Gamemaker part of Humble Bundle this week!

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Gamemaker part of Humble Bundle this week!

silentshark(Posted 2015) [#1]
My lad spotted this, and is busy downloading GameMaker (maybe he will get persuaded about Monkey at some point later)..

But it did make me think - what about getting Monkey into the "Humble Bundle" weekly deal. It might just catapult numbers into the sky!

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

(The GameMaker site seems to have gone down with all the folks trying to download. Lol, as my lad would say).

Cheers,
Tom


nullterm(Posted 2015) [#2]
Hopefully they sort out the server issue. I bought the bundle and would like to check it out. I want a non-coding game building tool to play with, Construct 2 was pretty cool but meh. Think I'm a born n bred coder, C++ and Monkey for me.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#3]
I checked out GameMaker a year or so back and didn't care for all of the GUI push button based development. This new visual design style is just very alien to me. It seemed more visually oriented than Unity even. Logically, you'd think such things should be ideal for doing some rapid prototyping but yet when I mess with such things it takes far more time than I could just code it up. Still, I grabbed it from Humble for $12. Maybe having the source for several full games will make it click for me.

Really I think it's hard to get faster development speed than simply using Monkey X, GLBasic or HaxeFlixel and getting to work hitting the keyboard.


Gerry Quinn(Posted 2015) [#4]
It's a matter of programming style. Probably for many of us here a GUI is awkward and limiting, but for others it is much easier and actual programming is baffling.


Milky Joe(Posted 2015) [#5]
I tried GM, but the lack of even the most basic of OO concepts left me cold (and with a hard to maintain code base - spaghetti code).


MikeHart(Posted 2015) [#6]
Milky Joe. I disagree.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#7]
It must be quite powerful and rapid game dev tool once a person invests the time learning and adapting to the workflow because it is used often for LD and other game jams. One of these days I will have to devote a weekend to messing around with. Previously I launched it started a new project spent 5 minutes looking at all of the GUI stuff closed it and moved on. lol

One of these days. Right now I find Monkey X quite enjoyable and promote it with a #MonkeyX on Twitter whenever possible.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#8]
It must be quite powerful and rapid game dev tool once a person invests the time learning and adapting to the workflow because it is used often for LD and other game jams. One of these days I will have to devote a weekend to messing around with. Previously I launched it started a new project spent 5 minutes looking at all of the GUI stuff closed it and moved on. lol

One of these days. Right now I find Monkey X quite enjoyable and promote it with a #MonkeyX on Twitter whenever possible.


Neuro(Posted 2015) [#9]
I never got into GM as much as i would of liked to but i'm not opposed to these type of game dev tools either. Unless its Unity :-D.


Nobuyuki(Posted 2015) [#10]
Bought a copy just because. Maybe I can glean something from the source code of the games included? *cough cough, procedural generation approaches*


Amon(Posted 2015) [#11]
I don't see it anywhere on the linked to page.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#12]
Yeah it was included in the weekly deal and looks like the new week's deal is up now.


MikeHart(Posted 2015) [#13]
Bummer. Had to much private stress. I own the master collection already but the source codes would have been nice.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#14]
I grabbed it for curiosity more than anything. Like you said just to check out the source code primarily. It's funny though because I was always more interested in low level stuff and having jumped into Unity and spent 20 months working in it I found myself wanting to return to a lower level. I think a big part of it is simply the easier they make this stuff the less impressive it is to actually do it. For example, I'd have far more appreciation for someone who makes a good game on a real C64 than I would someone making a game double that scope in HD in GMS or Unity (and probably rolling it out on mobile).

I am still big on game-play. That is the important thing. However, there are just so many games being made with these high level tools these days finding a decent game is not really an issue other than having to dig through so darn many. That definitely is the issue now. Too many.

Anyway, that is another reason I went looking elsewhere. Unity does make 2D games more work than necessary I think. Unless you're going with that modern vector graphics style which I don't care for. So that is a big part of it. But also because I don't know if I really want to be a part of this modern Indie high level game development thing. It's why I was hopeful for something like the Retro VGS to succeed. Unfortunately, I heard even they were committed to adding support for Unity and GMS development. That put off a lot of people including myself so I did a refund on the Retro VGS campaign.

Thinking I might grab the Neo Geo X. Games for the C64 generally sell only around 500 copies these days. I think the Neo Geo X has a bigger market than that possibly. And with these things one can appreciate not only the games themselves but also the skills of the developers. Kind of like the way I'd appreciate anyone making a good game in Monkey X more than someone making the same game in Unity. It's a mindset thing from being in this stuff for decades and I know the general gaming public certainly doesn't get that.


Why0Why(Posted 2015) [#15]
I bought the bundle and I have spent 8-10 hours watching various tutorials and experimenting. My background is strictly coding and I don't have much experience with things like gamemaker. My impression so far has been very, very favorable. It is extremely powerful. Most of the tutorials do hardly any drag and drop stuff. Create the object and then go in and add constructors, collisions, update loops, etc via code.

There is some behind the scenes OO stuff. You can make a monster class for example that has all of your base code and then assign it to "children"(they call it parenting.) And by default the child constructor doesn't work unless you specifically tell it to because it inherits all of its properties from the parent. The graphics, animation and spritesheet handling is also very good.

It is good enough so far that I have decided to focus on it almost exclusively right now and see what I can do. I am more excited about getting stuff done than I have been in awhile!


