To celebrate the occasion I finished up and released a new example! It demonstrates how to smoothly implement customizable controls for both the gamepad and the keyboard, as well as other useful functions.
Experience in GML is highly recommended, however.

A small update for the resources: tile sets from Star Man, Star Man -Upgraded- and Palace tiles from Zelda II.
Enjoy!

All three examples have been updated with revised Game Information, and two have been updated as follows:
I have also stopped offering examples for versions of Game Maker under 7.0 as I feel it's not worth maintaining the old versions any longer. Anyone who used 6.1 should be using 7.0 as there are hardly any incompatibilities between the two, and 5.3 is just plain outdated, especially with 8.0 around the corner.

The Mega Man Icon Pack under Resources has also been updated to include 52 new icons, now including other games aside from Mega Man 2-6 and not being limited to the eight main bosses from each game.
The icon file names have also been properly organized.

While I don't plan on updating here for every new video on my YouTube channel, I felt that this one was fairly exciting, and well, Blyka's Door could use a word of progress between now and SuperDanny 2's release. :P

The video is of course a demonstration of my new Mega Man engine, written entirely from scratch since Star Man and the current SuperDanny 2 demo. I poured a lot of time and effort into creating an engine that is perfectly accurate with Capcom's NES engines so that it looks and feels like an official game, and I'm very pleased with it. Check it out!

Though I promised that SuperDanny 2 would be finished this year, I must be realistic and admit that next near will more than likely see the release of this game. I have been seriously cracking down and using pretty much every spare minute I have to work on it since probably September and I intend to continue doing so until the game is finished, but there are always the inevitable delays and setbacks (I have already experienced many in the last month -_-). I expect the game to be very close by the year's end however as this new engine has eliminated all of the major problems that have seriously plagued my progress since the project started, so now it should only be a matter of time.

That's right; Blyka's Door now has its very own YouTube channel! In time I hope to upload a variety of videos relating to my game creations, and as of now the channel has four videos from Star Man -Upgraded- demonstrating how to defeat all four main bosses without taking any damage. Enjoy, and keep an eye on the channel for new videos!

I also went through and tweaked the entire site, correcting and revising text here and there and improving the format of certain pages. Worth noting among these revisions is I modified the Previews page to be a bit more exciting and revised the screenshots and information for SuperDanny 2 and Tuttle's Little 5-Island Adventure.

And last and least, I updated Yust Man 2... sort of. Apparently the one that's been on the site all this time was the very initial release, the most noticeable difference from the updated one being the loading screen was from before I had registered my Game Maker. There may be a few bug fixes as well, but it's so old and similar to the previous one I'm not going to bother considering it a new version. Just saying it's updated for the record.

Been a long time since the last update (longer than intended as usual), but as always I've been working hard on my various projects whenever I find the time. While the updates here are generally few and far between, I usually try to make a substantial update when the time comes- and I think this one suffices pretty well.

First off is a new demo for Tuttle's Little 5-Island Adventure! After receiving a number of complaints for its grid-based engine I have now rewritten it to be free-moving, which allows for some more action-oriented and generally smoother gameplay. Although the demo level remains almost the same as before, I think a few new surprises combined with the new engine makes for a much more exciting demo than before.
Download it on the Previews page!

I have also finally upped the number of examples here on Blyka's Door with one that demonstrates how to achieve what I call the lantern effect; where you can only see around the player and the rest of the room is in darkness.
Hope you find it useful!

And that wraps up this update. In case you're wondering, Game Maker time in the past four months has not been spent entirely on a new Tuttle engine/demo and new example. In fact a lot of work has gone into a brand new engine for SuperDanny 2- one that puts the engine in the Star Man games to shame. More on that later.

Progress has been pretty slow lately, but I've ripped another retro resource for the site: Overworld tiles from the first two Zelda games on NES. Enjoy.
I've also updated both of my examples, Skull Man in particular; generally more polish, better explanations, slightly improved methods, etc. It's also available in GM7 now.
Other than a few minor site tweaks that's about it for now. Oh, and Star Man -Upgraded- received a very minor edit awhile back.

Since the completion of Star Man -Upgraded- I have been working hard with fAB to deliver a demo of the new incarnation of Nazo Nazo: Tuttle's Little 5-Island Adventure! It's a maze-style Mega Man Legends fan game of pretty exciting and epic proportion. Read more about it on the Previews page!

Well this took a lot longer than I honestly expected... but what can I say, winter sucks and life has hardly been at its finest. But anyhow, the surprise that was planned for New Years and delayed for almost two months is now here!
Star Man -Upgraded-
What seems to be the star attraction of Blyka's Door (couldn't resist) has now been upgraded from Gameboy-style to NES-style. This means that the game is entirely in COLOR, and has an NES screen size of 256x224 rather than the measly Gameboy size of 160x144, among many other new features and improvements.

I have also upgraded the style changer (found on the homepage) to include the new Bubble Style. While not the most practical-looking of site styles, I personally think it's quite a fun change from the standard.

2008 was a fantastic year for me personally, and it is with great sadness that I bid it a fond farewell. However, while fantastic personally, it wasn't as great as I hoped where achievements in Game Maker are concerned. I plan on dedicating 2009 to the completion of most of my Game Maker projects, so here's to a good year!

If you are a returning visitor to Blyka's Door you'll notice that I have given the site a major revamp in appearance and layout for the new year. Along with its visual upgrade I have revised and refined all of the content of the site, and it is INFINITELY better than before from a technical perspective. Unfortunately the hectic holidays prevented me from fully completing and satisfactorily revising a few things, but nothing too important.
All will be accomplished in the fullness of time.

Among its revisions, I think the most obvious and exciting one is the addition of the PREVIEWS button to the navigation... and it is not a page under construction. I have finally revealed some facts, screenshots and an old demo of SuperDanny 2! I also plan on putting some other previews there as time and progress allow.

Also, probably not very exciting but I took a few hours to upgrade SuperDanny's Adventure to V2. You may or may not know this as my very cheesy second game full of inside jokes, but with V2 I have added just enough polish that I think it's much more playable than before.

And I suppose that wraps up my big new year update. I was planning on releasing an exciting surprise today, and while obviously delayed I can assure you it's not far off... Be sure to check back later.

Here's to an exciting year at Blyka's Door!