Everything listed there is free

You sure?  I'm pretty sure XNA is free, but I know for a fact that flash is about $700

[Unity]

Unity
You should maybe give Unity a shot. You'll be comfortable with it coming from Game Maker, but it has tons of fresh stuff to learn, and you have two choices of languages to use (Javascript or C#, the latter which I prefer). It'd be a cool opportunity to try out 3D modelling as well, if you're into that.

SFML
If you're more interested in 2D, Unity can be a pain. In that case, you might wanna check out something like SFML, which has a lot of good tutorialage and stuff around it, and I've heard good things about.

C#/XNA/Mono
XNA/C# is great to use, but people will argue that one. I've found it fun for prototyping, and not only that but Visual Studio C# Express is free (and wonderful to use), plus if you wanna develop cross-platform games there's MonoGame which is a Mono-port of XNA. (Mono is what drives the cross-platform Unity stuff, or something like that).

Flash
If you're interested in Flash dev, Flash is a fun tool to mess with, as you can just drop objects right into the scene and draw right into the game. Quite a powerful feeling. But if you wanna get serious, you'll want to pick up FlashDevelop (my recommendation, it's free too!) or Flash Builder, which are like the Visual Studio equivalent but for ActionScript 3.

Flash is great because you can share your games so easily and there are dozens of cool portals to upload your games to, but like the app-market you're also competing/drowning in lots of crap.

FlashPunk
If you develop low-res, pixelly, or just texture/PNG-based games, then you can try out my game engine FlashPunk. Lots of developers have come straight from Game Maker to making Flash games in it, and it's gotten good feedback for being similar enough code-wise, but advanced enough that it's helped them learn AS3 and move onto new things.

Flixel
Flixel is Adam Atomic's game engine, it came before FlashPunk (I just stole the idea from him) and has built-in physics/movement stuff you can play around with to get stuff up and running really quickly, and a larger community (the forums for both these engines are super helpful, though), so you might want to try that out as well. Lots of great games made with it.

There are tons of choices, but those are the ones I've personally found the most interesting, and also easiest to learn (even for uneducated fucktards like me).

Good luck!

Whoa thanks for the huge list, but I just have one question, what is the prices for these things, I know Unity and Flash are quite expensive and a lot of your suggestions are engines for flash...

[Unity]

   This is a section to post your advice for people who are moving on from GameMaker to a language with less limitations.  It was originally about me, but I've already made my decision, so now this is a place to help other people who want to move on. A lot of people posted a lot of great advice and I am going to try to summarize it here, please tell me if you disagree with something or want to add someting:

Unity
Easy transition from Game Maker.  Both 2D and 3D, and runs in browser.  Can use Javascript or C#.  Pro version is quite expensive though.

Flash
Great for 2D games. It's great in general and many games made in it run smoothly, but when you want something more it may lack in FPS.  Runs in browser.  Use Flixel or FlashPunk.

XNA
Good tool all around, and can do both 2D and 3D.  Also very easy to publish to Xbox and Windows phone. Uses C#

Java
More difficult to learn, but do it if you really want to.  Use a book to learn.  Can make both 2D and 3D, and it runs in browser.  It is not as powerful as C++, FPS may drop with really complex 3D games.  Use lwjgl and Slick2d.
  
C++
Like Java it is difficult to learn, but do it if you really want to.  Use a book to learn.  Can make both 2D and 3D, and it does not run in browser.  Most powerful of them all, used in AAA titles.  For 2D you can use SFML, SDL , Allegro, and AGK (paid).  For 3D you can use Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Panda3d, and DarkGDK (paid)

Scrolling Game Development Kit 2 (SGDK2)
Similar organization to Gamemaker.  Can be run in browser.  2D and 3D is possible.  Uses C#.  





Here is the original post if you want to read it:
  

Hey, I use GameMaker to make games, I'm pretty decent at it, and saw no reason to change, but I wanted to eventually.  After reading around on the forum I decided that I want to move on and learn a more advanced language with less limitations.  Could you please recommend a language to learn next, or a sequence of languages to learn to get up to a powerful one like C++? Good ways to learn, tutorials, or a link to some open source code to mess around with would be greatly appreciated. It would be nice if someone could explain how to get started, and what to download.  I know a lot of you guys are skilled programmers and your advice would be really helpful.

   In the end I'd love to learn how to use C++ or Java

I like the cave. I think your game could would benefit from dynamic lighting but only around the main character.

Good idea, I might try that, but I'm always scared of dynamic lighting because I might butcher it and make it so you can't see anything, and there is nothing worse than playing blind.

noooope

darker, and maybe desaturate

EDIT: there's a thread by JWK5 about color pallets; go find that, and stea- I MEAN LEARN - everything from it

Even darker now, but do you think it is enough?  Also made the texture more noticeable, does that look nice or should I change it back? I also darkened the sky to give more contrast with the player.

What do you think about the cave?

Game looks cool, do you think there will be a playable beta or something like that?

