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[Hamish Mcleod]

I'd say it's a great way to bridge the gap if you're intimidated by a programming language.  And it's also how Derek, Hamish, and a number of other great developers got their start.  (Though I don't know how many of them will admit it!)

Multimedia Fusion, Klik and Play, etc is a great way to get started. I got into it when I was like 8, way before I could actually program a full game. For serious game development, it's great for making low-res games that work within its event system. Lots of good platform games have come out of it. If you're thinking of making an old school RPG though you'd be better off with RPG Maker.

I also think you should mention that even though Blitz Max is the newer Blitz product, it doesn't have full 3D capabilties like its predecessor Blitz 3D yet. Blitz 3D (the actual language) is slightly simpler and has a huge amount of user-created libaries and dlls, while BlitzMax is multiplatform and much more powerful for 2D - B3D can do hardware accelerated sprites but it fucks around with the z-ordering alot, which I learnt the hard way.

[gnat]

Yo Derek, be sure to throw BGE up on there.  More info on this post.

If you need eye candy for the blurb, check this thread out. 

[Icedemon]

yea, i've heard of BGE... i like gamemaker the best personally, but to make this a slightly informative post, ill say that the drag and drop interface on gamemaker doesn't necessairly give you that much programming experience. the flipside is its easy to use, and if you ARE any good at programming, can work wonders.

ight im done friggin promoting gamemaker now. I'd rather promote mine. 

word fellas, word.

[Albert Lai]

I'm currently giving Processing a try - it's definitely very easy to use (where as I'm, paradoxically enough, confused by GameMaker). Bah, but I'm new at developing something from scratch, as opposed to adapting an existing engine.

Maybe I'll just go and look at the source for LA2 or something -mutters-

[Paul Eres]

Oh, I should stand up for my origins: The O.H.R.RPG.C.E.

Like RPG Maker, it makes RPGs. Unlike RPG Maker, it's 320x200 resolution, 256 colors, restricted to 20x20 sprites, restricted to 16 colors each sprite... but it's easier to use and the community is nicer (I met virtually all of my online friends there over the last ten years), it's open source, and its games don't often rip graphics like you see in the RPG Maker community. It can make more than RPG games, although that requires scripting in Hamsterspeak -- but if you are just aiming to make a FF4 style RPG, you can do that without any scripting pretty easily. However, I don't really recommend people use it *unless* they want to make a simple RPG or learn about game design -- for most other types of 2D games, or even for complex RPGs with custom battle systems, I recommend Game Maker more.

Example games:
- Wandering Hamster (flagship title made by the creator of the engine -- you know an engine's unique when the creator created it just to make the types of games he wants).
- Arfenhouse series (famous "joke games" that make fun of badly designed amateur RPGs).
- Missing, Sword of Jade, Boundless Ocean (they're really great games, and I'm saying that even though they were made by my friends)

Other stuff:
- Community site with downloads for the thousands of games made on it.
- My old magazine on it.

[eka]

I'm going to stand up for Flash here because it deserves better than being hidden away in the "Game Making Software" ghetto.

Flash 8 is a complete development solution for 2D and even pseudo 3D (mode 7 / raycasting) games with all the tools for art creation and programming built into the software.  I found it to be as easy to learn as any of the Basics / Gamemaking software but has the added bonus of being able to export right to the web with the least number of plug-in or compatibility issues.  There's also growing support for Flash on mobile platforms and the ability to export to mobile (Flash Lite) is built-in.

The downside is that the price unfortunately will turn most people away but there is a 30 day demo and it shouldn't take longer than that to learn and start making games.

Community:
Go local - most major cities will have their own designers group.  Here's Toronto:
http://www.flashinto.com/phpBB2/index.php

Tutorials:
The BEST Flash tutorials online - you gotta pay, but worth every penny!
www.cartoonsmart.com
Free Flash tutorials are everywhere but these are the better sites:
www.gotoandplay.it
www.actionscript.com
Since you mention N as a noteworthy game I might as well include his Flash tutorials:
http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/tutorials.html

Noteworthy Games:
Coffee Tycoon:  www.coffeetycoon.net
Dofus (MMO):  www1.dofus.com
Two Kingdoms: www.twokingdoms.com
You linked the Newgrounds but forgot to mention Alien Hominid:  www.alienhominid.co.uk/GAME.html
C64 Emulator:  www.gotoandplay.it/spotLight/fc64/
- there really is a lot more than just the crap free games you find online

Sorry for the hard sales pitch but having discovered Flash I will never ever use another platform for 2D game development.

