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Hi! This is my homepage, where I put the games etc. I make in my spare time. If there's a game I've made at a game jam or similar that isn't on this page, it'll be here eventually when the next Scrap Pack gets made. This site uses no browser cookies, scripts, ads, or pop-ups. My games do not make use of the Windows registry, do not come with installation programs and do not create any shortcuts. They're freeware, open-source Game Maker executables for Windows and use text files for saving. If you want to link to my site, you do not need to ask for permission. I prefer linking to the game pages instead of hosting mirrors of my games, as I still update them from time to time. If you want to translate a game or game guide, please ask me on cohost, Bluesky or Twitter. Thanks! |
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Frequently Asked Questions
This is a collection of things I've answered elsewhere, but could do with being gathered in one place.
Updated 15 August 2024.
1. Can I use the music in your games for something?
Please ask the composers, found in the credits in the manual for each game (sometimes inside the game itself).
2. Why do some of your games run slowly or not at all on my computer?
Most of the games here were compiled in Game Maker 5.3A and 7.0; if one version doesn't work, please try the other. Game Maker in general has issues with compatibility with different versions of Windows, but having two EXEs compiled in different versions increases the chances that one of them will work on your system.
3. Why GM5.3A and GM7.0, and not GM Studio or GM Studio 2?
There are differences between the various versions of Game Maker that makes converting old games difficult. I'll break it down, but I'll only go into the details that concern my games and this question:
GM5.3A: A very old program from 2004. What most of my games are made in. Runs on DirectDraw. Some computers don't like the way it draws lines, polygons and alpha blended sprites, slowing down heavily. This is why I stopped using those after Iji, or in the case of Hero Core's "motion blur", makes the game turn alpha off if it detects slowdown. However, the games can still slow down on some systems.
GM6.1: Runs on Direct3D and thus allows for 3D, rotation of sprites, advanced blending, surfaces etc. Unfortunately, sound handling is quite buggy and no longer allows for realtime pitched sound or specifying the number of instances per sound file. Most modern systems have GM6 games fail to boot, so they have to be closed from the Task Manager.
GM7.0: Similar to GM6.1, but compatibility and performance are a lot better. Appears to run fine on most Windows versions. A Mac version exists, letting you compile to Mac, though this requires a bit of work depending on the game.
GM Studio: This program is very different from the previous ones. The "treat uninitialized variables as zero" functionality was removed, since it didn't allow GML to be properly compiled. This leads to the upside: you can now compile to many different platforms, though back when I tried it many years ago, it lacked a lot of basic features.
GM Studio 2: As far as I know, this is again a different program and has little to do with previous versions of Game Maker. I haven't tried it myself yet.
For the purpose of the type of games I make, 5.3A and 7.0 have been preferred over the years, but I want to check out GMS2 soon and see if my older stuff can be converted for improved compatibility with modern systems. Starting with Hyper Princess Pitch in 2011, I've coded my games so they can be compiled in both 5.3A and 7.0, but it requires me to stay away from GM5-specific things like pitching sound effects.
4. Follow-up: Will you convert Iji to Mac?
Now that Iji 1.7 runs in Game Maker 7.0, it may be possible to compile it to Mac, but it depends on how buggy the Mac version of GM7.0 is.
5. Follow-up: Will you port some of your other games to Mac?
I'll try to get around to it (and when I say that, I usually mean that I'll forget about it later or didn't have the time). Music is always an issue when converting to Mac though.
6. Why not use a "real" programming language instead of Game Maker?
GM is a scripting language with C-like syntax, with optional drag-and-drop coding for beginners. While the graphics and sound handling isn't coded from scratch, the games themselves are. I've coded some in other languages before, but it's much faster for me to work in GM. So far I've not had an idea for a 2D game I'd like to implement that wasn't possible in Game Maker, so it's powerful and versatile enough for me.
7. Can I have the graphics/sound/voices from Iji?
It's all in the downloadable source code on the Resources page, which you can open in Game Maker. From there you can export any resource you want, though you need the correct registered version of Game Maker to actually compile and run the game, and I can't help you with that. There's also a sprite dump on the Resources page.
