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[Powergloved Andy]

I tried Construct earlier this week. MY EYES HATH BEEN OPENED.

It's completely shattered my Clickteam fanboyism

[Corpus]

I'd really like to try Construct, but the big decider for me is that there's a Mac version of GM already in development, whereas Construct, being that it uses DirectX, doesn't look likely ever to be Mac-friendly

[pgil]

Well, Game Maker uses DirectX too.. I'm sure it does make it more difficult to port, but not impossible.

[mr. podunkian]

don't, under any circumstances, ever buy multimedia fusion.

there are far too many unwritten rules and things you have to do to get things to work the way that they should work. there are lots of features that are built in (i.e. a built in platform movement) but none of these work as well as they should -- in fact, they even managed to fuck up something as simple as 8 directional movement. something that's basically been this way since klik'n'play was released more than a decade ago.

part of me knows that the reason that they're not renovating or fixing any of these built in features/bugs is to retain compatibility with existing projects, but i'd think after decades of revisions to the same software (under about 6 separate products) they'd at least figure something out instead of charging 200 dollars for the same software except with an added debugger.

then again i've been using MMF for my games, the underside and merry gear solid 2, but that's simply because i've been using them for suck a long time.

i think construct is generally a much better product -- in fact, a lot of its developers are MMF users who kind of got fed up with mmf being crap.

[astrospoon]

The thing with MMF2 is that it only really works well when you take control of everything, and essentially use the bare bones stuff to build up your own engine that works correctly.

Even then there are STILL some impossible annoying scenarios that can crop up. A most famous example is trying to attach objects to enemies. Like to give each enemy a separate gun object, and then be able to keep track of what enemy has what gun and have it not glitch.

And of course, the fact that each "level" has different code is ridiculous to the max. Who thought this was a good idea? They added "global events" and "global objects" to try and fix this, but of course, some things can't be coded that way because of other strange issues. So you pretty much have to roll your own level editor so that you can use just one "level" for all the gameplay. Which is fine, and works well. But it totally breaks the intended (crappy) work flow that MMF2 has built in.

The variable situation is also a bit of a nightmare, because while you can name an object's variables, you can't name a "group"'s variables. Groups essentially let objects inherit events. Which is great, except then you have to refer to them by the generic A, B, C, convention, even if all the objects in the group have A mapped to "HIT POINTS" or something.

That all said, I made my entire interactive book in it, and it works great, and made development really smooth and easy. But you must choose your projects wisely....

[AaronAardvark]

I would absolutely love to use Construct.
Where are the Linux game making tools?

[Don Andy]

In Wine :D

You are right though. There's a lack of this kinda stuff outside of Windows. I'd say someone port Construct, seeing that it's open source, but it seems to rely pretty heavily on DirectX.

[deadeye]

I'd really like to try Construct, but the big decider for me is that there's a Mac version of GM already in development, whereas Construct, being that it uses DirectX, doesn't look likely ever to be Mac-friendly

Actually the developers are working on a new renderer, and making plans to move away from the Windows-based UI, which will open up the doors for cross-platform games in the future.  That's the plan, anyway.  When that will come about is the question.

[Glyph]

Well, I've used GM 7 lite for a long time, and I've found my way around most of the commands you get in the registered version by doing some slightly trickier coding. Tho only things I DO miss out on is draw_sprite_ext() and stuff like that, so I have to have a sprite and then its mirrored counterpart(s). I also would like to get it because of particle systems other small, small things, but I don't really need it for the effects it creates or anything like that. They're all pretty crappy.
I don't know anything about MMF2 but I do think it has a fatal unavoidable game-ending bug, because I'm pretty sure IWTBG was made in it and it encountered that bug so often, the creator made a joke about it later on.
I haven't found any such bugs in GM, but sometimes an error occurs that makes no sense and then I'll delete the offending section and recode it from scratch and it'll work, and I'll get angry at the fact that it didn't go right the first time.
As for slowness in GM, I don't think it ever gets that slow. It may take forever to load at the beginning, but that's because (unless otherwise defined) it preloads ALL the sounds and textures, so there would be little to no lag from them in the actual game. One thing that bothers me with GM: It only supports generally large music file types, and I have no idea how to use a dll (I'm pathetic, I spent a whole day trying) but I've gotten around that by converting them to OGGs and back with Blaze Media Pro (It's awesome, 12MB to 500KB is a big leap, and it sounds the same!)

