Click Convention 2005 Report
By Chris Street
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It took me a long time to write this article. Claim it as your own work and die!


This article is not endorsed by Clickteam. In short, they had nothing to do with the writing and is all my own work. Clickteam and the convention organisers will not take any responsibility for any incorrect information. I however, do take such responsibility.

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PROLOGUE
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Having been told at the convention that my reports are a good and informative read, I've complied with various klikker's wishes and have chosen the selfish path of writing the third convention report for this year. And hope that maybe once again it will, for a brief time, be the most read article at The Daily Click. Fingers crossed. I'm going to write this in the form of chapters to make it just that little more interesting.


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CHAPTER ONE: The Day Begins!
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Woke up at 6am in a very grumpy and tired mood. I hate waking up early. My Dad drove me down to the convention in the pouring rain. Arrived just before 9am and sat quietly in main area. Rain stopped. Typical. Danish group came over to meet and greet (consisted of Burfelt, Random, Hazard and some other people whose names I forget - I know at least one of them was German). Sat quietly for a bit, making small talk, twiddling fingers. Simon Pittock of Acoders arrived, very outgoing and pleasant guy to talk to. In fact, all the convention attendees were. More people arrived, ordered lunch and the main evening pub meal, convention begins!


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CHAPTER TWO: Multimedia Fusion 2
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Francois kicked things off with MMF2 information. I won't go into too much detail here, so I'll note down much of what he said briefly. Imminent winter release, hurrah. Interface very much like TGF. You can preview what library objects would look like before placing them in the frame.

You can select an object to be the "master" object, and its clones can align themselves with it in any way you wish (you could align them all to the top of the screen to the y position of the master object, for instance) A blue box will appear around the master object with a small counter in the top left corner of the box, telling you the object number (ideal for use if you like spreading Alterable Values in your games).

MMF2 runs with only one window at a time, but you can open up new windows by holding down SHIFT and clicking on a relevant frame. Alpha Channel is featured in all Active Objects. Frame rate can be changed at runtime and this was demonstrated by Francois as Zeb was loaded and sped up to 60FPS. Layers can be introduced, reordered, so that even background objects can appear in front of actives. The speed can be set too. Perfect for parallax scrolling.

MMF2s runtime is faster than MMF 1.5 due to the program being completely re-written in c++. All extentions not bundled with MMF2 will have to be modified / recoded. In the event editor you can put objects into folders, to save scrolling across the screen if you have many objects. Helps to organise and group things too, such as placing all enemies in a folder. You can create columns to divide up the event editor and keep things tidy and organised.

Overall interface can be customised to suit TGF or MMF users. Its possible to convert old games over to MMF2 but .cca files will be redundant. Instead a new file format - .mfa will be used, which stands for Multimedia Fusion Application. Once MMF2 and TGF2 (a very lite version of MMF2) are out, all previous versions will be removed from the Clickteam website.

Direction Calculator no longer needed, it's built into the engine. There are now FOUR buttons that act as "FIRE", formerly two. And MMF2 will automatically download any new updates that Clickteam upload, so no more need to download bonus packs - although it is possible to disable this should you so wish. Platform engine has been hugely improved - player can move around on moving platforms and doesn't stick to the roof anymore. Hugely advanced sound effect options, can choose various channels to place samples in and change the position, volume, and panning at runtime. Music can now be paused and resumed. And as you may or may not know, no external .DLL files are needed to be packed with the game.

These were just some of the new things that had been changed, and Francois then answered some questions that were asked in the Clickteam forums. The first three questions were my own, and they were good questions - although I can't remember what they were now. Something about comparing the Irrlicht Object to MMF3D. It has been reported that Turboferret had actually stopped working on this anticipated object a long time ago - about a year. However, the project hasn't been canned, but the extention will not be released with MMF2. And on the subject of the Irrlicht Object, Francois also stated that it probably wouldn't be possible to make complete games with it in MMF2. Just thought I'd throw that point in, in case everyone was expecting more - and I daresay they probably were. There will not be a pinball movement included with MMF2 unless someone makes an extention for it using the movement SDK.

Currently, Clickteam lack a Mac programmer. If they manage to get a good one then a Mac version of MMF2 could be on the cards as well. And do not expect any more Bonus Packs to be released for the current versions of MMF.


