Posts by JasonDarby

Quote from MEHRDAD

Great!!. Jason!. I wish you success with your new edition. I read complete this book the same year and it was so useful. But I wish the objects were cross-platform.

Yeah I love the work ChrisB did on these objects, and really shows what the power of fusion can be like with objects doing certain tasks.

Yeah the cross platform stuff is a bit of a bug bear of mine. Perhaps at some point I can pay to get someone to convert them, but not sure its worth the effort.

Quote from Drillfoot

Jason,

I have most of your published books, including the short lived one on Realm Crafter. Will have to check this one out as well. Only thing I've seen that kind of turns me off of these type of books is the fluff first few chapters.

What is Fusion, how to install. What is/are an adventure games, board games, text adventures. A lot of fluff to be gone through to get to the reason for the book purchase.

According to the Table of Contents we're looking at 50 or so "fluff" pages before getting into the development. Your writing and knowledge has always been top tier. So I might purchase just for that. I'll keep you posted If I purchase and once I get through it.

Also, or lastly. Your "Making Amazing Games Using Fusion 2.5 3rd Edition" is $41 on Kindle, and only $23 on paperback. I bring this up because it looks like you only create four small games throughout, with one being a simple clicker and more fluff chapters than development.

Ah yeah the realm crafter one, good times - shame there isnt programs like that around any more.

I know what you mean about fluff. The problem I have is that the books are mainly aimed at new people or new to the topic, because thats where the sales come from, I'm not sure more advanced books would sell in larger numbers. They are also easier to write and get examples for. So because of that I need to cover the basics. I do have an idea to compress some of these things, perhaps create some video tutorials etc and just point people to that, and save space.But its just a time thing, this has taken me over 2.5 years to update. That was just taking content I'd already written, its very difficult to create new stuff in a timely manner whilst working full time in the games industry. I'd got the rights back to many of my books, so this was meant to be a quick turnaround to get them back into circulation, but it didnt work out that way

The Make Amazing Games 3rd Edition, unfortunately thats not self published, and so I cannot control the prices. When I did the 2nd edition, they were shocked at how low I was selling the 2nd edition books/kindle for. It's hard enough to self publish, but I cant imagine the costs involved in proper printed works, the amount of extra people you have to pay etc. I think they are just trying to claw back some costs. Even though I've had royalty advances (which have shrunk massively over the years), only one book has actually paid out royalties, and that was the first. So from an author point of view, there isnt much money in these books, I do it because I like doing it. For the publisher they need to try and make a profit (I dont need to make a profit because I just pay for the costs from my own pocket over a period of time). Books like these dont make as much money as they used to for pubslishers, so I guess thats the knock on problem. I personally dont see why the kindle is more expensive than the paper printed, it really shouldn't be, but as I said unfortunately I cannot control that, I can send them a message and see what they say.

Quote from MEHRDAD

I have" the Creating Adventure Games for Teens" by JasonDarby . Is it the same book?

Yes its a 2nd edition, I got the book rights back from the publisher and have updated it to work with the latest versions/demo. You wont need to get this book really if you have the first edition. And you can still download the example files and updated adventure files from my website if there is anything you wanted to check out.

Hello,

I am pleased to announce the release of “Creating Adventure Video Games” 2nd edition. It’s been a long time coming, and took way too long to complete :

In this book you’ll find how to make text, graphic and point and click adventure games. The book supports Free Fusion but there are also a set of example files included for those with Fusion or Developer.

The book is available on Amazon sites, in both print and kindle editions. Please login to see this link.

I hope people enjoy the book and any posts on social media, or for anyone that buys, any positive reviews would be most welcome, Usually it takes about 10 + to allow it to get into the algorithm. I’d like to convert some of my other old books into the latest version, but as you can imagine it takes a lot of time and effort and it has to make sense, so I need this one to do well for me to justify the time and effort.

Many thanks

Jason

PS there is a known bug in the current full versions of the software which will hopefully be fixed soon that prevents some of the examples from working, please use the free version download from Clickteams website to circumvent that issue for now.

Please login to see this attachment.

OK I found the issue, it was that there was an object with the same name in another frame and this prevents it from working.