[NEW]

that shade of green is painful to the eyes; try something more muted

the white character is a bit difficult to read from the light blue background

This muted enough or should I do more?
                                 NEW                                         OLD

No linux version :-(

Sorry don't know how, I would if I could.  Do you know any way to port .exe files into .app files for macs or to whatever type of files Linux uses?

While looking through the forums I noticed that some of you guys are really great art critics.
Here are some screen-shots from a new project, and please tell me what you think and how I can improve it.

First is just a hilly grassland.

Next one has water too.

How about the caves?

For the 30FPS being the problem, do you mean I should make it 60FPS, or lower than 30?

It should be 60 FPS.

OK ill do 60FPS in a future projects (Not my next one, I already started it with 30FPS),
it will make it a lot smoother, but I don't think I'll be able to change the FPS for this one without making it move too fast or breaking a lot of the jumps, so sorry for that...

Thanks for the continuing feedback, it has helped a lot.
 

As for the bad music, people said the music being your enemy is a great idea

I don't know who told you that, but I'm here telling you it's a bad idea .. :p

About the spikes not standing out enough, the ground all being the same colour is the graphical style, and I've tried, spikes look horrible if you make them a different colour.

Even a different shade of gray would help here.

About your framerate issue, its probably you computer or something.  The game runs at 30FPS.

I wasn't dropping frames, the fact that it's 30 FPS is the problem.  

Thanks for the continuing feedback, um first there was bad music in the original game, which won an award from IndieGames.com, and they really liked the bad music for some reason, and the people in the comments did too.  so I kept it for this one, sorry if it's not really your thing (Personally I don't really like the music either, but before you people all really like the "music is an enemy too" idea)

For the spikes, I actually have got a few complaints, so I'll try and see if they look good red.  Looking back on it, stairs are not really needed, so I probably shouldn't have added them and started the confusion in the first place.  Made the spikes bright red!

For the 30FPS being the problem, do you mean I should make it 60FPS, or lower than 30?

Got all the anti-cubes too?

No, I'm not good enough at puzzle games to find them all, or at least not the ones that you need to use the vibrating metronomes for, but I thought I could at least get all the normal ones.

host it somewhere else

uploading doesn't work

do not ask why _please

Okay I've tried hosting it somewhere else, but now I'll try a different website I guess...

I'm playing Fez! I love the concept and the graphics, but it's too puzzely for me to beat 100%

One cube bit left, and I can't find it, and there is no indication on the map.
(I love that there is a Gomez emoticon and this thread gives me an excuse to use it)

Sounds cool, have you decided on an art style yet?

[HELP]

Can't figure out how to change mine-
HELP_please?

Looks really cool, I'd love to see that art style in a game, but the creature on tops left eye looks a bit twitchy...

Hello.

This will be a really short introduction, but I like platformer games, and I like pixel art. Would love to change my avatar, but it doesn't work, please help! Can't think of anything else to say right now...

[I don't have any framerate problems, and no one else has complained.]

Ok, I tried it.  I was excited at the prospect of this game, but I ended up disappointed.

Music was really annoying, and there's no way to turn it off.  Everything sounds like it's being played back through a alarm clock radio that's been hit with a hammer.  I assume this is intentional, really not a good idea.

The spikes (which kill you) being the same color as everything else is a really bad visual design decision.  I shouldn't even have to point this out.  It's especially bad when stairs lead up directly to spikes.

When you're going down stairs it counts as falling and you can't jump off them, which limits your ability to move on them for no real reason at all.  Also you can't hold down jump to jump again as soon as you land, so once you fall down the stairs, you have to let go of the jump button to jump again .. which didn't work as you were going down the stairs.

Jumping and hitting ceilings seems really buggy - sometimes you hit the ceiling and your horizontal position changes drastically.  It also causes you to shift around.  Sometimes falling against a wall resets your falling speed.  Also, I'm fairly sure at one point I fell right through one of the platforms as I was going to land on it.

The frame rate seems to be really low and everything moves choppy.  It's harder to judge your movement and the movement of the moving platforms.  No reason the frame rate should be this low.  This is probably the biggest issue aside from the wonky jumping/controls/collision detection.

Hit detection on the first boss is ridiculously strict.  I found that even when I hit him dead on, I'd get hit by his blades anyway.  I don't know how many times you have to jump on him, but I could only get in one before I died on the next jump attempt anyway.  Also it was quite trial-and-error-ish as his blades are the exact same color as he is, giving the impression that his entire body is fatal no matter what you do.  Again, the low frame rate didn't help here.

Overall my first impression was not a good one.  Hopefully you can make some improvements.

       Firstly thanks for the head hitting on ceiling bug, its now fixed. I also made it easier to jump while moving it down stairs.  As for the bad music, people said the music being your enemy is a great idea, sorry it wasn't for you.  About the spikes not standing out enough, the ground all being the same colour is the graphical style, and I've tried, spikes look horrible if you make them a different colour.

       About your framerate issue, its probably you computer or something I don't have any framerate problems, and no one else has complained. The game runs at 30FPS.  Thanks for taking the time to write a review longer than my initial post