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[Alex N.]

I hear that GameMaker is a good choice for people wanting to make games with 0 experience in coding, but i find it hard to believe, so I'm double checking in here.
How realistic is to make a game in GameMaker if you have 0 coding skill?

[ProgramGamer]

I think it's not realistic, but the cool thing about gamemaker is that you can use drag and drop in conjunction with code, so you can incrementally convert your stuff into gml as you learn, or revert back to drag and drop if doing something with code turns out to be too much for you. It's very good at matching your skill level basically, and nothing else is really like that.

[Alex N.]

I think it's not realistic, but ...

Yeah, it seems like that's the case. I took the past couple of days to see what the best route for someone like me would be, and there's no way around knowing some basic code at least. For those in similar situations feeling a bit overwhelmed i recommend scratch dot mid dot eu. All you have to do is drag and drop blocks of code and see what happens when you fk around. Also there are plenty of tutorials online, so you're never really on your own.
For me this feels like a good step one into later game maker.... I might be wrong tho xD

[michaelplzno]

You must either learn to code or learn how to get coders to work as your mind slaves. The latter is tricky without throwing in some cash. Usually, the coders who are competent and cheap get snatched up super quick. But even after you pay someone, you still might have trouble getting them to do your dumb ideas instead of what they want to do.

[mega mega mega]

GameMaker was originally designed to teach people coding and the 'no coding' thing has always been limited and somewhat of a marketing gimmick. In early versions it was very obvious the drag and drop was a starting place compared to using GML which let you access more functions. Unfortunately since it's changed hands a lot and the official forums got reset it feels like knowledge is lost regarding GML and quirks in older versions, etc.

There are better engines that do the 'no code' concept better IMO but you're still stuck learning some computer logic.

[Pineapple]

Honestly, if your goal is to make anything but the simplest and most conventional games, I see these no-code and drag-and-drop tools as a trap. They often make the most conventional and generic types of games easy, particularly platformers, by allowing you essentially to fill in their template with your own assets. But they make everything else wildly more difficult. Real programming is done with text for a good reason: Everything else is worse. The approaches that drag-and-drop tools teach to making games surely are not going to help you to graduate to code later on, and I think are likely to make getting into code even harder because of everything you're going to have to unlearn.

I would suggest Pico-8 as a far better starting place for beginners. It uses Lua, which is a relatively beginner-friendly programming language, it puts everything in one place so you don't have to think so much about how to use a bunch of different tools together just to get started, and it has a community that is very welcoming to beginners, certainly as compared to anything else.

Code may seem scary at first, because there is an initial hump you have to get over of learning a bunch of basics before you can put them all together to make games, but that initial hump is not as huge as I think most people assume. It's very much like learning a new language, like a real-life spoken language. Yes, it takes a gigantic amount of time and effort to become fluent. But you don't need to become fluent just to get around well enough. Put in a bit of time to learn basic grammar and vocabulary, and you will already have enough to cover everything that's really important, like donde está la biblioteca, and you also have the foundation to easily keep expanding your vocabulary from there.

[GlitchyPSI]

I personally don't know if GameMaker still has the same kinda good ol drag and drop interface they've had since forever (I first used GM in GM8.1 and stopped using in Studio 1) and I must say that I was scared of learning GML or writing actual code for the longest time, basically hiding below a blanket covered by the fun and friendly and usable and nonscary wa-wa-wa-wa drag and drop interface. I think that's detrimental to the mindset that leads to learning to do larger things.

The drag and drop blocks are OK to teach the basics of control flow and make simple stuff (hi scratch) but by the moment one starts thinking big it begins to bog you down strongly (bye scratch)

Now I'm not saying a beginner should jump to something like Unity right away but there's definitely other tools that are beginner friendly that allow for a beginner to grow the desire to actually code which are easier than GML in itself

[KingOfDecoupage]

Matters how big of a game you're talking about. If you want to create something relatively small then it's very possible. Like a simple arcade-like game is very realistic.

I think after awhile you'll learn, however, that it's actually easier and less awkward to use code here and there. Then it's easier and less awkward as you continue to familiarize yourself with it. Even with drag and drop you're just dragging the same commands that are in the script anyway. It's just typing it all out is more agile.