next »

[GregWS]

OK, so now that there's an actual company and not just a hobbyist working on GM, I think we as an indie community need to start telling YoYo what exactly we want fixed/improved.

There's a bunch of GM users on TIGS (even Derek now too), and I think we all know what we'd like changed/improved.

If there's enough quality stuff here, then I (or someone else) can compile it and send a respectful email to YoYo that including some of our/TIGS credentials, YMM just winning their contest for example.

Oh, and just a note about game speed, from what I've heard the GM Runner built in C++ (which should be faster) is currently in closed beta, and YoYo hasn't decided what exactly to do with it once it's done (I think they're worried that if they just release it then it will be quickly used by the homebrew community to allow GM games on all systems imaginable, instead of letting them form partnerships with Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft to release games in a more legit fashion).

Here's my quick list (probably a lot bigger if I took longer to think about it):

Zooming on the Room edit screen: making low res games in GM is made that much harder because of the set view.

Optimize the 3D functions for 2.5D games: GM already isn't too bad for them, and a little tinkering (easy model importing for instance) would make GM into that much more of a viable option for that type of game.  There's also been some great 2.5D games lately like Megaman Powered Up and Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and I'd be happy to see more coming out of the indie community; Paper Knytt?  (Sorry.)

No more "bottom left corner" sprite colour thing: you all know what I'm talking about.  It's just really annoying and could probably be fixed quite easily.

Scaling: the default scaling in GM has quite a few problems, and given that there is a work around using surfaces, that work around (or an equivalent) may as well be built right into GM as it's default scaling method.

Alright, so what would you guys like to see changed?

EDIT: This is about the actual game development in GM, not what happens after a game is done, eg. scaling issues.  And anyway, I mentioned scaling in my first post.  I guess you're all just that mad about it. 

[deadeye]

Make it so GM games don't run like ass on my computer.  I have a somewhat decent computer, there's no reason in the world why a 320x240 retro-style game should run at 5fps.  I'm missing out on lots of cool games because of this.

The only GM games that seem to run even halfway decently are the ones where the creators are digging into GML and know how to optimize their games like crazy, and the ones that actually run well are fewer still.

[Movius]

Stop fucking up the size of my background windows.

[moi]

less "art games"

[Annabelle Kennedy]

stop moving my windows to my second screen when it runs full screen.

make it so cactus doesnt make his games force fullscreen

make all game maker games not use force full screen

[GregWS]

This thread was more about the actual development of games in GM.

All of these screen complaints come back to my point of scaling; if that's fixed all these problems disappear.  And yeah, I find it annoying too.

[sereneworx]

make it so cactus doesnt make his games force fullscreen

This.

[GregWS]

If this bugs you guys so much then just PM cactus about it.  There is an easy fix/work around for the scaling issue (just check out the tutorial section here) that he could implement in all of his games if he wanted too.

So yeah, lets keep it on topic, AKA, the actual game development in GM.

[Biggerfish]

All I really want out of GM is being able to turn off some of the default variables. I have absolutely no need for speed, hspeed/vspeed, gravity, gravity_direction, friction, just to name some. It's a slight annoyance more than anything.

Room editor scaling is also a good one.

[GregWS]

make all game maker games not use force full screen

The default in GM isn't fullscreen, you have to turn it on.  Another default is that F4 toggles between fullscreen and windowed; unless the designer turned that off, then it should work.  I prefer fullscreen for my designs, and that's how I want them to be experienced, so turning it on is usually one of the first things I do; I also disable the option for windowed mode because I just hate the idea of one of my games being played in a window.  That said, maybe if I make a puzzle game at some point I'll allow it to be windowed, simply because that fits with the genre.

@Biggerfish: Hmm, yeah, there are definitely time that I'd want the default variables gone.  That said, I'm not sure just how easy/hard it would be to do this; I'm assuming it would cause quite a mess to make them optional.

[Biggerfish]

You can have fullscreen where the window is scaled, or fullscreen where the resolution of the monitor is changed, and that's generally what makes GM fuck with background windows.

While GM could be changed to make this not happen, I think the developers in the meantime should just offer the option of not having a res change and allowing someone to just scale up (even if the graphics are ugly).

[William Broom]

All I really want out of GM is being able to turn off some of the default variables. I have absolutely no need for speed, hspeed/vspeed, gravity, gravity_direction, friction, just to name some. It's a slight annoyance more than anything.

The worst thing about this is that it can, theoretically at least, drag down performance because it checks for so many worthless variables.

What I would like from GM is more than one undo in the sprite editor. Another little thing is that as far as I can tell, you can't scroll up and down when you're selecting code - you can only zoom in and out.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

There's already a big list of suggestions here: http://forums.yoyogames.com/forums/7/topics/3091

A lot of the things you guys are suggesting are already doable. For instance there's actually a .dll which was specifically devised to make GM *not* mess with the other windows when it changes resolution. More people should use things like that.

[moi]

I like to play games fullscreen.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I don't really understand why people even *have* windows open when running games, anyway. It takes resources away and games run much better when you close your browser (etc.) before running them. Not that this is an excuse for GM's window-changing behavior, but I'm just saying it's not a problem if you close windows before running games, which you should do anyway to make the games run better.

[Melly]

Allow for easy scaling without bilinear filtering without the need of annoying view/surface hacks.

Allow for the removal of unused preset variables (or just make them not be checked/updated if you don't want them to).

Make fullscreen not screw up other windows without the need of a dll (Can you link me to where you got that rinku?).

Make the code compileable somehow (performance/security).

Stop trying to be a flash portal and hide the download links for games (that one's to Yoyo itself).

[Rory]

Allow creation of particle systems in scripts (I don't know why this happens, when I do 'ps = part_system_create()' in a script it doesn't work; it assumes part_system_create() is a variable)

[Corpus]

No, rinku, because the nice thing about the ridiculous power of modern PCs is that we don't have to worry about closing everything down before we load up a simple 2D game (and even some 3D games.)

[team_q]

I don't do the close down dance anymore, since I can afford my own hardware, I hardly notice a difference, well unless its Dwarf Fortress on my laptop.

[muku]

No, rinku, because the nice thing about the ridiculous power of modern PCs is that we don't have to worry about closing everything down before we load up a simple 2D game (and even some 3D games.)

I agree. Thankfully we've left behind the times where a basic 2D game may assume total control over the machine it's running on. I like playing a quick game of whatever-GM-game-du-jour is sitting on my hard disk every once in a while, and I don't want to shut down my browser/IDE/whatever for that, because the process of saving my progress in whatever program I'm using, shutting it down and starting it back up again typically takes much too long for a quick diversion.