[Fifth]

Ugh... please don't base your opinion of MMF on IWBTG.
There are practices that will result in unreliable crashes, and there are practices that will minimize such bugs.  It's mainly about the extensions you use and how you use them.

...The way things are going, though, it seems like I'm gonna end up on the losing team here by sticking with Clickteam...

[Glyph]

Like I said, I don't know anything about MMF2...
(or extensions, for that matter)

[deadeye]

Ugh... please don't base your opinion of MMF on IWBTG.

I would go one further and say don't base your opinion of any tool/engine on any specific game made with it... whether the game is good/bad/friggin awesome/whatever.  Base your opinion of the tools on what the tools can do, not what people have done with the tools.

I had a serious hatred of GM before I came to this forum, and I now realize that was all a bunch of hogwash.  GM does what GM does... and if what GM does is right for your game then go for it.  Same with MMF, same with any tool.

[Glyph]

I didn't really want to shoot down anything at all, but I see I came off that way. I guess it was a bit rude of me to say that since one game has a bug, all games must on a game compiler. I'm not trying to say GM is superior, I'll admit it has its shortcomings, so don't think I was.
Also, I certainly don't rate a compiler on its games! That would be stupid. I'm going to check out MMF2 later. I am sure it is a thoroughly competent game compiler, but I truthfully hadn't had a chance to look at it yet. Sorry if I acted a fool, but I am what I am

[pakoito]

I feel under the obligation to :bump: this thread to get an updated view on the issue:

Has Construct matured enough to make anyone rule out GM8.1?

[Hima]

I'd love to go with Construct but now that I'm on OSX most of the time now I don't think I'll be able to try it anytime soon. Someone should port it to make it support OSX and Linux

I haven't tried MMF2 myself but from what I've heard it lack scripting/coding and I don't really like drag'n drop for everything in my game, so that leaves me GM, regardless of how much I don't like Yoyogame's take on it :/

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

mmf2 doesn't lack coding, it just allows you to do more without coding than gm does. with gm, you pretty much *have* to use coding if you want to make a good or even decent game. with mmf2 you don't have to, but you can

[Amirai]

Construct Classic (the new name for the open source version, which is now developed by the community) has vastly improved in the past 2 years, it's much more stable than it was.

Also there's the in-progress rewritten from scratch construct 2, which while it's not ready for prime time yet is getting close to being ready to make simple HTML5 games.

[Hima]

mmf2 doesn't lack coding, it just allows you to do more without coding than gm does. with gm, you pretty much *have* to use coding if you want to make a good or even decent game. with mmf2 you don't have to, but you can

What language does MMF2 has or does it have its own language like GM? I know it's visual programming, but can we access these commands through some kind of text file or typing instead of having to click?

Personally, I don't see GM having to use coding as a bad point because I like coding more. GM code editor sucks so bad though :/

[pakoito]

Construct Classic (the new name for the open source version, which is now developed by the community) has vastly improved in the past 2 years, it's much more stable than it was.

Also there's the in-progress rewritten from scratch construct 2, which while it's not ready for prime time yet is getting close to being ready to make simple HTML5 games.

Hmmm, that's why I overlooked it the last time, now I remember it.

Anyway, to which point has Construct Classic evolved? do you think it is better than GM8.1 today?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

What language does MMF2 has or does it have its own language like GM? I know it's visual programming, but can we access these commands through some kind of text file or typing instead of having to click?

Personally, I don't see GM having to use coding as a bad point because I like coding more. GM code editor sucks so bad though :/

i haven't used it, but i'm friends with many who have, and my impression is that it uses a context-sensitive system which looks like a series of checkboxes, and each 'box' is filled in with a function or value or expression. you can see a video of how it works here: someone codes a chatroom using mmf2 in 10 minutes in this video:





make sure you keep annotations on while watching it