Still finding this all confusing, especially if I want the UI to be on top and have multiple frames. Can I actually call a different include frame, as I am guessing my UI frame would be the core frame? or can I layer one frame to be above another?

Didnt find any tutorials on youtube related to this, have you got any links?

So I might just be dumb.

Was trying to use the Include another Frame Option, as one frame was going to be UI and the other was going to be a level. But I cannot get the UI frame to appear above the level frame.

Is there any simple documentation on the Include another frame option?

Also anyone know if its possible to jump to frame using a frame name rather than number?

Been a while since I posted here, but the new forum system is particularly confusing for an old brain like mine

I cant seem to find the different threads that used to be available.

Ironically, I just found the breadcrumb trail... yikes. +1 for reducing the size of the header as well, all too big

Very sad news.. Met the guy a number of times at the click convention and he was great, his passion for making games was amazing. In fact myself and my son were just talking about the Caretaker game and whether he was going to remake it again the other day.

Quote from ALEXIUS

Hi Jason, any news about the book paper version?

Sorry ran into a few issues that I had to resolve, which took me way longer than I had expected (I blame the heat, its too hot in my office... haha). Then I had to wait a couple extra days for amazon to approve it.

But good news, book is now available in print copy via Amazon (international sites also available just go to your local amazon site and do a search for Make Amazing Games, but links to the UK/USA below).

USA - Please login to see this link.
UK - Please login to see this link.

Quote from dsilvers

This looks awesome, Jason! I'll definitely pick up a copy.

Quick question: How in depth does this go? IE do you cover any intermediate concepts like trig-based movement or is it just the super basic stuff?

Hey,

Just a basic guide, its really aimed at beginners, so nothing too complex, simple games at not a particularly difficult level. So yes Super Basic Stuff

Cheers

Jason

Please login to see this picture.

Cover done, test print sent off, which should be turning up next Wednesday/thursday apparently. I then need to go through it and just make sure all the example files work (and technically its correct). I guess we are looking 1st or 2nd week of June for it to go live, as at that point its just a pressing of a button.

Quote from ALEXIUS

A print manual is always a good idea, it can be readed on the garden, on bad, taking notes when a person is out and so on. Instead to search endlessy on sites about stuff.

Yeah I am still a print person, there is something about being able to sit on the sofa etc and just look through pages. Always find that easier to do than electronic and I think its more rewarding. The wife who is a massive book reader has gone the other way and only generally buys kindle books.

Update: Book has been through the editing process, formatting correct (I hope), just doing the cover and hopefully by the end of the weekend sending off for a test print.

Quote from ALEXIUS

This could be very useful. Will be on amazon and ebay?

It will be on amazon, for both kindle and print. Not sure about other formats yet as I don't know how difficult that is I picked amazon first as its the primary place for books these days, but we shall see.

Update on book.
Just done the final internal print, just some minor spacing issues, now just a final quick run through to make sure all formatting is correct. A test print is going to go off today hopefully, still working on the cover though, that's a bit more complex.

Quote from MEHRDAD

very good. I wish you success in selling your book.

Thanks, not expecting it to sell loads, but was something that I wanted to do... and I had some free time

Finally the major work is complete, the book chapters are all written and the content has been moved over to Amazon formatting (wish I'd just done that to begin with, would have saved a weeks work

Now doing the index and have to do a chapter intro, one final content check through and then a test print is being done next week. Hopefully we are only looking at a few weeks work before it is available (though I dont know the process on amazon yet and how long that will take).

Eeeek... good luck.

Quote from danjo

ill more than likely support you with this one too

Thanks Danjo, much appreciated.

Just converting the whole word doc to Amazon formatted file, so that's fun. Only on chapter 3, but I really like the amazon formatting. Hopefully can get a test print done next week or so.

Quote from MEHRDAD

Hi Jason and congrats!!

I always follow your books. And have "Awesome game creation" And " Creating adventure games for teens". So useful for me

Thanks a lot

Thanks really appreciate the kind words. Been a long time getting back into this, day jobs and life got in the way (probably the same for all of us). Hopefully this is the first of many new books related to game creation and games.

Quote from Tisnart

Wow, Congrats on completing it Jason.

Thanks dude... took me longer than it should of, but at least the content is done now.