Anyone using Gamemaker Studio here?
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Anyone using Gamemaker Studio here?
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| As the title says: I'm starting to look for alternatives. And no, Unity is NOT an alternative when it comes to 2d. Cheers! |
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| What are you expecting to find in the alternatives that you don't already have in MX1? And why is Unity so bad? I'm just curious, as I also had been looking for something different to play with, but all the alternatives came with their own can of worms. |
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| I got GMS1.4 in the Humble Bundle just before Xmas with all exporters etc for $15, and after a bit of a rough start learning of the ways in which it wanted me to do things I could easily do in a few lines of code, it's actually pretty good and I've upgraded to GMS 2.0 now on the back of it. Of course there are a few rough edges and a few missing features / bugs but they are being worked on (slowly), and it's especially quick when prototyping. It supports Spine (although not as well as it should, and not as complete as the Monkey Spine module), Box2D, shaders, tiles etc, there is a marketplace with free/paid extensions that do anything from typewriter text and dialog box systems to full 2D lighting systems, fluid dynamics and water systems using shaders etc Don't get me wrong, it has it's downsides and annoyances as does any framework, but for 2D games it's pretty solid and lets you get on with the game side of things once you're over the initial learning curve of how to put things together. Grab the trial version of 2.0 and see what you think, and like I said any questions I'll do my best to answer them. |
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| I really like Defold. It's best if you want to focus on mobile game releases. The built in features it has for that are big time savers. |
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| Thanks guys! :) @secondgear: Monkey is just discontinued, which is ok for a desktop solution but not for the fast changing mobile markets. I don't blame Mark, it's just too much for a single person. And Monkey 2 might be fine at some point but for now I have to dig through examples to know how things are supposed to work and I simply have no time for that. Unity is very good for 3d but for 2d it's somehow quite a pain to use, at least for me. Plus it's quite some bloatware with huge binaries. @rikman: Thanks, yes I always had the same expectation that Gamemaker is just a toy for guys who don't know how to code. I've looked into GMS 2 and I'm quite impressed. @soap: Yeah defold is on my list as well as godot. |
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| Planiax editor looks good. Eager to see that in beta, if it surfaces. |
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| Thanks Adam, yes I know, looks pretty good! :) But I don't look for editor based solutions just for alternatives to Monkey which is somehow a shame because I love Monkey so much... |
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| @Xaron: I have only tested GMS2 a small amount and worked with a friend on some games in GMS. Through a competition I won the master edition. GMS uses a complete different approach compared to a code centric solution like MX. But the game catalog if GMS which has been released and was/is successful is amazing. There isn't much you can't do with it, if anything. I wouldn't worry. They have updated GMS regularly and I am sure they will do the same with GMS2. Personally I am waiting for GMS2 on OSX to arrive before I upgrade. |
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| It's probably just me but if you know and love Monkey so much you should not have to much trouble to use MX2. I use it on a daily base now and I really like it. Sure it's bit rough around some edges but it's stable and the TED2GO isn't bad at all. I am now working on my first real game ( demo needs an update ) in ages on MX2/Pyro2 and I started the project around a month ago and it's progressing really nice. Point is, MX2 is in my opinion the best alternative to Monkey. Btw, the editor that we are building is just to produce level data or edit your game objects so coding is still required. |
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| Yes Monkey 2 is nice but it's still incomplete. I don't want to look into examples or ask in the forum all the time just for how to do tiny things, that's annoying. The documentation at its current state is a joke, it's practical non existent. Still I like Monkey 1 and Monkey 2 but I don't see a bright future for it, sorry. And I need something I can rely on for the next years to come. I probably will continue to use Monkey 2 for desktop things, even though I still think that Monkey has its strengths in cross platform development and not only desktop. |
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| GMS2 looks pretty darn tempting for the type of project I want to make, but I kinda don't want to have to re-invest a lot in it. I'm also hoping that the new Playniax editor offers a similar increase in productivity, though I'm not going to be switching to mx2 anytime soon until someone makes an IDE as comprehensive as Jungle's. Actually having project files is kinda a big deal for me these days, and I've been spoiled and don't feel comfortable coding without the types of amenities IDEs like VS and Jungle offer.. GMS2 has switched to a more tile-based engine, so if your game is more of a tile-based game (many 2d games) this is pretty helpful. Audio support could be better but at least it seems you can make seamless ogg music with custom loopback points, something I badly wish Monkey had. Shader support also looks pretty good. GMS2's visual event-based coding pipeline can be "baked" to GML code, letting you use their visual flow editor when it's easy and dropping down to GML when necessary. That's something that you could only do with a really tightly integrated engine and editor, so it's unlikely Monkey will see something like this unless Tony and ziggy take up the torch of pushing something like MonkeyX Studio, only even more tightly integrated. Big disadvantages of GMS2 are the same as most other "black boxes", you have to use their compilers and are 100% dependent on them to support your target of choice. If there's a problem with their engine/runtime environment, all you can do is try to find a workaround or pray. You gotta pay to keep supporting the system, since the community only handles plugins and such, not the base programs, and there is some fragmentation between versions (particularly regarding plugins/extensions). |
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| Not tried GMS but have been playing with Godot a lot recently. From what I can tell its more powerful than GMS but shares many of the features.The upcoming update will feature c# too which is quite exciting. The project is very much alive and the main devs update the software and fix bugs rapidly, plus its free as its open source! |