Sledge(Posted 2015) [#16]
I am more excited about getting stuff done than I have been in awhile!


That's what I found with it -- the most fun tool for developing games I've used. Treating code like just another resource that can be attached to things is very handy and I found that going from drag-n-drop testing to actual coding was a breeze. Whenever I start a project I'm always very tempted to use it.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#17]
@Why0Why That definitely sounds better than what I had seen which were primarily drag n drop then building simple behaviors again through a GUI. It was interesting in a novelty way. However, what you are describing sounds much better.

Definitely if a person wants to just get something done as fast as possible GMS may be great. I am all for that. I just am of two minds on it I guess. Half of me wants the thing that doesn't get in my way so I can just get stuff done and half of me has more appreciation for the greater technical skills required by someone making a game just coding it all themselves in Monkey X, C++ or whatever. Probably because for me the two merge in that just programming a game proved to also be the fastest most flexible way.

I might take a look at it this weekend based on what you said.


Arjailer(Posted 2015) [#18]
@Why0Why - what tutorials were you watching?


MikeHart(Posted 2015) [#19]
@Arjailer: This guy has some great ones, but there are many many more:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn7FE3Tx391g1tWPv-1tv7Q


MikeHart(Posted 2015) [#20]
Here ares some more I watched:

https://www.youtube.com/user/uheartbeast/videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/rm2kdev/videos


SLotman(Posted 2015) [#21]
I bought it mainly to see the sources... but Jesus! I was just browsing Spenlunky's source... and just to find WHERE the "lives" varible was, took me a looooong time.

And the IDE... OMG, the IDE... first time I opened, it was dark background with dark green texts... I couldn't read anything! O_o

Games for the C64 generally sell only around 500 copies these days

Woot! I wish my MSX games sold as much... I'd be doing them 24/7 :(

But it did make me think - what about getting Monkey into the "Humble Bundle" weekly deal.

Would be nice. Monkey + jungle + ignition + a number of games (I could offer my "Escape from Alcatraz", or some other game...) would be really nice.


Arjailer(Posted 2015) [#22]
@M.Hartlef - thanks!

I bought the bundle and want to give it a try :-)


Why0Why(Posted 2015) [#23]
I recommend the ones Mike suggested. I watched them.

@Garbenjamin
I understand what you mean. I honestly feel a little "dirty" using it. Like it isn't a "real" tool. That is just the programming snob in us :) If it does everything I want(I don't know that it does, but so far, so good) in a much more efficient way, then I would be stupid to not use it.

@Slotman
It definitely takes some getting used to. I have spent a few weeks with Unity as well and I found the structure similar. It helps to organize things the way you want. The biggest shift is having to plop code in different places. Although when I code in Monkey, I try to split my code into logical units per file so if a 3rd party looked at one of my projects, they would have to browse around multiple files to figure everything out.

I have been on the Blitz bandwagon for close to 15 years. I have bought almost everything Mark has released and I think he is a genius, so I am not here to proselytize for another product. I have a full time job, 3 kids and am active in church, so my time is super limited. I just need to make things as efficient as possible. So for me if it does what I need and is faster, then I need to use it. I also own the studio version of Monkey and I recently bought Pyro. I really like the direction it is going and Tony has a bunch of exciting things planned, so I am keeping up and will continue to use my Blitz products as well.


GarBenjamin(Posted 2015) [#24]
@Why0Why ha ha! That is quite a way to put it "the programming snob in us". lol I definitely get that and I think it is just a greater appreciation of the skills required when programming everything more than it is just being elitist or something along those lines. It's like appreciating an artist who is doing it all with a blank canvas, brushes and paint compared to someone doing it with a paint by numbers set. Perhaps a bit of an extreme example but you see what I mean I am sure.

On the other hand I do agree on the development speed side! Like I said when I first got here that is my driving force these days. Just to find the thing that allows me to develop the fastest while still having the flexibility I want. Dev speed is so important. The problem I ran into is every GUI style dev environment it takes more time to do the same thing and generally creates limitations to things that could be done fairly easy otherwise. At least that is how it seemed with Unity for 2D development anyway. I wasn't limited by Unity but it did make some things just more difficult or the workflow was more time-consuming. I definitely think Unity would make 3D game development much faster.

And it is quite likely that GMS will do the same thing for 2D game development. A person just needs to invest a week or three to wrap their mind around the GMS workflows and learn the environment and so forth. I haven't installed the new one I bought in the bundle yet. Instead I have spent my time so far this weekend checking out tons of youtube videos of C64 games I used to play long ago. LOL!

It has been a blast. Each time I'd think of one, look it up and while watching it would trigger a memory of another game or two so I would search for those as well. Those old machines had such a diverse library of games. There were many truly great games that would be cool to see even today. Of course, there were also many that were poorly implemented yet still were very interesting ideas. And a lot of them were just too dang difficult mainly for the PAL games because over here in USA all of those games ran 20% faster in NTSC and believe me that is a heck of an increase. Where things were likely timed very well for PAL mode for us it was dang near impossible to react fast enough. I am sure they helped improve our reflexes greatly though! :)

Anyway, then I started working on another game in Monkey X. Been wanting to make a little top down action RPG for quite a while and I thought why not make one now before making Mars Explorer in HaxeFlixel. MX is a fine language and seems to have strong web game support which is something I was looking for.