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CHAPTER THREE: Ugly Mugs Crack Mirrors
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After this long demonstration - and it was effectively the main talk of the convention - it was time for the most anticipated event of the day - the photo shoot! And, because there were so many people this year, we couldn't all fit into the room - so we headed outside to the Watermill car park, where we looked like total idiots as other hotel guests passed by, wondering what on earth was going on. Nobody actually knew when Jason took the photo, so we were all a bit surprised to be told to go back indoors when he did! As a result some people on the photo look grumpy.

Now, because somebody stole my schedule for the convention, I'm going to have to try and remember roughly what happened next. And from here on in, I humbly apologise if things aren't in the correct order.

I believe we had a lunch break, and the conventioneers got the opportunity to try other games around the room. Super Stun And Run, by Chris Och (who unfortunately wasn't there, but Andi and Mark Pay were representing him) took quite a big audience, as did this two-player deathmatch game, which looked rather good (although it bore more than a passing resemblance to Fallen Angel's Fatal Bout. My lunch arrived, and quickly into my stomach it went, before I headed downstairs for a drink.


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CHAPTER FOUR: Clickteam Get Greedy!
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There was a further Question and Answer session to questions not entirely related to MMF 2. One of the more notable pieces of information was concerning Jamagic and its future. According to Francois, Jamagic was a failure, sold badly, Clickteam have three options. First is to look at the Irrlicht engine and base a potential Jamagic 2 on that, second option is to release Jamagic as FREEWARE, the third is to totally scrap it. This process of planning could take a few months as Clickteam study the Irrlicht engine hard. Releasing it as Freeware is the most likely option, however, since it didnt sell very well worldwide.

Other questions included requests on information on Clickteams mission statement regarding MMF2/TGF2, to which Francois replied "To sell as many copies as possible!" Tsk... it's always about money, isn't it? Are there plans to make an exporter which can create applications for the Gamepark GP32 system? Answer: No, nobody likes the Gamepark GP32 system! Will there be a better way to view library graphics? Currently, they are very small. I would like a preview window? Your wish is granted. Other questions were asked, but I can't remember the answers to them all.


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CHAPTER FIVE: First User Presentation
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Paul Boland, one of the convention regulars, stood up and ran his presentation. There were three games he wanted to show - Shooting Stars, The Caretaker, and a third, which I forget the name of, but it was all about spaceships that looked like vacumn cleaners. Depressingly yet again, Paul didn't actually demonstrate the games, but showed videos and his presentation in the form of a slideshow. Shooting Stars was first, and Paul was still very reluctant to reveal what the concept of the game is. Apparantly it's a brand new, never before seen genre, and we got some nicely rendered videos of cut-scenes. Then there was the new project, again I forget the name, but it's Paul's first attempt at a proper RPG. Finally we had a look at The Caretaker, and how the new and revamped version compares to the old game. You need to collect cards/keys to solve puzzles and enter rooms. All very complex, and it would be great to see this game soon, for each time we see it at the convention, it has morphed into a new form.


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CHAPTER SIX: The Phone-Ins
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Before I forget, I thought I'd just quickly mention the phone-ins that were arranged for the convention. Rikus Kras and Danjo were meant to phone at two different times during the day, and I got to speak to Danjo for about five minutes, after Andi and before Simon Pittock. He seems a very nice guy, a little hard to hear though because of the long distance (he lives in Australia) and the fact that the convention room was so noisy during one of the breaks. I believe that five people spoke to him in all. Sadly Rikus never made his call - I'm not sure why, but it was a shame, it would have been good to speak to my "employer". Regarding Danjo, I didn't really know what to say to him, I don't know him in person and it felt very weird talking down the phone to him.


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CHAPTER SEVEN: The Spirit Engine 2
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Mark Pay of Natomic (everyone knows him, I don't know why I'm introducing him!) ran a presentation for his upcoming game TSE2, and it did look very interesting. He mentioned how his graphical style had developed over the two years it took to make the first game, and how difficult it was to keep a similar style. A slideshow took place first of all, and then we got to see some ingame action. The game looks stunning, it really does. It ran incredibly smoothly with parallax scrolling and we got to see two battles. There were four main characters onscreen, although only three were actually "playable", and Mark demonstrated the ease of how the fighting engine worked. However, the presentation didn't run entirely smoothly, and I'm thinking we should all blame TwiTerror for that His ModFusion object crashed the game immediately upon startup, so Mark had to switch computers around. Although saying that, the game initially ran on Jasons computer, and I had problems with my own music when I demonstrated MSD2 (more later), so maybe Josh isn't entirely to blame. But I'm still going to anyway!