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| Ive abandoned the monkey1 Ultim engine not because of capabilities but the whole community is getting smaller and smaller by the day, MonkeyX1's forums seem to be going the way of the original BRL forum and becoming a bit of a ghost town. If you do get stuck with anything there is less and less people to ask and if you do ask a question its a mixed barrel if its going to be answered as there might not be anyone to answer it for you. Ive now moved to other engines and writing my own so I can have stability for the years ahead, yes MX2 is nice BUT with the past of BRL I dont see it being a stable place to be what with all the languages they have made over the years which are all now crumbling wrecks by the wayside. What we do need is a definitive plan from BRL about what they are doing and where they are going not a load of abandoned sites and forums about where they have been. Personally I would like to see ALL the sites merged together under the www.BRL.com banner this would allow people to see what they have done in the past and what is current now, it would also mean people wouldnt need to visit three seperate forums to see all the BRL product line. I might look at godot but at present I am coding using a well known engine which is also free and has a great community and support ;) |
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| Thanks guys, Godot seems to be awesome indeed. And if they introduce C# that would be even better. How about stuff like Admob and InApp purchase stuff? Does it work using Godot? Edzup, I totally agree. Would be nice to have one community at one place for different products. I have no doubts that there will be Monkey 3 at some point in the future, with another community split up. I mean I'm totally fine with new products, other companies just name it upgrades or whatever or give just new version numbers... It's really sad. It's such a beautiful language (beside the name)... |
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| https://godotengine.org/qa/363/app-monetization-with-ads-and-iap-in-godot-for-ios-and-android seems to suggest its in there BUT you might have to do some of the donkey work to get it to actually work however. Yeah I would like to see a site www.BlitzResearch.com which has links to all the available sites and hosts a gallery, worklogs etc this would not only serve as a brilliant advertising tool to demonstrate whats possible with BRL stuff but also bring the community together somewhat as they could all post pictures to it and completed projects etc. |
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| Yep, looks like some additional work then. Hmm... I think I still tend to use Gamemaker for 2d and Unity for 3d then... Regarding that page for BRL: This isn't going to happen. To sad. He's doing what he can do best, and that is creating languages, unfortunately marketing is not only not his strength but just non existent. |
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| @Xaron: Unfortunately that has always been the case, marketing BRL stuff has always been asked for by the community BUT never happened especially after the Guildhall and Blitz3d debacle where Mark got burned by Guildhall and it ended up rather ugly in the end. I think this was the time that mark got put off from marketing as a whole, its a shame but its one thing that is understandable but to be honest I would get back on the horse and make that site to bring the communities back together and then we may be able to heal all the rifts that have sprung up because of the separated forums. |
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| Ugh, what was this Guildhall thing? |
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| IIRC Guildhall leisure (now iDigicon) was tasked to sell Blitz3d for BRL which they did but there was some issues and a legal dispute entailed which Mark won BUT its left its mark on his marketing loathing. Guildhalls backing is also why Blitz3d has the most complete documentation of ANY BRL product its a shame it didnt work out better as Max could have also benefited should it not have gone south. |
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| Ah thanks. Well ya. I see there are so many other solutions out there which are simply outperformed by Monkey. What a shame. Monkey 2 for instance looks awesome as well. But every newcomer will look at the non existent documentation and will ... well just leave. |
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| Yeah unfortunately its documentation with working examples that keeps people plugging away at it, as it stands the communities are getting smaller I see this every year on year. For me early 2000's were Blitz's golden era from then on things have taken a more downward turn. After BlitzMax and the break away into monkeyX with the fracturing of the community with this very site it did put a lot of people off who then went on to pastures new I see loads of the old faces over on 'the other popular multiplatform engine' forum. I also keep in contact with loads of the old crew who some have given up coding altogether. For me BRL allowed me to plug away for several years making some test projects and has allowed me to release a few even got one published BUT for me its time to move on to pastures new as im not getting any younger and I need a engine that will be around in a few years and will be current with the latest tech and I dont see that with monkey after all said and done look at MonkeyX1 now and that isnt that old. |
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| You have a typo in your sig, EdzUp. There are people who are maintaining Monkey on their own and probably will for many years even if Mark stops. There are a couple of new console targets but not public for example. |
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| That's fine Soap. But personally I don't want to develop and maintain an engine but develop games. ;) So I see no point in maintaining an engine even though Monkey is an excellent tool! I simply have no time for that. |
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| Use Defold then! :) It has a real team behind it and who supports developers who use it. Editor 2 is shaping up really nicely. It keeps getting killer features that I wish Monkey and other tools already had (which I wouldn't mind either building for Monkey or paying someone to eventually...). |
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| @Soap: thanks :) |
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| There are people who are maintaining Monkey on their own and probably will for many years even if Mark stops. There are a couple of new console targets but not public for example. So how do updates and new targets being made but not made public, help anyone else but the person who creates / maintains them and his select group of friends? For the vast majority of MX users they don't exist because they'll never get access, so it's a bit of a mute point. |
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