Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

We've talked a lot about Gameleon, we've encouraged you to check it out and tell us your opinions,but now it is time for you to play with it!

Gameleon is now live!
The platform already comes with assets and themes built in, so you can start playing with the Editor and creating content right away, exploring it’s built-in content and creating new ones with ease.

We've also implemented a new system: each action in Gameleon is rewarded with points that unlock new and exciting content to make games with.

We’re proud to have received quite a bit of recognition for the innovative ideas behind its power and simplicity, such as the “Innovation in Internet, Mobile and Software Computing Prize” at the Intel Global Challenge 2013 in Berkeley (as well as Best Pitch) or the IXIA Innovation Award in 2012. We’re also proud of our partnerships with Mozilla (through their WebFWD program) and Microsoft’s BizSpark Plus, who have helped us in our efforts to create a better game-making experience.

Gameleon

twitter: @gameleonmain
contact@gameleon.co

Hi guys,

We have released a new video tutorial about How to create Achievements using Gameleon
Check it out! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb24eJC2idQ

Hi, it's me again :D

I wanted to update you with our latest tutorial : How to create quests using Gameleon.

You can find the video over here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ8l5l3fPRY or here http://www.gameleon.co/media#!prettyPhoto[gal]/7/
and we will also add a written guide of how to do it by Monday.

We will soon have video tutorials for achievements, bag and loot editor too.
Enjoy!

Some good news!
After winning the 4th place at Intel Business Challenge Europe and securing a place in the competition for the grand prize atIntel Business Challenge Global that will be held in California, Gameleon is proud to announce 2 new big events:

Microsoft BizSpark Plus!
A very exclusive startup development program by the most prestigious software multinational in the world,Microsoft gave us free software and support, developer tools, and training to build apps & scale our business. Not only that, BizSpark offers technology to get us in the cloud and free access to Windows Stores and free promotion to the global BizSpark community.

Webit Congress Startup Challenge!
834 startups applied for the Global Webit StartUpChallenge from all around the globe - Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Middle East and Australia. Gameleon had a huge succes and won the semi-finals,along with 24 other talented teams.
http://webitcongress.com/en/2013/startup-semi-finalists.html

Next stop: Istanbul and California!

Meanwhile,we added new features in the editor and we will release new video tutorials about quest editor,achievement editor and other great stuff.

At 8/24/13 01:23 PM, dem0lecule wrote: More free tools. More lazy people. More badly coded products.

Free tools have their advantages when it comes to spending money when you don't really have a source of income. I'm sure there are a lot of people in that position that know how to appreciate it. A free tool doesn't necessarily mean a bad tool. If you think of it as a bad tool from the beginning,then you might miss the chance to discover a great product; and this applies for all the tool on the market.

At 8/21/13 05:39 AM, TeslaShockwave wrote: Sounds interesting, especially the open source bit. So... Its like an open source alternative to Game Maker?

Yea :D
There are some differences of course.
Gameleon is multiplayer by default; once you hit the publish button, the game is available on line immediately, people don't need to download any client to play the game because it runs directly in your internet browser, and the biggest advantage is you can use the editor wherever you are because it's in the cloud, so you don't need to stay in front of your pc every time you want to create more stuff.

By the way, we've just updated some of our features in the Object Mode, namely the Skin Editor.

Now you can also directly drag and drop GIF files into Gameleon, and the editor instantly converts them into usable animated models and skins. We've used WoW Model Viewer to extract some models from World of Warcraft and showcase this feature.

Read more on our page!

At 8/6/13 05:39 PM, sharpnova wrote:

What does this game making tool have to do with democracy, a form of government based around elected officials representing a people? You really like to throw around buzzwords.

He used the wrong word here. But it is clear what he meant. He has some idea that you have to be backed by some multi-million dollar studio to get things done and wants to push the idea that "anyone" can do it. Similar to how in a democracy everyone supposedly gets a say rather than some kind of totalitarian dictatorship where only the elite and powerful have any say in things.

I have to admit, it was indeed bad wording, and indeed what I meant was similar to what you said. We live in an increasingly crowd-sourced world. Not only that, we're getting tools, software that allow people to make their own websites with zero experience, make music without instruments, shoot films without crews, and publish short films on communities such as youtube instead of paying for screening. Many environments of artistic expression have become more accessible to an ever-increasing audience of aspiring creators clamoring for new means of expression. Music making, film making etc have stopped belonging to an artistic elite, and have stopped being something you need a lot of hard cash to do. I think the same is happening in gaming, what with our indie gaming revolution, where small companies have begun pushing really good quality games and franchises. We believe game making can also move on from the world where only big companies with big money make most of the games we consume, and to a world where more and more consumers get to dictate and create content independently - where gamers start having their say in what the play.

With something as easy to use and ambitious in scope as Gameleon, we hope we'll contribute to that vision.

