Author: James Pennington

  • What is Aclevo in 2021? A Blog Update

    What is Aclevo in 2021? A Blog Update

    It’s been a long haul for all of these years, we have gone through many hardships and challenges, but things are bright in our future as we make our blog even better.

    Who I Am

    So hello, My name is James D Pennington, the current president of Aclevo Innovations, a Content Creation Community dedicated to bringing you the best content we can provide within our abilities. We will be introducing a new format of media soon, and I would like to call it OVOB, which stands for One Video One Blog. We agree that this new blog format will help us grow our community and raise traffic to our website.

    Recent Idea: The One Video, One Blog Idea

    We are also getting ready to apply advertisements to our website to help earn a bit of money to better our server infrastructure to be able to host more, and even serve more for our viewers and community team members. Aclevo will continue to provide content to everyone that is willing to consume, we will be pushing a 1 to 2 blog post a week schedule to make sure there is plenty of content to digest each and every month. As president of Aclevo I will make sure of this, and, if nobody has anything to write I will willingly create a post.

    Conclusion

    Finally, please have a look out for some new projects in the near future, I myself am working on something in the prototype phase and will be ready for an announcement later this year. I can not get too much into detail on it at this point in time.

    Thanks, James D Pennington

    Aclevo President

  • Final Fantasy XV – Game Review

    Final Fantasy XV – Game Review

    Well, since I’ve played quite a bit of this game, I have enough info to express my thoughts on it. Final Fantasy XV is one of the best Final Fantasy games in the series, and SquareEnix did a wonderful job on the graphics and game play. Here are my first impressions.

    Battle System: Fresh and New

    The whole battle system is a wonderful experience, you can block attack and dodge in real time which is what I love in most modern games. Final Fantasy XV executes it perfectly, especially with Noctis’ Warp Strike ability it makes the game feel fresh and new. It’s a fun experience for all.

    Graphics: Great on PC

    The graphics are very stunning, on the PlayStation 4 console they are slightly dummed down, but on PC I love how they look especially how their hair blows in the wind while driving. The soundtrack is also quite amazing, it fits the Final Fantasy theme perfectly and I can never get enough of the radio while driving. 

    A Sleep Schedule and Leveling Up

    Also I like the whole Day and Night system, where at night you have to watch out for “demons” which are a bit too much for you in the beginning of the game, and the level up system is completely different, you have to go to sleep in order to game experience and level up, which is a nice little feature. It promotes actually having a regular sleep schedule in the game and leveling up also makes it easier to fight certain enemies and bosses, Just like in other Final Fantasy games.

    Story Line and Voice Overs

    The story line is also very engaging, I love how almost everything is narrated in the game, the voice overs are also very fitting to the characters that they are placed over. Voice acting in games has always been one of the things I look like in reviews.

    Conclusion

    Overall, the game scores a near perfect 9.5/10 just because I love the story line and the game play. It is a recommended  pickup on steam or even PS4.

    Thanks,

    James Pennington

  • MapleStory 2 – Game Review

    MapleStory 2 – Game Review

    MapleStory 2, explore a new dimension of MapleStory in fabulous 3D Graphics and a similar gameplay style as the original despite it being an overhead game. The ring to it sounds too good to be real, and yes it is too good to be real.

    About the Game: An MMORPG

    MapleStory 2 is a MMORPG for the fans of the original MapleStory, although it’s not designed in that aspect it’s aimed at people that like MapleStory but would like more to the story and quite a bit better graphics.

    Honestly the 3D visuals in MapleStory 2 is quite stunning in my point of view, it really brings out the cartoon style that the original aimed for. The music as well is basically remixes of the original MapleStory soundtrack which is what really got me going when waiting for the game to even release.

    Difficulty, Gameplay, and Quests

    The difficulty curve in the game is quite nice, though it does indeed help to do some quests in a group, it would more than likely make some dungeons much much easier.

    In my honest opinion the game is insanely fun, but it’s sad that not many people even make videos about it anymore or even livestream it. What I personally want to see though is more people actually playing the game as it’s not as popular as MapleStory 1  in the states.

    Overall Conclusion

    Anyway, Overall MapleStory 2 is a very fun game, with in my own opinion the best 3D Graphics for the style that they are aiming for, and pretty much awesome gameplay-wise. I rate this game a full 10 out of 10… Just due to how much I like it.

  • GameMaker Studio 2 – Review

    From the little games to even bigger games GameMaker always simplifies the process of creating the vision you desire. The more you use it the more you love it as a game developer. It’s one of those engines that does the work of creating level editors for you.

    The simple drag and drop features are great for a novice developer while the scripting language GML is great for the more advanced developer. I personally enjoy GML as it’s very flexible on what you can do in your game even though it takes some getting used to.

    The Sprite and tile editors are very intuitive and making graphics in gms is simpler than a program like paint.net or Photoshop. Honestly gms is my go to for 2D game development and I would love to hear your opinions on it.

    Overall I give GMS a solid 4.5 out of 5. Mostly due to how simple it is, and the immense amount of features it holds, along with the flexibility of said features.

    Hope you share the same opinions I do.

  • LateralGM: An Open Source Alternative to GameMaker

    LateralGM: An Open Source Alternative to GameMaker

    Introduction

    Why should you consider LateralGM? Let’s face it, Game Maker (the one by YoYo Games) can cost a bit of money if you want to remove their branding when you publish a game. Some people are okay with having their branding on the game. Others may wish to remove it without having to spend a fortune doing so. However, why pay for the software when there’s an open source alternative already available that looks almost exactly like the original software. But why would you consider an open source alternative adequate?

    Why LateralGM? Is it Stable?

    With LateralGM, you get all of the features that Game Maker for free. On top of that, all of the code is public on GitHub. You can find all the code available here. Clone the repository there to install the software. It’s the best way to use the software. It basically works just like Game Maker (8) would, however there are some takeaways from using this over YoYo Game’s version. Some differences include:

    • Some bugs need to be worked out. For instance, the built-in editor for working with in-game sprites doesn’t function well. A workaround is to use an external program to work with the game’s objects.
    • The code will be compiled using C++ and Make. You can even read the output to make sure your game is not executing any bad code. This however will cost you some time to compile.
    • The user interface will look a little different to what you are expecting, as the front-end uses JDK (Java Development Kit) to display the User Interface. While you can customize it a little, they are apparently working on a new solution that uses QT, the same framework that powers KDE (a desktop for Linux).

    Conclusion

    Whether to decide between open source software and paying for a commercial product is always a debate. Consumers should this alternative first before going to pick up YoYo Game’s version of Game Maker. This version might just save a few hundred dollars depending on your use case. You get to see all the code you are compiling before you release your project to the open world, which may get more users’ trust.