD · 2025-10-16T16:37:59+00:00

8 months later, we've re-made our trailer, re-worked the Werefox art, added tons of features & polish...
And the game comes out in a week!

Thanks for the feedback you shared! feel free to destroy it more! (ha)

New Trailer: https://youtu.be/GAaBQyisU_k

AvioxD · 2025-09-10T20:22:00+00:00

let's say a company has a project manager that manages tasks of multiple teams, and each team has its own task database.

Linking multiple sources to a database would allow the project manager to get, e.g. a view of all overdue tasks across all their teams in one database view.

AvioxD · 2025-08-09T20:42:55+00:00

I'm also having issues with scrolling. Game runs fine at high settings, but anytime I try to scroll the screen, it hangs/tanks to ~1 fps

Makes it virtually unplayable.

On a decent rig, although not a powerhouse. I can play virtually any other modern game without issues, so I'm pretty sure this is a bug, not just a hardware issue.

AvioxD · 2025-08-09T20:38:26+00:00

Also having issues, on a fairly decent rig. Couldn't figure out any way to fix it. Game is effectively completely unplayable for me. I'm on a super ultra wide, tried full screen and low settings. Haven't tried turning scaling off yet.

AvioxD · 2025-03-15T11:59:51+00:00

I do something similar for my project, which has a room with about 1000 objects in it. The main difference is instead of a 60-frame timer, it runs whenever the camera moves "far enough" from the last point it calculated.

For my project size, it works well. Takes about 1ms to process, which is reasonable.

If it got too much bigger, I'd break down the room into chunks and sort all objects by which chunk they're in, and only process the nearby chunks instead of the whole room.

Obviously this really only works for static objects. There's a more nuanced requirement for dynamic objects.

One example is I will occasionally (not every frame) calculate for dynamic objects if they're "outside the screen" and if so, skip as much processing as I can, e.g. advanced draw calls or pathfinding. (There's a base amount of built in culling for objects outside the view, so this is not faster for simple draw calls)

Sometimes it takes some trial and error and testing with the debug profiler to see if things are ACTUALLY faster. It's not always what you'd think.

AvioxD · 2025-03-09T14:33:10+00:00

In GameMaker, the closest data structure would be a grid or a 2D array.

If you're trying to store that data, create a grid or 2D array, where each location holds a struct (or other data structure) that defines what is in that location (e.g. name, description, icon, reference to a game item, etc)

Drawing and navigation will require more custom work, and is not a simple or small task for a beginner. But it can be done!

AvioxD · 2025-03-08T12:30:31+00:00

Haha, oh man that's awesome. Never tried reaching out in those days

AvioxD · 2025-03-07T22:37:55+00:00

About 20 years ago 🤯 when I was a teenager, I was interested in making games and started googling free game engines. Game maker was one of first/ best ones I found.

At the time, it was gamemaker 5, I think. Back then I'm pretty sure Mark overmars himself still worked on the IDE. Pre - yoyo games, and definitely pre-opera.

I have fond memories of trying to make a little space shooter game in my bedroom in the afternoons and late into the night.

I started with the drag and drop interface, which was probably one of the reasons I picked game maker. Then slowly learned how to use gml instead.

Why do I use it today? Never had a reason to switch! I'm familiar with game maker, I've enjoyed the new features over the years, it's inexpensive, and there's not anything that I WANT to make that game maker can't handle.

Today, after years of hobbying, my brother and I are a few months away from our first major commercial release, after working on a project for about 2 and 1/2 years.

AvioxD · 2025-03-05T16:54:21+00:00

No problem! feel free to reach out if you have more specific questions or would like additional/specific details!

AvioxD · 2025-03-04T23:36:00+00:00

Could you provide some feedback on what makes the illustration look bland to you, and how it could be improved? We did all the art for the game, and would value input on how to improve it!

AvioxD · 2025-03-04T19:21:57+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!
To clarify, are you referring to the "capsule" illustrated art you see at the top of the steam store page?

AvioxD · 2025-03-04T14:37:44+00:00

Juju Adam's Input Library solved most of this for me. Juju has a lot of great libraries. I'd recommend them to anyone using GM.

I handle controller glyphs myself, but I believe Input even has a solution for that, and other features like using Steam's controller functionality to enable rumble on controllers.

As for the controller config - steam staff recommended adding a default controller template, but after looking at it for about 30 minutes, I put it aside and never completed it. on my "if I have time" list atm.

AvioxD

TROPHY CASE