8. Can I have the original 3D character models from Iji?
You can get the models on the Resources page, but be aware that they look really odd due to the way they were used in the game.
9. You've said you're unhappy with Iji's graphics and cut scenes. Why not remake them?
Iji has a lot of graphics - about 20.7 megapixels if you don't count the transparent pixels around the sprites. I've never found the motivation for remaking all of it, and I don't even want to. Version 1.7 at least updated the most embarrasing of the cutscene images...
10. Follow-up: Will Iji get more versions beyond 1.8? What about an HD version? A 3D version? A level editor? Online co-op mode? Smell-o-Vision VR support for the Atari 2600? etc.
There have been all kinds of suggestions since Iji was first released, but I don't want to spend several years on something I don't want to do. There are many other things and projects I would much rather do instead. Every version of Iji was made because I wanted to, and it'll only be updated now if I feel like it.
11. Will you ever make Iji 2?No, sorry.
12. Follow-up: How about sequels to your other games?It depends on if I want to make them.
13. What is Ludosity?
From 2010 to early 2023 I worked at Ludosity Interactive as a game designer / all-around type person. I left because the company had changed, but for full disclosure I still own 10% of it. I did game design documents, story, items, competitive balance, 2D graphics and some animation, 3D modeling/rigging/texturing/animation, levels, scripting, lyrics, sound editing, and I wrote level editors for some of our games. You can see a list of games we made here. In fact nearly everyone at Ludosity multi-classed as a programmer, artist, musician and/or filmmaker, and coded their own games or tools in their spare time. This greatly helped our creativity and productivity together on games like Ittle Dew 2 and Slap City.
I write some more about getting into the game making business in question 31.
14. Why won't you sell your games?
1. I want everyone to enjoy them, including those who can't pay online.
2. I want the games to be available in the future without people having to pirate them.
3. Getting things published is a troublesome process.
4. I'm not obligated to patch or support the games (I do it anyway, but still).
5. I can do anything with my games and release the source code.
6. They are unbound by companies and contracts.
7. I have no deadlines.
8. It would not feel right asking for money for something that is and will always be free here on my homepage.
Some people say "you would have made a lot of money if you sold them". But barely anyone would've known the games existed had they not been free, and I made more on my day job than I ever would had I sold the games made in my spare time.
If I would sell a game that contains other people's work, such as the music for Hero Core or Hyper Princess Pitch, I would of course contact them and give them their fair cut. I feel really bad about not having had the means to pay for the music back when they made it, even if the games were freeware. :( But they do have the rights to sell the music on their own, it's their work after all.
15. Follow-up: But I would throw money at the games if I could.
If you want to support me, please consider subscribing to my Patreon. The reason I have a Patreon instead of a donation button is that it makes it a lot easier dealing with VAT when it comes to paying my taxes. I used to have a donation button between 2010-2021, but to be honest I spent the majority of those donations on charity, since I had a day job back then and didn't need the money. Still, huge thanks to a handful of people who donated over $100 each!
16. Follow-up: But Garden Gnome Carnage is being sold for multiple platforms, isn't it?
Yes, at Ludosity we ported and sold some games me and Joel made previously, like Garden Gnome Carnage and Really Shooter / Clean House. But this was done as a company, and the originals will always be free and available on my homepage, no matter what. As for Iji, see the next question.
17. Follow-up: What about selling Iji and/or porting it to a console?
No-one, not even myself, is ever allowed to make money on Iji (the original game). Ever. It will not be ported to any console nor get any sort of remake.
18. Follow-up: But Steam has a section for free games, doesn't it?
You can already share/torrent/whatever my games and their source code for free, or add them as "non-Steam games" to your Steam library if you want. If you'd like more people to know about my games, please feel free to spread the word - I doubt more people would know about them if they were on Steam considering the ocean of games they have on there nowadays. It also wouldn't be fair to put too many free games on there, or any other platform, to compete with the developers who do require sales to make a living. As for itch.io and GoG, they are much more likely places for me to upload my games to, and I've been meaning to take a closer look.