At 8/6/13 05:39 PM, sharpnova wrote:

What does this game making tool have to do with democracy, a form of government based around elected officials representing a people? You really like to throw around buzzwords.

He used the wrong word here. But it is clear what he meant. He has some idea that you have to be backed by some multi-million dollar studio to get things done and wants to push the idea that "anyone" can do it. Similar to how in a democracy everyone supposedly gets a say rather than some kind of totalitarian dictatorship where only the elite and powerful have any say in things.

I have to admit, it was indeed bad wording, and indeed what I meant was similar to what you said. We live in an increasingly crowd-sourced world. Not only that, we're getting tools, software that allow people to make their own websites with zero experience, make music without instruments, shoot films without crews, and publish short films on communities such as youtube instead of paying for screening. Many environments of artistic expression have become more accessible to an ever-increasing audience of aspiring creators clamoring for new means of expression. Music making, film making etc have stopped belonging to an artistic elite, and have stopped being something you need a lot of hard cash to do. I think the same is happening in gaming, what with our indie gaming revolution, where small companies have begun pushing really good quality games and franchises. We believe game making can also move on from the world where only big companies with big money make most of the games we consume, and to a world where more and more consumers get to dictate and create content independently - where gamers start having their say in what the play.

With something as easy to use and ambitious in scope as Gameleon, we hope we'll contribute to that vision.

At 8/7/13 03:01 AM, Diki wrote:

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: We’re not trying to replace hand coding or experienced developers, we’re trying to offer an alternative for beginners as well as a rapid iteration tool for experts.

Beginners should be taught the skills required to produce the works they are interested in. It's like the old adage "give a man fish he'll be full for a day; teach a man to fish he'll be full for the rest of his life". From what I can see this tool is handing beginners a metric tonne of fish, subsequently circumventing any need for them to learn anything.

A better goal, in my opinion, would be to design your application wholly around the end result of the users learning how to make these games without the assistance of advanced tools.

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: In the end, one of the things we’re proudest of is that we’re Open Source

Kudos for that. I'm a huge advocate of open source.

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: I understand that you wouldn't like to share your code, Diki. Our philosophy is completely different, and is based on the general open source philosophy that has so far contributed so many interesting and innovative due to the way it promotes universal free access.

The philosophy of open source doesn't really apply here, though. Your target audience, beginners, won't have the knowledge to do anything with your code through open source. Most probably wouldn't even know how to pull your version control repository.

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: That being said, we’re hoping to attract similarly minded people to our idea. The fascinating bit about Gameleon is the architecture behind it, something that we think your kind of crowd would love.

It's certainly possible. While I don't agree with your design decisions, I do of course recognise the difficulty in what you are making.

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: Not everyone is a programming expert, yet anyone can have cool or creative ideas for a game.

Programmers are seldom game designers, but if you want to be a skilled game designer you need to know some programming in order to understand the limitations of what you are doing. For example Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, Tim Schafer, and Cliff Bleszinski, all very successful and skilled game designers, all know programming. If you want to be the creative force behind a game you need to learn programming. Trying to design a game without that is like trying to direct a film without knowing how to use a camera, or trying to draw up blueprints for a building without knowing how to use power tools.

And really ideas are worthless per se. Everyone has ideas and 99% of them are terrible.

At 8/6/13 06:58 AM, Gameleon wrote: Maybe the next big thing, the next good game is inside the mind of someone who can’t write code

I seriously doubt that.

You raise interesting points, though I think I need to clarifiy some of ours.

The Editor is not all powerful - by no means will it be able to do anything to make a game idea come true. We know it'll start out limited, at least when it comes to the expectations of more imaginative developers, yet we hope that with a strong community and continued involvement on our behalf, it will grow and continue to expand its features and possibilities.

That being said, it'll never do 100% of the job. It can't - we can't think of all contingencies. But this is a good thing - we believe people will learn to, as you put it, fish by using this. Maybe as some of our future developers will make games and publish them, they'll move to on to making their own stuff. Probably some of them will take our game realm and hack it into such a way as to be unrecognizable and run marvelous games it can't support now.

If indeed you see Gameleon as the plastic kitchen set young children play with, when compared with a professional chef's experience of a fully stocked gourmet kitchen, think of it like this: many chefs started out with plastic pots and pans. Many engineers and chemists started with plastic chemistry sets and such. You're afraid they'll never learn, never move on - we think it's human nature to aspire for mastery. We think that if people will be introduced to the game-making art, especially with baby steps, many of them will learn to love it and move on to greater things.

You've said you can't be a game designer without knowing programming, and made it akin to directing films without knowing how to use a camera. I think the comparison, although fair, is empty in some respects. Game making today ( we started out as a game making company, mind you) is divided between artists and designers that forward ideas to programmers, and this back-and-forth determines the limits of the game. Sure, maybe a level designer who knows C++ may do a better job when discussing with his programmer peers, or propose a more sound level design based on software limitations, but sometimes the most creative things come when one is unaware of the limits. Or when one makes new ones.

