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For a while, I've really hated Game Maker due to its clunkiness and terribleness. I want to move up, but my brain is too stupid to learn anything too much more complicated. So basically, I want something cleaner than GM [bonus points for a cozy interface], but still not too much more difficult than GML. Also, MMF and Construct don't count since they're the worst things ever. Anywho, thanks in advance.

I was gonna say Construct but then... y'know, your last sentence there. I dunno, with those three out theres nothing else that I know of. Stencyl (http://www.stencyl.com/) maybe, but thats been around forever and is just now going into closed beta. (What's wrong with Construct?)

I'm half-heartedly developing a GM replacement, if that counts for anything.

Other than that, I recommend LÖVE (http://love2d.org/). It has no official interface to speak of, but it is still pretty damn easy to make stuff with it. Plus it's open source and supports the three major desktop platforms!

Holy shit, yes. I fucking love you, Skofo. I'm trying out Love right now, and it's motherfucking AWESOME.

Try Flash.

It's been pretty easy and the platform can be played anywhere.

(With that said, we're using GM and love it!)

Construct may be unfinished, but I love it.

I'm specifically looking for an engine that has a graphical interface, but one that supports lots of tweaking... I don't want to learn 3 programming languages just to make some boxes fall over, but I also don't want a GUI-run engine that slows to a crawl with more than 20 sprites on screen (which I have seen happen with GM.)

I tried Game Maker some time ago and i quickly realized that i was going to use GML 98% of the time, so i thought i'd learn a "real" coding language. I went with Python as i've been told it was quite easy to learn. I bought a book two weeks ago, then recently i started playing with Pygame and this is pretty well done and easy to use. So you might give it a try, i'm sure the transition will be quite smooth. Plus, you might find this tutorial (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7283.0) helpful.

I think i'll go for LÖVE too! GM doesn't satisfacted me. I did try to learn C but gosh it's hard!

Flash

How about Flixel? I personally don't have any experience with it but I keep hearing it's good.

Flixel looks good, but I'm not terribly interested in Flash.

Construct I'm definitely interested in... I prefer a mix of GUI and coding and GM has some limitations that make me wary. Also, if I do delve into the coding, it's pretty much just Python.

Hm. Flixel, or Flashpunk?....
I can't decide.

Flash + Flixel.
Flash is the best way of distributing games. No executable "hazards", playable in most systems without effort, it's a lot of fun :)
Flixel makes it really easy for you if you don't know anything about Flex (flash objects, functionality and stuff)

Of course you can't have (fast enough) 3D, but for 2D is tits.

Who needs 3D? I'll look into flixel (again).

Try an assembly language, that should give you a good start!

Alternatively, take a look at flixel, I found it eaiser than a lot of things (but harder than some) and it will give you a good step into "proper" programming. It's perfect if you want a challenge, but if you want to go onto making games quickly in somthing after making games quickly in gm then it might not be best.

We've looked at Python at have found it difficult to understand :(

I really think Game Maker isn't that bad of a platform.  It's pretty stable and resources are ridiculously easy to manage...

Yes, but they're managed VERY poorly. Have you seen how much RAM GM games take up? It's ridiculous. Not to mention you can develop some nasty syntax habits since you don't need to use semicolons.

Constantly?

LÖVE hasn't seen an update since over a year ago.

I went directly from a BASIC variant quite near to GML (I think - never actually used GML) to C++, then maybe a bit too quickly to OpenGL (where's the fun without graphics? :crazy:) Took some time of course to get all the stuff of course, but once I did I've never actually regretted.

Just to give a different view to you than most others. ( like MrHackenbacker, but maybe a bit more seriously ;D)

Glad someone appreciates it, we had to write in assembly this week in my computing class, and I think everybody should learn it. Im a sadistic kinda guy!

They update the 0.6.0 build at least every few weeks.

I'd actually like to learn some simple assmebly one day, nothing fancy but just for the heck of it. Hello world, moving box -stage stuff.

ohh, assembly's not quite like that, any hello work program would be setting memory location 3 to a value of 1, it's not really a programming language like you know. Basically, assembly is straight processor commands, one step up from machine code, you can't do much else without a lot of lines of code.

I feel like moving away from GM also.

Do you think that Visual Basic is a good program to use?