19. Do you still make Dance Dance Revolution Simfiles?
No, but maybe my interest will return someday. I played a lot of DDR until I felt that I hit my skill limit without bar (I prefer not to use one), and my focus turned to other things.
20. What is FK/Ultimortal? Will it ever be publicly visible again?
It's a long story - brace yourselves for some self-indulgence as I try to remember it all...
Sometime in 1996 I made a silly top-down shooter in Klik'n'Play called Fanatic Killer. It was inspired by Operation: Carnage and later got two sequels, titled Fanatic Killer (wait, a reboot of a series with only one entry?) and FK2 (the third game - makes sense).
FK0 / FK / FK2 screenshots
The games spawned an equally silly comic titled FK, starring the series' protagonist "Killer Roy". As in the games, Roy was one of the hostile intergalactic invaders revolting against his own in order to save the Earth. This in turn inspired the plans for a untitled fourth game, which was never made since it was supposed to be in 3D, and a new comic titled FK: Planetfall. This was around 1999. The series was still fairly self-aware and oddball in tone, and included videogame conventions even in the comics, such as visible hit points.
Around 2002, FK: Planetfall was rewritten into Ultimortal, a webcomic that ran from April 2003 until October 2004 with a schedule of two pages a week, and later three pages a week. The style was considerably darker than before, again featuring Killer Roy (under his real name, Zaia Kataiser) slowly going insane from killing off his own species in order to save the Earth. Seriously, don't let an impressionable teenager read a bunch of Spawn and re-imagine their own goofy video games. :p
Ultimortal - a bad day for everyone involved
Anyway, the comic grew to 135 pages, which was halfway through the planned script, until I suddenly burned out and was unable to draw anymore. For maybe half a year I felt physical disgust for putting pen to paper. Looking back at the comic, I also realized how terrible it was.
I started focusing more on programming, as even before the end of Ultimortal, the idea for Iji had started forming. In late 2004, work on that game got off the ground and carried on the FK spirit, but this time mixing some of the old Tyrian-style goofiness in with the seriousness. For the few who read Ultimortal, and to remind myself not to repeat my mistakes, I included a lot of references back to it such as Iji's surname and Dan's FK logo necklace.
Iji was also a sequel to the tongue-in-cheek Killman, one of the games in Scrap Pack 2. Very few people played the original version, which revealed that Killman is in fact a woman with long brown hair, as an homage to the original Metroid. The portrait was later taken out since it looked bad, but it was remade and re-included for Killman Gold, which is the version currently in Scrap Pack 2. Iji's visual design was based on Killman, and it's far from the only reference to that game in Iji.
Proto-Iji from the Killman beta - we're in deep trivia territory here
Come to think of it, the FK logo is also found as a secret powerup in Hero, and in my Quake level Citadel of Fire. My nickname on several sites also used to be "Ultimortal", eventhough I don't like the name anymore. So it's been a dear thing to me, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't finish that webcomic and waste any more time on it.
I doubt I'll ever want to show the whole of Ultimortal publicly again - it's quite embarrasing! But better make something you'll be ashamed of later than never making anything.
So without Operation: Carnage, Iji would not exist. It's not a fluke that Hyper Princess Pitch is a remake of the game that started the whole FK/Iji thing.
21. Follow-up: what does Ultimortal mean?
"My name is Ozymandias", basically. It was a nickname for two of the characters in the comic, the protagonist being one of them. No matter how skilled or respected they were, they still died in the end.
22. Are you a (blank)?
There are many things you could call me, but none I'd like to be judged by - I generally don't associate myself with larger groups even though I share a common like / belief / motivation / idea with one. I'm just more of a loner I guess. It's only if I feel strongly for something I'll be vocal about it. Although I admit to having trouble practicing what I preach here, if there's someone whose values you disagree with, talking to them face-to-face is a much better way to learn about people than constructing your own idea of their motivations before even asking.