I'm speaking from experience: most of the stuff we did on BugTopia, our first game, were ground breaking, at least for our small development team and for an HTML5 real time MMO. As a game designer I showed them what the game should do. Many times these guys would scratch their had and say it can't be done, or it can't be done in a browser. Yet we achieved really cool stuff - an achievement system that didn't bottleneck the processor, real-time pathfinding in an HTML5 game that didn't destroy either the client or server side, and so forth. Much of it was code written by our team to answer the demands of a designer that had no idea of the programming limitations or boundaries. And it worked. And I think sometimes not knowing the limits can lead to making new ones.

We'll have to wait and see. We've managed to attract a large group of Open Source enthusiasts, aspiring game makers and artists onto our platform that share this vision, and we're hoping that en even larger group is out there still. It's great to get differing opinions, though - even the slightest helps us improve our goals and product.

At 8/5/13 05:53 PM, Diki wrote:

At 8/5/13 10:38 AM, Gameleon wrote: We designed it with user-friendliness in mind, and specifically tailored it to people who are non-technical in such a way that it doesn’t require any knowledge of programming languages, animation, etc.

Why do you want to encourage people to be lazy and complacent?

If someone wants to make a game they need to learn how. Just like if someone wants to write a novel, make a film, or compose a song, they need to learn literary theory, film theory, or music theory respectively. What you're making is a tool people can use to pretend that they accomplished something when your little program did all the work for them.

At 8/5/13 10:38 AM, Gameleon wrote: The finished editor will also have an Asset Market, where you can upload assets made for your games and auction them to others (or give them away for free). This means that not only game creators will want to use Gameleon, but also artists and programmers, sound designers and recorders, who will be able to get a buck out of helping people with bits and pieces to make their own games.

I can say wholeheartedly that as a programmer, and as someone who has spent over 10 years learning my trade, I would never write anything for your program so that some schmuck can come along, copy/paste it without knowing what it does, and then take credit for solving a problem without actually doing anything.

At 8/5/13 10:38 AM, Gameleon wrote: When we started out making Gameleon, we had a vision: to reinvent how the world creates and consumes online multiplayer games. To take game making from the elite few big companies and make it accessible to the vast majority of gamers out there.

You want to to turn game making into pressing a button and not having to learn anything or do any real work. I don't support this whatsoever.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of the gaming market. The indie scene, especially on PC, is on fire; it's exploding right now. Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, FEZ, Mark of the Ninja, Don't Starve, Penumbra: Overture, and Binding of Isaac, to name a few examples, were all made by small groups of indie developers (Super Meat Boy being made by just two guys), and they all were very commercially successful. Super Meat Boy and Minecraft both made several million dollars in profit, turning their creators into millionaires almost overnight.

At 8/5/13 10:38 AM, Gameleon wrote: To crowdsource game making, if you will. We want to democratize game making, and we need you to do this!

What does this game making tool have to do with democracy, a form of government based around elected officials representing a people? You really like to throw around buzzwords.

Long story short I agree with pirateplatypus and kiwi-kiwi: you're pitching being lazy and unambitious to a community of creative minds that highly advocate hard work and learning new things.

I think it’s important to clarify that what we have here isn't something that replaces programmers and developers - it’s an acceleration tool. We’re not trying to replace hand coding or experienced developers, we’re trying to offer an alternative for beginners as well as a rapid iteration tool for experts. In the end, one of the things we’re proudest of is that we’re Open Source - we’re actually looking forward to having hardcore enthusiasts pick apart at our code and write their own stuff.

I understand that you wouldn't like to share your code, Diki. Our philosophy is completely different, and is based on the general open source philosophy that has so far contributed so many interesting and innovative due to the way it promotes universal free access. Thanks to this philosophy, we have amazing things like Linux powering more than 1 out of 4 corporate servers, or Apache powering the majority of web servers - and this philosophy of shared growth and mutual benefit is something we feel very much a part of. It's the main reason we joined up with Mozilla's WebFWD program - to be part of a larger, open community of tech geeks.

That being said, we’re hoping to attract similarly minded people to our idea. The fascinating bit about Gameleon is the architecture behind it, something that we think your kind of crowd would love. In the end, it’s a visual studio, but under the hood there’s code being written that is then pushed onto a server. If you make your own server, you can start playing and tinkering with the code that’s pushed, making the game behave whichever way you want.