Nah, Visual Basic sucks. I would try this instead: http://t3dgm.thegamecreators.com/ (http://t3dgm.thegamecreators.com/)

It's like Game Maker, but in 3D!!!!111  :durr:

 :biglaff:

Don't get me started on that.

Oh god. No you didn't. I still have nightmares of that horrible horrible program. CREATE A GAME BY CLICKING ONE BUTTON!! ITS SO EASY! and the result is something that barely qualifies as a screen saver :crazy:

I know assembly is very, very low-level (basically easier names for machine code instructions and symbols to avoid using memory spaces directly) and it's tedious, but a Hello World shouldn't be too hard; at least MASM and Z80-assembly have some sort of printing functionality (if you don't consider it cheating to use a readymade procedure ; D)

CAsinclair, why that face, I'd be delighted to "Make Horror games with 3rd person controls and scare myself silly!"

Ninteen45, Visual Basic isn't that much game oriented.. And I haven't heard too many good things about it, either. (if some VB-lover wants to speak out, now is your chance!) I'd go with something like python instead, at least if you have used GML and not just the point and click interface. It's that crucial bit more advanced.

Visual basic is good for getting started programming, the a level course I'm on uses it, even though I'd prefer c++. Unfortunatly visual basic doesn't do graphics very well, but I'm working on somthing to change that...
If you want to learn more programming and more graphically consider  processing (http://www.processing.org) , it has very simple drawind stuff and libraries or thing like box2d.

If you want another game making thing, take a look at unitiy 3d, it's free now so take a look.

@msqrt
X86 assembly doesn't have those things as far as I'm aware, sorry.

Vb isint that bad as a learning tool or for developing tools, like excel or mapping tools, but it's a bit too slow for real game development.

Okay, just have to clear this now that I checked it out; yes, MASM is something fancy known as 'high-level assembler' for windows and DOS, so it is a bit cheaty. (as a good side it lets you see some output with less code; great for intros/effects) Although the x86-assembly article @ wikipedia includes a MASM-hello world :)

My bad then, the assembler I was using only had basic moving, arithmetic and logic commands.

Having had a chance to play with Construct for a few days, I have to say it is in no way unfinished. It's up to v0.99 and it's very smooth to learn... haven't gotten into the deep coding yet but the GUI designing is straightforward and has lots of options.

Yeah, I dived into it yesterday and I'm finding it pretty intuitive. For the uninitiated, here's a very helpful Platformer tutorial by Deadeye.

http://www.scirra.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2154&sid=95289f6bda7bbbc9f438a965fb346856

I would say blitzmax.

it's pretty easy to get some stuff on the screen.
it's blazingly fast.
it's cross platform.
it's originated in the days of the amiga.

the only thing against it, is its lack of marketing, and thus recognition.
But that wouldn't hurt your programs/games i suspect.

I can only chime in to say that Flash is indeed a very good tool to get into "real" programming while still not having to deal with that much shit, especially when you use something like flixel of Flashpunk.

If coding is not desired however, Construct is your best and also pretty much only choice (unless you dish out the money for MMF2, but if konjak says he likes Construct then you get Construct).

But yeah, if you're moving away from Game Maker you probably had your fair share of GML already, so just go with Flash. It's what the cool and hip guys do.

Don't use Flash. Adobe's Actionscript implementation is likely to be too slow for your purposes. Apart from that, the language is buggy, and it comes with a blatantly incomplete standard library (no basic vector math, for instance). For the last reason you do have to deal with "much shit".

Don't use Construct, at least not yet; last I saw it was buggy as hell. I realize that you excluded it in your original post but it was mentioned nuff times.

If you're into self-flagellation and such you could go for C++. It enjoys the greatest support base, and library development, of any language ever madeboth unqualified statements. Yet. The library thing is especially cool because you can outsource so much of your development at zero cost. The problem is the language itself.
EDIT- Just in case you're enough of a dumbass to go with this option, Truevision 3D (http://www.truevision3d.com/) is the most intuitive 3D engine I know of. I believe Polytron are using it for Fez.

The best language I've seen (and never used) is Python. If someone has a good Python game engine to recommend, heed their word.

Construct can use Python as an undercurrent, or so I hear.
Yes, it is a bit buggy, but it's mainly because there are a lot of changes with each new iteration, but they're about to hit 1.0.

Also, it's free.

