next »

[s0]

GM has been on a steady downward slope ever since yoyo took over anyway

literally 90% of what makes GM good and worth using is the work of mark overmars

[Moth]

yeah, mark laid out all the important functionality that people use to this day, but I think yoyo's done a decent job. if they never came along and made gm games actually portable, gm would be [even more of] a fossil imo. before YYG the only way to play GM games on linux was with an emulator. using gm to develop for html5, droid, iOS and ps3/4/vita would have sounded like a totally unrealistic pipe dream back then. I mean some of those things didn't exist back when gm was PC exclusive, of course, but that was the big reason not to use GM back in the day, the fact that it and games made with it were totally windows exclusive.

the only reason why I never moved onto another program is just because gm:studio hit the scene with all its fancy export capabilities right when I was ready to start getting serious and I had been using GM for more than a decade and could make really pro stuff with it

edit: but yeah not like this is changing since no one at yyg is getting fired or anything (I wonder what things will be like without sandy though).

[Melon Mason]

GM has been on a steady downward slope ever since yoyo took over anyway

literally 90% of what makes GM good and worth using is the work of mark overmars

You say this based on what?

The greatest GameMaker-powered games were developed using 8.1 and Studio, both developed by YoYo. This is because YoYo took the product and gave it actual power and potential. GameMaker Studio is the most powerful and versatile edition of GameMaker ever, and much of what Overmars worked on is long outdated and rebuilt.

[s0]

GM has been on a steady downward slope ever since yoyo took over anyway

literally 90% of what makes GM good and worth using is the work of mark overmars

You say this based on what?

let's see...

an interface stuck in the 90s

a level editor that is basically a joke

terrible built-in audio support

drag & drop is laughable and ought to be cut imo. good luck making anything more complex than a pong clone without GML

no mac support for GMS IDE

bullshit overpriced "modules" for compiling to different platforms in GMS

seriously the entire history of yoyo and GM can be summed up as "too little too late"

[Melon Mason]

let's see...

an interface stuck in the 90s

a level editor that is basically a joke

terrible built-in audio support

drag & drop is laughable and ought to be cut imo. good luck making anything more complex than a pong clone without GML

no mac support for GMS IDE

bullshit overpriced "modules" for compiling to different platforms in GMS

seriously the entire history of yoyo and GM can be summed up as "too little too late"

I agree with a lot of this, but this was the work of Overmars. YoYo is working towards a better level editor and IDE if I understand correctly. Studio has a new audio system that in my opinion is very flexible, and the module pricing is pretty fair compared to other engines and design programs.

YoYo has introduced better debugging, official networking and web functions, shaders, texture page management, audio management, new audio system... so many things.

[Moth]

I agree, the module pricing is really harsh. I definitely wouldn't point any beginners towards GM for that fact alone. the only reason why I shelled out for them, personally, is my years of familiarity with the program. anyone getting into game making would be much better pursuing unity, they don't horribly gouge for the different platform exports and it's so much more 3d friendly than GM will ever be.

[Melon Mason]

it's so much more 3d friendly than GM will ever be.

And so it should be. GameMaker is designed for 2D game building.

[MeshGearFox]

wait that was porn, whoops.

[Sik]

drag & drop is laughable and ought to be cut imo. good luck making anything more complex than a pong clone without GML

Isn't that like the whole selling point of Game Maker? The whole point of that interface is to attract those people who are too afraid to program anything at all in the first place. Eventually users get pushed to use GML later on, but still.

[Manuel Magalhães]

For me, all bets are off.

[s0]

yo im not saying the older versions of GM are actually better than the newer versions, that'd be stupid. i just think yoyo has done a subpar job modernizing the software. they're lucky that the groundwork mark overmars did is so good that GM remains usable despite being kind of a fossil, as moth put it.

they have a history of neglecting to update outdated core functionality. we had to wait until gm8.1(!) to get a basic zoom function for the room editor for instance. and we had to wait until GM studio to get a better debugger and more helpful error messages. for instance, up to and including 8.1, data structure errors didn't even tell you which data structure caused the error. ive already mentioned the interface.

[s0]

Isn't that like the whole selling point of Game Maker? The whole point of that interface is to attract those people who are too afraid to program anything at all in the first place. Eventually users get pushed to use GML later on, but still.

i know but that's exactly why i think it's bullshit. people get lured into buying GM thinking theyll be able to make games "without programming" only to realize how incredibly limited, annoying to use and all around shitty drag & drop is.

[Blademasterbobo]

basically every game making engine markets that bs

[J-Snake]

That's unfortunate.

I believe everyone has to be taught early on that everything is programming, even when you don't type it.

[Melon Mason]

i know but that's exactly why i think it's bullshit. people get lured into buying GM thinking theyll be able to make games "without programming" only to realize how incredibly limited, annoying to use and all around shitty drag & drop is.

I really don't understand what your point is. You're bagging the old version of GameMaker yet saying it is superior to the new GameMaker, even though YoYo's new edition has, or is striving to include, everything you think the old one lacks.

I don't think GameMaker has been marketed for it's drag and drop for a long time. I went and double checked on the YoYo site and I can't see it mentioned. If it is on the website, it's not heralded as the reason to use GameMaker.

With respect, I think quite a few of the people in this topic have a very outdated, misinformed opinions of GameMaker. Some of the complaints you've shared are totally valid, but a lot of it simply isn't true anymore.

[s0]

I really don't understand what your point is. You're bagging the old version of GameMaker yet saying it is superior to the new GameMaker, even though YoYo's new edition has, or is striving to include, everything you think the old one lacks.

i'm not saying that. read my other post.

[Melon Mason]

Ah yep, I see where you're coming from now.

I think the reason for that is YoYo had to address a lot of 'behind the scenes' problems with GameMaker. The community that uses it is also very demanding of new features, so a lot of things that are dated but okay to be left for a while (like the interface) have not been prioritized over things like a proper debugger, or a decent audio system, or their YYC export.

[JWK5]

Any tool's usefulness is going to vary depending on the individual. The tech and features don't really matter. The goal should be to keep trying different ones until you find the one that is as close to your "sweet spot" as possible. Having something that let's you operate fluidly is far more effective than having one that operates technically superior.

[Sik]

Isn't that like the whole selling point of Game Maker? The whole point of that interface is to attract those people who are too afraid to program anything at all in the first place. Eventually users get pushed to use GML later on, but still.

i know but that's exactly why i think it's bullshit. people get lured into buying GM thinking theyll be able to make games "without programming" only to realize how incredibly limited, annoying to use and all around shitty drag & drop is.

That may be the idea though. As limited as it is, you already get a vague idea of how object behavior works (i.e. as a sequence of instructions executed in a given order). That will help people become less afraid of programming, because it's essentially the same thing but using text instead of drag & drop, and much more flexible. It's really more of a façade than anything, consider it more of a psychological trick.

Also the drag & drop isn't as limited as it may seem, once I was making a platformer purely with drag & drop as a challenge and it wasn't really that hard to get some basic physics going - reasonable ones, that is, getting flipping to work was more of an issue since the only way to do it in the trial version was to modify a variable directly, which drag & drop allows you to do but is not something a beginner would think to do (I think the full version makes this easier).

In any case the point is that it's more of an entry point to encourage beginners to lose the fear to programming. And even ignoring this, well, removing it would reduce the amount of people who may want to use Game Maker and that's definitely something they won't want to do. Ultimately all a business cares about is to pocket in.

[Kaustek]

I've seen a lot of "the sky is falling" type stuff especially on Reddit. Everything will be fine. The expanded resources of a larger company backing YoYo will benefit all of us.