Now you can download Flesx SDK for free and compile to .SWF, you can use AS3 and Flex2 libs. for no cost

[Xion]

Yo Derek, be sure to throw BGE up on there.  More info on this post.

If you need eye candy for the blurb, check this thread out. 

I've been toying around with Blender and iz wundering: Are there any 2d games made with it? Is it any good for 2d games, even?

[Kon-Tiki]

AGI
AGI Studio
Link
AGI Studio's used to make adventure games in the old Sierra style, with the parser and 16 colours, Leisure Suit Larry/King's Quest 3/Space Quest 1-style

Best version isn't the latest one, but 1.34. The versions after that have a bug in the view editor (used to make objects and animations). Version 1.34 can be found here, along with alot of other tools you can use for it (AGI Studio doesn't have a built-in background editor or sound editor)

WinAGI
Link
AGI Studio's used to make adventure games in the old Sierra style, with the parser and 16 colours, Leisure Suit Larry/King's Quest 3/Space Quest 1-style

This is a newer studio, still supported and further developed.

Games made by these:
(These count for both. Different development studios - although WinAGI is backwards compatible with AGI Studio - but same interpreter. Can't really say which game's made with which tool, but it's always one of these two)
Enclosure
AGI Hobbits (Unfinished)
More

And if you need more recommendations, just let me know. There're quite a few good ones out there, which the indie scene doesn't seem to've discovered.

[Buff Cardstock]

I think SDL should be noted somewhere.  It looks to be roughly the same as Allegro, and sure, most of the games the SDL site lists (here: http://www.libsdl.org/games.php) look like turds, but it works fairly well for something so basic and simple to use.

[Kekskiller]

I'm not sure if its suitable for any type of special project, but Purebasic is a bit like Blitzbasic (note the gaming library are just "additional features"). It has everything for to code games and implement other engines. The feature list is VERY long, reachs from simple Blitzbasic-like game coding functionalitys to more complex things like inline-ASM, very uncommon OOP, macros... whatever.

It's good for: small 2D games, games using 3D sprites (also ALPHA CHANNEL SUPPORT)
It's NOT good for: 3D games (fuck off that crippled OGRE engine...)

But there are many extensions for using several 3D engines (for e.g.: Irrlicht Engine) and many more things. Give it a chance - you won't regret it! I'm still using it to code my game tools (compression tools, crypterizers for file archives, etc...).

[Niwdz]

can Adventure game studio make 2d side scrolling games? Because I looking for a free one

[skaldicpoet9]

So if I want to make a pretty big game would it be better for me to use C++ or C#?

[Al King]

From what I gather, knowing only one of them myself, the differences between the languages aren't really related to the managability of large projects. C# is faster to write, but it's restricted to platforms supporting the .NET framework (i.e. only Windows). C++ is more portable and more efficient at runtime (assuming the code you write is efficient), and - having been around for longer - has more libraries and general community support. It really depends on how you define big, and how important development speed and efficiency respectively are. haowan's probably the man to ask, I gather he's got experience with both.

[skaldicpoet9]

From what I gather, knowing only one of them myself, the differences between the languages aren't really related to the managability of large projects. C# is faster to write, but it's restricted to platforms supporting the .NET framework (i.e. only Windows). C++ is more portable and more efficient at runtime (assuming the code you write is efficient), and - having been around for longer - has more libraries and general community support. It really depends on how you define big, and how important development speed and efficiency respectively are. haowan's probably the man to ask, I gather he's got experience with both.

Right on, thanks for the reply

I think I'll probably just end up trying them both out and seeing which one is better at handling it.

I may opt for C++ just because it seems like it has a lot more of a base.

[baconfish]

C# is faster to write, but it's restricted to platforms supporting the .NET framework (i.e. only Windows).

I was under the impression that C# programs don't need to use the .NET framework. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (since I'm planning on starting a 2D game engine in the near future and would like to use C#). Mono is an opensource project to port the .NET framework to other systems (ie, Linux), and there's even the Tao framework that covers a whole bunch of libraries you'd need for writing a cross platform game.