Construct is a pretty interesting project and a lot of people seem to be liking it, but I'm surprised that nobody has yet mentioned that it has a huge downside: it is DirectX-only. This is unsuitable for anyone looking to make a popular indie game today; OS X users make up a very large if not the major portion of indie gamers.

Ah, true. Well, hopefully there will be a workaround in future for simple Python apps made in Construct.

Totally slipped my mind, as I haven't used a mac since the classic black & white The Manhole was king of adventure games.

In all honestly, I want to use GM. But my experience so far has been that using it in elaborate ways is akin to spinning plates, except one plate is carefully balanced with a stack of RAM, which will cause all manner of abnormalities if it tips over.

It is open source though, so anybody is free to take Construct and make it DirectX independent. I'm also pretty sure the creators mentioned they'd eventually move away from it, but don't take my word for that. I think Construct is one, maybe two, years old so that's pretty good so far.

But yeah, Windows only has neither stopped the Game Maker nor the MMF2 guys to make pretty popular games so far.

Pssh, GM is capable of plenty as long as you stay away from drag+drop and externally load everything. ;)

And pretend the new logo doesn't exist.

If you're going to use these tutorials, keep in mind that I haven't updated them in quite a while.  Yes, you can get a general idea of the basics, but a lot of the info is outdated or obsolete.  In fact, if you try to run those tuts in the newest version of Construct, the animation is broken, and I think some of the other controls like climbing ladders and such is too.

I've been meaning to update them for a while, but I've completely re-written them four times now already (in order to keep up with Construct builds) and I still haven't even finished the damn series.  I've been putting it off because I don't want to have to keep re-writing them from scratch each time a new build breaks something.

Eh, I guess I should make an attempt though.  People keep linking to it, it'd be a shame if I was driving away potential Construct users because they open the tut in the latest build and say "this broke ass shit sucks donkey ballz."

Well, you do make clear that it's for novice users, not beginners, and Ghost Shooter works like gravy for getting a handle on it, so it's fine. Wait 'til stable 1.0 before fixing it again, at least, and then just add a caveat to the post.

The announcement that 2.0 will have no legacy support irks me a bit.
I mean, pulling an RPGMaker and saying 'we're done! feel free to use this, but it'll be obsolete soon anyway' is a bit annoying, but I suppose as long as they continue to support 1.0 I won't be too concerned.

I understand that Visual Basic is evil to game making, but I'm sure it's good enough for a simple text based game. besides, I'm sadomachoistic with code!

It is good enough for a simple game, yes.

The distinction between VB and Python, or other languages, is more like "what can I express with this, and is it easier here than it is there" than an absolute of "only this tool can do what I want." VB exposes fewer concepts than Python, which makes it easier to start with, but harder to use in the long-term. Learn the concepts that appear in other languages, and you're 80% of the way towards knowing the languages themselves - plus you gain a new perspective to apply to VB code, simultaneously.

I think this is one of my favorite topics. So much awesome info! I'm goina try LOVE mainly for it's cross-platform capabilities... what file does the finished game get exported into?

As far as GM goes, I don't mind it too much. If you do it right, it can go pretty far... it's just, Windows only is a bummer.

VB can be good for learning basic concepts like:
-variables
-functions
-basic maths
-boolean stuff (if, else, switch)
-loops
-classes

However, its got a lot of auto complete stuff with it, so its not very good practice for writing code in a strictly typed language (like c++)
Its also a basic deriviative, so probably unlike anything you'd use for writing a game, except for the structure. I would reccommend starting learning to program with processing (www.processing.org) as it has a c like syntax, requires semicolons at the end of lines and is very easy to get visible results with quickly.

Lately I am trying my hand at Ruby. It was a pain to set up, but I am slowly adopting it. It offers so much freedom once you get used to it! So many possibilities.

First I have to learn the basics, of course... Well, in any case, Ruby has some libraries that aid with game development such as RubyGame and gosu.

I bought that when I was a kid. Some electronics retailer had it in the bargain bin. Even though I quickly realized it was crap, I had lots of fun making tons of little bullshit "games" in 30 seconds, having a car shoot little cartoon Indians and shit like that. I think I even managed to get one published on a (now defunct) German freeware games portal. It's funny to think how low the standards for free games were as recently as 2002. Ah, fun times.

On a related note, I think someone should organize an inofficial 3d Gamemaker compo round here.  :D

Should I learn Unity today, or learn WebGL tomorrow....

