Thinking about moving to Monkey for 2D

Monkey Forums/Monkey Beginners/Thinking about moving to Monkey for 2D

Rukiri(Posted 2015) [#1]
Good day everyone!

I currently use Unity as for the most part it works and does what I need it but 2d still feels forced "it works" but it still feels forced to me, 2d still feels like it was slapped on to me but I'm sure others will argue.

Before Unity I heavily used Game Maker and I never bothered with drag and drop as I wanted to get away with that. What I liked about GM is that it was easy to get into and GML was pretty straight forward but it was a resource hog and you're crazy for buying a $300 addon for a compiler while it will make the game play better it should have already been added to GM by default and shouldn't have to extort users for more money.

What I like about monkey at least from reading about it is that it's supposed to be really good for 2D games, however I do have 3D effects in my current prototype in Unity as Unity is well a 3D engine and it was easy to add. However this is only on the overworld map, remember the old SNES games that has a projected effect? I think it was called Mode7, Genesis/Megadrive had something similar as well.

The type of game I'm currently working on is an Action-RPG similar to the Zelda, and Mana games with some fast past actions. So, how does Diddy or Ignition X stack to Unity for 2D?


muddy_shoes(Posted 2015) [#2]
It's hard to answer the question without knowing what's important to you. Simply speaking, Unity gives you a lot more than Monkey in terms of built-in functionality and especially in terms of the available 3rd party code and assets. On any tick-box list of features basis there's no contest at all even with the likes of Ignition on top. If people choose Monkey over Unity it's because they prefer the language and the simple workflow. I can only suggest that you look more closely at the IgnitionX samples ( http://docs.playniax.com/html/Ignition_Ignition%20samples.html ) and judge if it's a good fit for how you want to work.


nullterm(Posted 2015) [#3]
It could be a great fit, but depends on your tastes/preferences and what you need. If you want a low level language to allow you to blit sprites to the screen (with rotation, scaling, etc) then core Monkey X has ya covered.

For the 2D stuff, you should have everything you need with Ignition. I haven't yet had time to play with it (soon!), but I have an idea I'd like to try with it.

For 3D, you'll need to wrap your head around OpenGL ES (1.1 especially if it's ur first try with GL). Though I think there's a few 3D modules out there.

Do like a super simple sprite game with just a guy moving around with keyboard control, and go from there. Monkey is free for desktop and HTML5, so no barrier other than a few hours of learning a new language/toolset/library. Then if you like it, then think about Pro and Ignition to increase your toolset.

But like muddy_shoes points out, it doesn't have the same massive community it like Unity or tools. But you also aren't trying to wedge a small-ish 2D game out of a massive 3D game engine.


Rukiri(Posted 2015) [#4]
I wouldn't call an RPG a smallish project, but it's not large "at least 2D" either. Isn't OpenGL ES for embedded systems? I'm deploying on desktop only.


nullterm(Posted 2015) [#5]
Should have said OpenGL [ES]. Works same/similar on both platforms.

I say smallish in terms of technical, being 2D, not necessarily content. 3D = 3x the work, even though both equally fun. : )


EdzUp(Posted 2015) [#6]
Unitys '2d' capability is one of the reasons I chose monkeyX for Star Rogue, the 3d side of Unity is second to none but its 2d is basically a screen over a 3d interface.

With monkey as others have stated you will not have 100% of the crap that goes with Unity, its not drag and drop but what you do get is a simple language that is easy to pick up and run with. Yes the community isnt massive but it does have loads of people that can answer your questions and help you along the way. I would download the free version and see if it fits to your liking and go from there after all the best person to tell you if its fun is you.

You can do big projects with monkey BUT you really have to lay them out first due to the way monkey is targeted you cannot have everything hogging the main loop all the time you have to plan ahead, as an example in Star Rogue I did have a planet generator that made the surface and kept going until its complete this was a wrong idea it crashed on android. To get it working I had to make it generate the surface in stages and set a bool value to true when its completed. Its simple things like that which when done right will give you brilliant results :)

Has anyone mentioned BlitzMax? (www.blitzbasic.com)