Now, there are some bad people out there, but people are also complicated. Just be wary of someone promising an easy answer to a complex topic.
23. Why do you occasionally remove pictures from the pics section without notice?
I don't want them there anymore, usually because they're too old and embarassing, though I still have pics from around 2000 up that weren't completely bad.
24. Why do you take so long to respond to mails?
Although I removed my adress from this site since I received so many mails, I still get a few now and then. I try to respond to every mail within two weeks, but I can't guarantee it.
25. Is there any connection between you and the character Dan in Iji?
No, but since Chris Geehan calls me "Dan" it all got a bit confusing during the game's release. I didn't even make the connection during development, since here in Sweden I've never heard "Daniel" being shortened to "Dan".
26. Who is Yukabacera?
He's a character in Iji, an in-universe geek who wrote the Iji pre-release teaser pages. Another character in the game confirms that Yukabacera created Hero and Hero Core, which itself contains a reference to Iji.
27. Who is reallyjoel (and reallyjoel's dad)?
reallyjoel is the nickname of Joel, a friend and co-founder of Ludosity. He was the first to comment on my Maximum Charge Tor video, saying that his dad could beat it on an even higher difficulty setting. This soon turned into the well-hidden "reallyjoel's dad" difficulty in Iji, and later Hero Core, Hyper Princess Pitch, Muri and a few others.
28. What is No More Sweden?
A lighthearted Swedish summer game jam I usually participate in, though it hasn't been held for several years now. Me and reallyjoel made Bear Miner, Really Shooter and Baad Gringos together. I later made Bromancing Saga 2, Hype Snake, and Violet Metal at NMS as well. All of the above can be found in the Scrap Packs.
29. When did you start making games?
I started with QBasic as a kid, as my brother had an interest in programming, though I was never any good at it. I got Klik'n'Play around 1994 and made a whole bunch of nonsense in it. I later discovered Game Maker in 2003 or 2004, and though I know some C and AS3, I much prefer Game Maker due to how fast it is to develop in (and how lazy you can be with the code).
30. What game are you most proud of?
Though I'm glad I finished Iji back in 2008, and I do look back on it sometimes and think it turned out alright after all the updates, I think Hero Core is a better game. I'm also happy with how Hyper Princess Pitch turned out. I got in touch with Patrick Maidorn, the programmer of Operation: Carnage (the 1996 DOS game on which HPP was based) and he liked it a lot. Yay! :)
31. How do I get into the game making business?
I only have some general advice, based on my own experiences, but hopefully it'll do.
1. Even if you're attending a game making course or similar, make stuff in your spare time.
2. Always strive to improve and challenge yourself.
3. Ask for feedback and know how to take criticism. Not all criticism needs to be considered, but on the other hand people may give you the wrong reasons why they didn't like something - find out the right reasons through discussion.
4. Be passionate about your work when you're creating it, but separate yourself from it when you're taking criticism. People are critiquing your work, not you as a person (most of the time). Taking breaks and coming back to your stuff with a fresh mind really helps in finding faults in it yourself.
5. Make contacts everywhere! The only jobs I've ever gotten in game making were thanks to friends and teachers who saw my hobby work and remembered me when they were hiring for their companies later. I've never gotten a job by applying for it myself.
6. In my experience, pure programmers, artists and sound/music makers are always in demand. The concept of a "designer" is pretty fuzzy, and all I can tell you is that it's difficult finding work as one. Smaller companies very rarely go out looking for these; you have to be assertive.
7. Having skills in multiple areas is a plus. At Ludosity everyone knew how to program, for example. This also helps you understand what other peoples' job is like and how long it can take.
8. Even if a job is stated to require years of industry experience, apply anyway and show them your portfolio. Just be prepared to be turned down a lot.