(http://i50.tinypic.com/5z0cyf.png)

It's a goddamn conspiracy.  Retarded smiley logos are taking over the indie gaming world.

What sinister plot is hiding behind that smile?

I think PacMan is the source of all this dang non-sense...

Go with Flash :-) Super easy to learn and it's a skill that can be applied to many other areas, web development (RIA), desktop development, mobile development (Flash CS5 will allow you to make IPhone games), more game companies actually starting to use Flash for prototyping, making spin off games for their bigger games.  Dragon Age Journeys, Mirror's Edge 2D are great examples of that.  EA just bought out Play Fish a facebook gaming company that makes flash games...  Id say it's a pretty good investment considering all you get from the Flash platform.  It has an amazing community rich with really smart people and everyone is always willing to help you out with things :-)

I stopped right there.

He's right though, Flash is awesome and easy to learn.

but html5 is going to make flash obsolete

well, we're gonna move on to html5 when it comes out. learning a lot of different stuff isn't necessary a bad thing :P

anyway, i shifted to flash from gm (still use it for prototyping and my last attempt of creating at least decent game), but i guess i'll try löve to.

while you guys decide... i make gam

Why HTML5? Just use Canvas. http://www.paulbrunt.co.uk/bert/

The downside to making raw browser games is that Chrome is the only browser capable of running them at decent speeds.


Not at least when I tried it with the Flex SDK.

Flashpunk is coming guys, rest assured.
Also, flixel.

WebGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL). No AL, tho

Flash or C# with the xna framework both are simple and powerful. I recently stepped up from gm myself and i love these.

Flash is so expensive to develop on(buy the tools), am I missing something here?
Especially compared to Game Maker.

The developer kit for Flash is free. The art tools are not, but depending on the art style you're going for, that may not be a problem.

EDIT: Technically you don't even need to install anything to develop Flash games. (http://wonderfl.net/)

Oh, okay. :biglaff:

I should go download that dev kit.
The website looks pretty nice, too. :)
I wonder if it was built with flash?  :durr:

I make Flash games in FlashDevelop, which is free. You lose the handiness of Flash's stage editor and awesome vector drawing tools and stuff, but since my games are pixel art, and I design my rooms with Pro Motion's tilemapper anyways, it's no problem.

Christ... another gear logo.

Construct was first*, dammit!  :handshakeL::outraged:




*(Actually, probably not, but still... why does every other game making engine out there need gears in their logos?)

Gears ARE pretty cool... :whome:

Also, Pushbutton seems nice to use. I have it sitting around and I dig through their code every once in awhile for inspiration and learn how they accomplish a few things; I really wish their networking component was free too though :(

I'm starting to get really interesting in Flash for my prime game development method.

The idea that basically anything(except iPhones  :wtf:) can run my game is definitely attracting me.

your choices aren't that great;

flash is a "real" programming language but it's interpreted and just as slow as GM and in some regards slower, and much of the gamer player base finds it hard to take shareware flash games seriously ("they expect me to buy something that runs in a browser?")

mmf2 and construct have many of the same drawbacks gm does (windows-only, interpreted), and at least gm is getting a mac version

unity is supposedly hard to adapt to 2d purposes, since that isn't its primary function

blitz and torque i don't know much about, but i've heard they are hard to use and poorly documented, but good once you learn them.

my policy has always been (and i know people disagree with this policy) to *judge an engine by the number of good games it has produced*. if you're judging engines by that, the clear winners are gm, c++, flash, and mmf2. there are also a few good games made in unity. i know of almost no good games made in construct, love, rpgmaker xp, torque, blitz, python, etc (although there are at least one or two good games for each, but nothing like the dozens of good games for the previously mentioned engines).

this judgement is a form of pragmatism: judge the use of something but its actual use in the past for other games, not its theoretical use. it doesn't matter what an engine can do if it frustrates you enough that you find it painful to work in.

practically, my advice is this:
- if you want to make 2d downloadables (freeware or shareware), then gm or mmf2, or if you can handle it c++
- if you want to make online / browser games, flash or unity
- if you want to make 3d, unity or c++

also, another bit of pragmatism


also,


it is not easy to learn for everybody. i found it extremely difficult to learn, even after dedicated a few months to learning it i couldn't figure out a thing about it.

Got to keep in mind that flash, GM and mmf are old and established engines, while Construct is still fresh and in development stage. People are holding back from major projects until the final stable version is released.