ICT4Life and GameMaker Licensing

[mrforgetful]

Just thought I should point this out, and noone seems to have noticed in our LEA...

We use ICT4Life for Year 7 and soon to be Year 8 too.

Some of ICT4Life requires a program called GameMaker.

The ICT4Life System Requirements and GameMaker website state this is free. Even delving into the EULA provides no clue otherwise.

But, if you look on the Help section of the GameMaker website (yoyogames) the top entry states to email them if you use GameMaker on a school network.

After doing so, I have been informed it will cost £300.00 for 60 concurrent licenses.

I advise you look into it as God knows how many schools will have missed this, seen as the publishers of ICT4Life seem to have missed it too.

[lickydog]

The Paid for version is only if you want to use the Pro release in school (and this is the discount price).

You are still free to use the LITE version for no cost as per the terms of the Lite licence (irrespective of whether you are a personal or school user). The only caveat is that there is a prompt on launching to suggest that you upgrade. I don't think this can be suppressed.

They have got an MSI available for the Lite version for rolling out across a domain, but at the moment you have to request this - they are going to add this as a download to an educational section of the site at some point.

"Please send me the GameMaker Lite 7 MSI installer"...

Or contact Longman who publish the ICT4Life software directly - we should be able to smooth things through

[burgemaster]

Did you have any success getting this MSI ?
we are in the same boat...

[actech]

Apparently there are some issues using GameMaker 7 on a domain network too. I use v6 and was told by a colleague that just installed v7 that he had some troubles but there are threads on the GameMaker Forums that tell you how to resolve the problem. Not sure if it will apply to you but worth the heads up.

[lickydog]

Originally Posted by actech

I use v6

If you have V6 already installed, then you might try some replacement files:
ftp://ftp.pearsoned-ema.com/Public/Y...4L_1_0_GM6.zip

It's not an 'official' support patch but effectively it gives you a server-deployable installer with .gmk files replaced with .gm6 - it was created specifically for a CC3 deployment... so make sure you are comfortable with what it is doing.

The GM7 msi can be found here:
ftp://ftp.pearsoned-ema.com/Public/YoYo/GameMaker7.msi

[mortstar]

Any chance you could have a look into this:-

1 - Use a database rather than a plethora of xml files with plain-text passwords in them, also this will mean teacher accounts can be used across all ActiveBooks rather than having to set them up individually and change them individually for every single copy we have.

2 - Use UNC paths - what is the point in mapping a drive if I'm just going to have to hide it again? Also - forcing me to do the work to hide a mapped drive rather than follow conventions is annoying. This is why we use UNCs.

3 - Why does tabbing between fields sometimes work and others not? This is a normal software convention, I've never seen anything that has managed to break this functionality before now.

That is it for now...thanks.

[lickydog]

Originally Posted by mortstar

Use a database rather than a plethora of xml files

I have passed this back to the development team, but to the best of my knowledge this was done to support the broadest possible range of deployment options/technologies without relying on third-party tools and systems.

Originally Posted by mortstar

Use UNC paths - what is the point in mapping a drive if I'm just going to have to hide it again? Also - forcing me to do the work to hide a mapped drive rather than follow conventions is annoying. This is why we use UNCs.

This is to address an introduced issue with Flash-based content. For security reasons, Microsoft and Adobe removed support for UNC paths with locally served Flash content. Prior to this change, our preferred option was indeed to specify UNC.

Originally Posted by mortstar

Why does tabbing between fields sometimes work and others not?

The flash-based content cannot self-set focus - the interface has an omission (click here to continue) for example - again, this is a security 'feature' introduced by Adobe and Microsoft. Once focus has been set during a session it tends to be persistent. Again, I have passed this on to the development teams.

I know this doesn't address the issues for you, but it may go some way to understanding the why...

[Gibbo]

Originally Posted by mortstar

Any chance you could have a look into this:-

1 - Use a database rather than a plethora of xml files with plain-text passwords in them, also this will mean teacher accounts can be used across all ActiveBooks rather than having to set them up individually and change them individually for every single copy we have.

2 - Use UNC paths - what is the point in mapping a drive if I'm just going to have to hide it again? Also - forcing me to do the work to hide a mapped drive rather than follow conventions is annoying. This is why we use UNCs.

3 - Why does tabbing between fields sometimes work and others not? This is a normal software convention, I've never seen anything that has managed to break this functionality before now.

That is it for now...thanks.

I've noticed exactly the same things, and about half a dozen other flaws, errors, bugs, niggles, whatever you want to call them.

Without a doubt in all my years of working in education this is the worst program I've come across, coupled with the worst support.

[mortstar]

The responses given by 'lickydog' are quite intriguing -

Originally Posted by lickydog

I have passed this back to the development team, but to the best of my knowledge this was done to support the broadest possible range of deployment options/technologies without relying on third-party tools and systems.

This software can only be installed on a Microsoft system and...

Originally Posted by lickydog

This is to address an introduced issue with Flash-based content. For security reasons, Microsoft and Adobe removed support for UNC paths with locally served Flash content. Prior to this change, our preferred option was indeed to specify UNC.

Originally Posted by lickydog

The flash-based content cannot self-set focus - the interface has an omission (click here to continue) for example - again, this is a security 'feature' introduced by Adobe and Microsoft.

...relies quite heavily on Adobe Flash - although this seems to provide a clunky user interface that doesn't work intuitively. Using Microsoft and Adobe Flash surely would be "relying on third-party tools and systems".

Another 'feature-request' - why have pupils to remember yet another username and password - how about some LDAP compatibility.

[Gibbo]

I mentioned to their support that I found it interesting that I was running other flash based applications from my server, and using UNC paths without any issue.

For some reason I never got a reply to that!

When I first contacted them about a fault when I started WRAPPER.EXE (it was looking for a CD) the reply I got was:

"The error message regarding disc availability is a known Macromedia
Director issue that appears to affect some configurations of machine.
To date we have found no work around other than to click 'continue'.
The software has not been configured to expect a disc."

I'm getting a distinct feeling of "it's everyone else's fault but ours".

[Gibbo]

I'm now looking at ActiveTeach 2. It seems to have a completely different layout to ActiveTeach 1. Hardly surprising as it's been created by a different team of developers.

One thing which has bugged me is the disabling of the QUICK START feature. It clearly states you can use that to access the program without the assessment features.

So, logic would dictate that if you're using this, you won't have any need for the mapped drives or saving of data.

So, you login as administrator to enable the "Quick Start" setting, go to the Administration page and put a tick in the "Enable Quick Launch" (hang on a minute, you called it "Quick Start" on the main screen????)

However, try and save these settings and it won't let you until you put in a mapped drive to save the data.

Try and exit and it asks if you want to save changes. click YES and it returns to the main menu, but doesn't save the changes, nor does it warn you it hasn't.

In ActiveTeach 1 you can edit the XML document to enable quick start, but that file doesn't exist in ActiveTeach 2.