Not everyone is a programming expert, yet anyone can have cool or creative ideas for a game. Given what I said above, I hope it’s clear we’re not trying to do developers a disservice or frustrate their talents. Maybe the next big thing, the next good game is inside the mind of someone who can’t write code - hopefully, the visual nature of Gameleon will help him make that idea a reality. That’s what they take out of Gameleon - but that’s just one side of it. We’re programmers, developers, gamers and game-makers ourselves: we see a world of open-source enthusiasts, 3d artists, technical or nontechnical creative people that can come together to create inspiring things for everyone to enjoy.

At 8/6/13 06:31 AM, Gameleon wrote:

At 8/5/13 01:30 PM, kiwi-kiwi wrote:

What I'd like to know is if you guys have any public APIs that I can use to program reusable components, for instance if you can give me an interface with a graph of the nodes in the walkable polygons, current location and destination node so I can process it, apply an A* and return a root, or a more interesting application, have an interface that sends you all the players in a group so you can implement flocking etc.

That being said, if you want to try some type of flocking, we're really interested to see what you can do based on our code! Remember to check it out on github.

At 8/5/13 01:30 PM, kiwi-kiwi wrote: Like pirateplatypus said, you're pitching this to the wrong crowd here, or at least in the wrong way in my opinion.
What I'd like to know is if you guys have any public APIs that I can use to program reusable components, for instance if you can give me an interface with a graph of the nodes in the walkable polygons, current location and destination node so I can process it, apply an A* and return a root, or a more interesting application, have an interface that sends you all the players in a group so you can implement flocking etc.
If you do have such APIs I'd be very interested if you could also have some sort of way of selling them for the monetary equivalent of a coffee, beer or cookie.

Also, I'm pretty curious about what happens to the pathfinding when the polygons are concave, but feel free to ignore this question if you want to. xD

Good question!

I’ll try to be brief about your pathfinding question: the polygons are translated into a grid with a square size of 8x8 pixels, and the pathfinding we use is A *. Short version is, we don’t currently support flocking.

If you’re curious, you can read more about our pathfinding on Mozilla Hacks.

If you’re interested in seeing our code or how it works behind the hood, we’re really keen on helping out. For starters, our realm (virtual machine) is on github - it’s the full virtual machine we push games on with Gameleon.

Secondly, since we’re all about Open Source, we’re always looking for ideas, collabs and developers and hackers to look at our code and contribute somehow. If you’re interested, give us an email at contact@gameleon.co and we’ll gladly set up a skype meeting or anything like that to help you out!

Hey everyone,

I hope you’re having an awesome day. I’m excited to tell you about a really cool game making platform we’ve been pouring the last year into. It’s called Gameleon! It’s a cloud based game editor and publishing platform that we’d really like to get some feedback on.

Why is it so exciting? Well, let’s put it like this. Have you ever wanted to create your own game, and publish it online for thousands of people to play? Well, you can’t really do that without some programming experience, technical know how, dedicated hardware and much more.

You’ll probably want to know straight away what kind of games you can make with Gameleon, and to keep the answer short, you can make 2D and isometric MMORPG’s and similar games ( single player RPG’s, hack and slash games, point and click adventures and so on). In fact, to showcase this exact point we’ve taken an iconic RPG - Diablo 2 - and re-created its first few levels.

It tooks us two days to extract models and textures from the original Diablo and import them into our editor. Check out the result for yourselves: and remember this is in a browser!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31tkQ4tp_2c

We designed it with user-friendliness in mind, and specifically tailored it to people who are non-technical in such a way that it doesn’t require any knowledge of programming languages, animation, etc. It’s very intuitive and 100% visual: everything is done with a drag and drop interface, and the scripting and AI behaviors and such are all pretty easy.

The finished editor will also have an Asset Market, where you can upload assets made for your games and auction them to others (or give them away for free). This means that not only game creators will want to use Gameleon, but also artists and programmers, sound designers and recorders, who will be able to get a buck out of helping people with bits and pieces to make their own games.

We’ve entered open beta recently and have opened up the beta version editor to the world. We’d really like to get your feedback on this.

We’ve made a quick tutorial video to showcase the creation process using a quick, basic 2D map. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T1MBu8qJEc

You can access the live editor at http://editor.gameleon.co/

In the left hand side of the interface there are resources and links to get you started: you’ll find maps and skins to start making maps for the beta, as well as links to the community and to the contact form, videos and more. We’ve tried to make it so that you have an easy time getting started.

When we started out making Gameleon, we had a vision: to reinvent how the world creates and consumes online multiplayer games. To take game making from the elite few big companies and make it accessible to the vast majority of gamers out there. To crowdsource game making, if you will. We want to democratize game making, and we need you to do this!

If you like what you’ve read so far, please, gives us a hand and test out the editor! We’re excited to get your feedback and suggestions.

Contacts us: contact@gameleon.co
Website: www.gameleon.co
Facebook: http://goo.gl/Ey2bTO
Twitter: www.twitter.com/GameleonMain
Beta Editor Link: www.editor.gameleon.co

Have fun! :D