The Games Factory

The Games Factory was an entry in the 'Klik' series of tools in 1996, after the release of Klik & Play. Actually, Click 'n' Create was the original sequel to Klik & Play, and The Games Factory was mainly a rebranding of Click 'n' Create. It builds upon the work of Klik & Play, boasting many new features, while retaining backward compatibility (mostly).

Improvements Over Klik & Play

  • Native scrolling: simply make a level larger in size than the game window, and with a single action you can scroll to different parts of the level.
  • Preliminary full-screen support (the requirements for this are rather picky)
  • A native 32-bit version, including improvements to graphics (can use 16-million colors regardless of drivers), multi-sample playback, and the ability to include more events in a level
  • Advanced object properties, such as ink effects (including semi-transparency), options to enable/disable precise collision and automatic inactivation/destruction of objects leaving the window/playfield, and the ability to assign objects to one or more "groups" to make coding easier
  • The ability to add comments in the Event Editor
  • The ability to add groups in the Event Editor, which can organize events and enable/disable large chunks of events during runtime
  • Objects for Windows common controls such as push buttons, radio button lists, and text edit boxes, as well as playback of AVI, Quicktime, and CD audio, among other things
  • Support for extensions, which allowed for the addition of newer functionality such as MP3/module music playback, program flow, system integration, data storage, online multiplayer, and even some very basic 3D
  • A multitude of other miscellaneous new features and bugfixes

Limitations

  • While The Games Factory finally allows for native scrolling, this new feature is hindered by the fact that there is still an object limit of about 250 objects at any given time. Depending on the game being made, this sometimes meant that object placement would have to be sparse to avoid hitting the limit.
  • There is an issue with the the sound code where playing too many sounds at once and too often will eventually cause a malfunction where the game stops functioning normally, only advancing frames upon mouse and keyboard input, and causing sounds to be stuck playing in a loop. This will happen much more quickly on multi-core systems, so players will need to change the process affinity to just one core when running games made in The Games Factory. This issue was not fully resolved until Multimedia Fusion 2, which featured a complete overhaul of the sound system.

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