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CHAPTER EIGHT: So What Does "DT" Stand For Anyway?
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DT's turn came up next, and this is where I started to lose concentration and I didn't really pay attention to the presentation, to my own discredit. From what I do remember however, DT ran a small series of presentations actually. He told his story of how he was asked by a school to create a platform game and how he stole basically everyones ideas off the internet since he had never actually made one before! The point of this particular presentation was to offer the advice that you should never say you can do more than you actually can. Another example was when he had to go to the Middle East for a few days to create an interactive map, and he demonstrated this map, which could load external maps from folders and he could drag around and name ships, planes and other vehicles and place them where he needed to - and he could save and reload their positions for later use. He also created a DNS scanner, which would be able to track users on a network (for school use ideally) and monitor their activities. All in all, a pretty impressive demonstration, but I did forget a lot of things in this.


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CHAPTER NINE: Competition Time!
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Much like previous conventions, there was a high-score competition. This time you controlled a paddle which needed to keep a bouncing ball within a circle. The paddle was mouse controlled and the whole game was viewed from a top-down perspective. Very nicely programmed. I managed a peasly score of 15, while the top score ended up being about 45ish, can't quite remember. Prizes - which were handed out later in the day - included books on Indie game making. And, to be fair to those who were rubbish at the game, a raffle was held, with prizes being MMF 1.5 Pro, MMF 1.5 Standard, and um... some posters. I didn't win anything... oh well. I think it was fixed anyway


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CHAPTER TEN: Free Convention Tickets. Well, Not Really
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No, I'm not talking about any draws or raffles or anything, I'm talking about Simon Pittock's presentation (which wasn't initially scheduled until I convinced Simon it was worth him squeezing it in) which was extremely impressive to say the least. Simon works for a theatre, and was given a budget to create a ticket booking system. He pulled it off with cash to spare, and I managed to get a quick go on it before he actually showed it off. Basically you create a database of people who have booked a show. You can allocate them specific seats in an array type format and design the layout of how the seating would look. Clicking on a seat would create a bubble showing the full details of the individual sitting there.

What was most impressive though was the fingerprint scanner. An ActiveX was created especially for this, and it's mainly to aid elderly people who couldn't remember their passwords. Jab the finger onto a fingerprint reader and its image appears on-screen. Simon also demonstrated an extra application - a ticket designer program. You could drag and drop things and design the layout of the ticket, and with special printers, print them out. Simon demonstrated this by handing out specially made convention tickets - void, of course.

All in all, an excellent application. I mustn't forget that it has an onscreen keyboard, which can be changed around from a QWERTY layout to a basic ABCDE design - and although the feature wasn't displayed at the convention the final product will have a touch screen system. And it goes into effect only two days after the convention! Sadly there was no sign of the online Scrabble clone WTFD, but hey, you can't have everything.


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CHAPTER ELEVEN: That Book
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One of the convention organisers - Jason Darby - was up next with the promoting of his new book which was released on the day of the convention. Or rather, should have been released on the day of the convention. Yes, it's still unfinished, with several weeks before the American release (as usual, we in the UK get a bum deal and have to wait around the end of October). Jason took the book along in the form of a 350 page folder, and told the tale of how the publishers wanted him to design the front cover - and how one reviewer didnt like some of the book (because he didnt believe that TGF2 could make professional games), yet this person had never seen the product, and only had used "TGF1" a little bit over eight years ago.

Jason demonstrated the demo games that would come with the book. These have actually been released on the Clickteam forums a couple of months ago or so, and you can experience them for yourself. There was a Space Invaders clone, a beautiful looking platformer about a character called Jack who was lost in the forest, another platformer in the style of Donkey Kong, a side scrolling aeroplane shooter (in the form of 1942), a side-scrolling spaceship shooter and a bat and ball game. The graphics and games were done by various chaps, aside from the Space Invaders clone which Jason created himself - as he said himself, "he is horrible at graphics and choose the simplest game style"...

Looking forward to the book release, just in time for my October holiday


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CHAPTER TWELVE: My Turn!
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There was another break, and some of the people in the room were playing the competition game again, so I quickly headed out to the toilet. Upon return I found everyone seated, and suddenly I was up, with MSD2. I rehearsed what I was hoping to say the night before, and it took up fifteen minutes. This time my talk took about five-ten minutes tops, and that included the time where the game ran very slowly until I disabled the music. Once again I was pretty nervous. I'm not a great public speaker by any means, and this was plain with lots of "um's" and "urr's" thrown into my vocabulary... oh well. StickyKeys was also enabled, which meant I couldn't hammer down the SHIFT button as much as I wanted to, and the games window minimized twice.