9. If you don't know the tools, but you're a creative person, you will learn the tools. A good employer knows this.
10. If you don't see many people like yourself in the industry, don't think that you don't belong there.
However, a warning: some companies rely on young applicants to more readily accept working under bad conditions, such as overtime or unpaid. Publishers like GameMill set absurd, immovable deadlines while not understanding the developers' work. At an old job a very long time ago, I was bullied by my boss but was unable to quit for fear of losing my only income. So stand up for yourself.
32. What are your hobbies besides game making?
It's mostly cooking, baking and swimming nowadays.
33. How do you keep from feeling discouraged during a long project?
There's nothing you can do about such feelings. I just take a break when I'm feeling down, as I know motivation will return once I'm feeling up again, even if it takes months. I also rarely work on only one project, it's fun to switch things up.
When motivation was down on a project we did at work though, I just grinded through it, taking many tiny breaks during the day, either for having a snack or chatting with the others. Someone who tries to work constantly 8 hours a day without breaks won't be more productive, only more stressed and grumpy. I got severely depressed at the job mentioned in question 31 where I had to stay in my room all day and only come out for lunch.
34. Can I publish or otherwise sell your games?
No, but see the next question.
35. Follow-up: Can I remake or port the games to other platforms?
Of course, as long as no-one makes any money on it and the porting/remake project is open source like the original. I reserve the right to sell ports, remakes and sequels (see question 16). But again, in practice only Ludosity as a company has done this.
36. What's the story behind Strawberry Jam?
It began as a test in 2009, then in 2012 I said I would finish it within a year at a No More Sweden presentation. But it wasn't until 2014-2016 that I actually put any serious effort into it. The first chapter was finally done and released in August 2016, much to my own amazement and relief, after about a year of full-time work in total. It's very unlikely that I'll make the remaining chapters due to how exhausting it was to make the first one - many years were spent agonizing over when (or even how) it would finally be done, as I was feeling increasingly stressed about how long it had been since I last released a proper game on my homepage. This was of course silly since by then I had a full-time job at Ludosity, and it wasn't possible to spend all my time and energy making hobby games anymore.
In the end, I still feel like I wasted far too much time on Strawberry Jam.
37. Can I make mods of your games using the source code, and distribute the mods?
Yes, as long as you give credit to the original authors and don't make money on it. You don't need to ask for permission.
38. Can I make fangames?
Of course, and you can sell them too as long as they don't include material taken straight from the original game (as in literally the exact same graphics and music etc). You must note that it's a fangame, too. If you make a fangame of something Ludosity made, you'll have to ask Ludosity for permission before selling it.
39. Why not abandon Game Maker 5.3A/7.0 for a more modern environment like Unity, Godot, etc.?
Trust me, I've been asking myself this for over ten years now. Game Maker 5.3A was outdated even back when Iji was completed in 2008, and for years I've been dreading the day when Windows (specifically DirectX) drops support for the code Game Maker games use to run, and nobody will be able to play my games anymore - not without significant effort involving Linux+WINE or virtual machines. It's a real source of anxiety, but I still struggle to do anything about it.
It really comes down to laziness in learning a new language, and the comfort in using a tool that I work quickly and effortlessly with. Being an old program, Game Maker never changes. It's not like Unity that breaks what you've built with each update, which is painful when dealing with console ports since those require the most up-to-date Unity versions to be released. I think it happened at least four times that I had to redo all the particle effects in a game we were making at Ludosity because we were forced to switch Unity versions.
Sooner or later I'll really have to move on to a new game development tool, and when the day finally comes when old Game Maker games stop working... we'll see if I'll have the motivation to port them to a modern environment such as Game Maker Studio 2, or if anyone cares about them anymore besides me.
40. How dedicated are you to keeping this homepage up and running?
Extremely! Much like in the 90's (as you can tell by its design), it's essentially my "home" on the Internet. Besides some expected server downtime now and then, it's not going anywhere.
41. What happened to your old No More Sweden presentation videos?
I thought the videos were so weird and embarrasing that I set them as unlisted. You can still find them here and here. They're from 2011 and 2012 respectively, and when I watch them now I wonder what I was talking about at times...