Hello! Liam here to run over a few bits and pieces over the last month. Thank you again for all your support, it's been a seriously busy few months with so many announcements appearing all the time. This was first posted on Patreon.

Keeping on top of it all has been something of a struggle, but it's a nice problem to have for sure. I seem to be cutting and pasting the TODO list from one day to the next. Due to how much article work has been going on, not much to share over the last month!

Stuff and things:

- To help visibility, new posts in the Tech Help forum will get auto linked into the #tech-support channel in the GOL Discord. The tech support forum is also now bridged to our new tech support Matrix channel thanks to the new Matrix Spaces feature we can do multiple channels there.

- Actually mentioned we're on Matrix on the Contact Us page, in addition to all the other social areas you can find us. For those that don't know, it's a like a more modern and decentralized IRC that's still also open source.

- Did Linux pre-release testing for Jetboard Joust.

- Did Linux pre-release testing for Space Chef.

- Did Linux pre-release testing for Harvest Days.


- Pre-release testing of the new APICO demo as they rebuilt it from JavaScript to Game Maker. They're still using the launch script I sent them and we came across the almighty stupidity that is Game Maker's input system treating a mouse and keyboard as a gamepad and fucking everything up. Thankfully, after I discovered by chance that uplugging my mouse made the game pad work TNgineers were able to solve it for APICO by ignoring anything that has a zero for "GMS Gamepad Direction Count" meaning it has no D-pad so it's not a gamepad.

Seriously, YoYo games, we need to talk about your gamepad input support. WTF

So yeah, for GameMaker Studio games, tell developers to disregard anything that has no d-pad "GMS Gamepad Direction Count" as a gamepad, and it will probably fix almost all gamepad issues.

We also took the APICO developer through the needed steps for the Steam release, thanks to this guide. Because surprise, Game Maker doesn't stick with the Steam Runtime.


- Poked the developer of Copy Editor: A RegEx Puzzle again, to remind them of the fix I sent them. They were quite appreciative.

- Pre-release testing for If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers as they're doing a Steam release now (already on itch.io). They were quite happy about the help.


Misc:

- New articles since the last update: 166

- We also livestreamed for 14 hours on our Twitch Channel! Yup, it's back in action. Mostly VR stuff for now. Big thanks again to Scaine, who donated the whole complete VR kit!

- Remember to check the Supporter Forum if you support us on Patreon.

- The next podcast episode is due soon, real soon, maybe even today/tomorrow for you! It's recorded, just finishing up the editing! (it's out since the original post)

- Our IRC moved to Libera.Chat due to the recent and very public issues with Freenode.

- We've built up a nice hit-list of interviews again, hoping to have more out over the next month!

- The Sunday Section articles have returned, and likely will stick around. A good way to round-up stuff not big enough for a full home-page GOL article or stuff we just didn't get around to covering. Latest example Sunday Section - May 23.

New Patreon Tiers

Additionally, we've added two new tiers on Patreon and both limited:

• Mega Supporter - for those who want to go the extra mile for us, limited to TEN
• Sponsor - limited to ONE at a high price to get a small plain image-link (no JS/no cookie crap) banner above the comments area. Patrons at the first level ($4) will be able to hide it.

Why? Everything we want to do costs a lot of monies, we need more - simple as that. Plus, I don't even want to consider doing "normal" adverts ever again. Nope.

Last edited by Liam Dawe on 30 May 2021 at 10:13 pm UTC