So anyway, I ran the game, told the story behind the first game, and the extention of this new story (dentures get stolen this time, not eaten) and played through several levels including the never before seen Super Happy Fun Zone, which introduced conveyor belts and swimming elements. I received several questions at the end of the presentation, including someone asking why the game ran so slowly initially. I couldn't answer that, but I'm planning to create some .WTF music files with Josh's WSF. Josh actually got mentioned quite a few times at this convention in several different presentations. But at the end of the day, my presentation was pretty bad, and it wasn't helped when the air conditioning system turned on, drowning out much of my speech...


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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: What The Hell Is A Widget?!
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Jeff Vance's presentation was all about this program called a "Konfabulator" which could create spinoff applications called "Widgets". They could range from desktop pets, to RSS news feeds, to having an internet searchbar. Little programs that could make your life easier. Jeff went to on demonstrate that MMF is capable of creating widgets, and he demonstrated this with the use of two small applications - one which told him how many people were online at the Clickteam forums, and if he had any new Private Messages (indicated by a lightbulb), and I can't remember what the other one did! This presentation was particularly fascinating - even if Konfabulators and Widgets are stupid names


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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Finale
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I hope I haven't forgotten anything here. But as Jason was announcing the convention end, another game maker - Melli Georgiou - tried to get a presentation up and running. It was a beautiful looking game with great graphics, but unfortunately he didn't quite manage to get the game working properly. He stated however that he had developed everything himself, right down to the music. The game was created in a year, if I remember correctly, and he is/was looking for beta testers. So if you're interested, go and find him


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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Great Dinner - With Unexpected Surprises
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The convention was then over. Many of the people headed back to their hotels or for home, but the ones that stayed enjoyed a slap-up meal! I sat with Sarah, Mark Pay, Andi, Firemonkey, Annabelle (very nice lady, wish I had spoken to her a lot sooner), Sarah, and I can't remember the other three people... feel free to fill me in, sorry!

So anyway, I had garlic bread for starters, and that alone might as well have been a meal in itself. It was huge and eventually, since nobody else on the table had a starter, shared it around while they were drooling. Main meal was great too - steak, chips, jacket potato, and onion rings for me, and it was more than just a little bit tasty. Got chatting more to Andi, Mark and Sarah and I felt that, at long last, I could just unwind a bit, having presented my game earlier and now having nothing to worry about.

After a bit, Andi and I joined the other "main" table, where most of the Clickteam staff were sat, for a few minutes. We both didn't really feel included in the conversation and I didn't really know what to say, so after a bit we trudged back to our own table again

Then came, for Sarah, the fun task of sorting out the money for the meal. This process took a very long time and I was starting to devlop a headache. In fact, I was just extremely tired after a nerve inducing day. Eventually Andi left, and I felt that I couldn't keep my own transport waiting for much longer, so shortly afterwards, I followed him out - but not before shaking everyone's hands. I felt like a person of great importance

Then, a bit reluctantly, I guess, I headed off home.


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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: My Best Bits
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The main best bit: Everyone who attended the convention was given a pre-beta version of MMF2. However, we all had to sign an NDA for it, meaning that we cannot give out unofficial information and we most definately cannot hand the betas around. Don't waste your time asking, I will not reply.

Meeting Simon Pittock (aka StopGap of Acoders). I've gotten along with him for quite some time online and it was great at last to meet him. He was a cool guy.

Meeting Andi and Mark again. Two great guys!

Francois forgetting an aspect in MMF2 and saying "Oh yes! I haf just remembered sometink!" in a very squeaky voice, which lead to most of the room laughing.

Speaking to Francois properly this time!

Many of the conventioneers actually remembering me For a split second I felt important

Sarah telling me that Francois isn't intimidating, but "like a big cuddly teddy bear" after I told her that I was nervous around Francois



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Guess that's it. If I've left anyone out, then I'm truly sorry! Without a convention schedule I've had to rely on my memory. I would like to thank Sarah and Jason Darby for organising the convention once again, and for the Clickteam for turning up (and giving us the betas!). Thanks for reading


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THE END
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