Today, the popular 2D development tool GameMaker has announced Windows 8 and Windows 8 Phone support. Windows 8 support for Game Maker: Studio will be available on October 26; Windows Phone 8 support will follow when the devices themselves launch, later this year.
That's just the latest in a raft of improvements that began with the May release of the latest edition of the software, GameMaker: Studio.
"GameMaker's been around a long time," says Sandy Duncan, CEO of Yoyo Games, which acquired the tool in 2006. "Really, we didn't do that much with it for about three years," he admits.
While some significant indie games have been made with the engine, including the original PC versions of Derek Yu's Spelunky and Vlambeer's Super Crate Box, the product was losing steam.
"You look at guys like Derek Yu and Vlambeer, for example," says Duncan. "Those guys have been disappointed, in a way, that we haven't kept the technology moving for them.
We've caught up with them, in a funny way," he says.The Current State of GameMakerGameMaker: Studio, which works with OS X and Windows, and which builds to those platforms for no additional charge has been bolstered by $199.99 plug-ins which allow it to build to iOS, Android, and, soon, Windows Phone 8. HTML5 costs $99.99.
The company has also recruited DMA Design co-founders Russell Kay and Mike Dailly to head its tech team.
"What I have is a core of a tech team who are guys not just with games industry experience, but they go back to the point when you had to work hard to get a game to work on different device," says Duncan.
"We now really concentrate and focus on what Studio does." That's a "fast," extensible, 2D-only tool for creating games that even non-coders can use with a mixture of drag-and-drop and scripting.
The affordability of the base tool -- which costs $99.99 if you intend to build commercial games on it -- is what attracts developers. While the company has only sold 5,000 to 6,000 commercial licenses since Studio was launched in May, Duncan estimates "we're adding 1,000 or 2,000 a month."
"Everyone focuses on how to monetize and distribute games," says Duncan, but they miss another key cost: "If it's fast development, it's cheaper."
And the engine also seamlessly builds both native apps and HTML5 versions, too -- "There's nothing in the HTML5 spec that affects games that the developer is exposed to with GameMaker, and so you write your game, you write it whether it's running on anything and it works," he says, sidestepping the issues with the standard (though WebGL is required, meaning its HTML5 games will not work on Internet Explorer.)
The company is now trying to make the tool as simple and transparent as it can for developers, and add options. For example, 11 "dropdown" packages now allow developers to add ads (from various companies) or analytics (from Flurry) to their games.The Future: "As Big as Unity"Duncan also promises "better support, more community features, field engineers, tutorials" -- "stuff we've done a bit of, but not enough of."
"We're all about delivering stuff to the devs, because they'll make our business for us if we use the tech," says Duncan.
Though Duncan maintains that Studio has taken big steps since May, the engine isn't quite there yet, so to speak.
Extensions don't work with mobile games, just yet, for example, because "the way that GameMaker compiles today, you would break the iOS rules," but the company plans to implement the Apple-favored LLVM compiler late this year to change that, in a change that should otherwise be transparent for its user base.
It also plans to add support for Ubuntu Linux versions of its games "really soon". Other additions are more airy: "We're pretty interested in smart TV stuff," says Duncan, who notes that "it only takes us a few weeks to move to a new platform."
What won't come is a focus on anything but 2D game development. "We don't attempt to be 3D; we never will be. The simplicity of game making is destroyed when you go to 3D," he says.
Duncan was clearly enthused and optimistic about the rising fortunes of the software package -- he teased a new distribution agreement that will make it "the most vitally used tool by Q1 next year."
By next Christmas, he wagers, "we'd be at least as big as" Unity.
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As a game developer I've found GameMaker frustrating and always used to go for "my own tools" as you guys are saying. Lately I was working on something called Mixow (www.mixow.com). A online and simplified version of GameMaker. Here is one example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX4Sx1-i_6k.
My voice sucks, but I'll love to know your thoughts on this. I'm even planning to make the whole editor open source and invite community to build more "behaviors" plugins or custom rules for the game.
Tech wise it's Raphael (No redraw on render, works with IE6+) + SVG + Box2D + newton.js (a tiny 2d game engine - may shift to Cocos2D.js/Crafty.js or whatever)
-Cheers
Deb
I spend at least a week in Game Maker just throwing around ideas I think would be fun before I even open Visual Studio.
I tried, oh how I tried, but they were just too slow and crashed over and over and over.
Still, I dare hope that they will improve. I'll wait to try them again until I read rave reviews from hundreds of people about the stability and speed. Until then it's just "we're working on that" and "we've got alot of great ideas in the pipeline". Unh-huh.
Also. Corona is not too bad either...(not perfect though)
I would still love to see GM "grow up" a little, but Yoyo has had a poor track record in the past w/r to advancing the product. That said I hope they make good on their current promises.
But on to matters of software; As I see it, Game Maker differential is how it makes solo development easy, thanks to its integration of all the resources of a game with very little fussle. But instead the new versions dilute its potential, because, while its great for prototyping, it cries on longer project development, thanks to its instable engine, poor debug tools, and far too much invisible processes even if you're working with pure code.
Don't get me wrong; Its an incredible tool, easy to learn and incredibly versatile; but there is lots of room for improvement, which was promised to come thick and quick with the 8.1 version, that updates automatically. But no improvements, no even to the interface, were made.
1. It needs to be fixed so that variables are initialized before use. Can't tell you how many times I've written something like 'gravityModifeir = gravityModifier * currentWeight + 12' and then didn't understand why gravityModifier never changed.
2. It needs a MUCH better system for collaboration. Basically now, you can't collaborate at all. Needs to integrate with source safe.
3. Needs a much better debugger, with break points.
4. Needs to be compatible with multiple monitors.
If it had those things, I might think about using it instead of Unity, but I'm loving me some Unity.
This may be interesting: http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/GameMaker:Studio_Roadmap
However in the about 16 hours in GameMaker I made a very quick and stupid PvZ style tower defense using the Drag and Drop. I've also started my first real project using GML exclusively and everything is so much fun at the moment. Big week long national holiday coming up so I hope to finish the core gameplay during that time.
It sounds like an awful marketing slogan but game making really has never been so much fun. That's why I like Game Maker. I have no CS background, I stumbled into Game Design through the social space and now I want to make up for lost time and start making prototypes and fun mechanics without years of training. Learning that Spelunky and Super Crate Box were built in Game Maker has just sweetened the pie. I thought it was a toy before, but if you can make critically acclaimed games in it then it's a good enough engine for me.
Until I want to upgrade to something 'proper'
For instance, in GameMaker, you can just set the opacity of any object. It's a built-in variable.
In Unity, you have to make sure that your object has a material whose shader allows for transparencies. Then you have to access the material component of your object, then set the alpha. Just as functional, but slightly more complicated.
I still think Unity is incredibly easy to use - and a better engine overall - but GameMaker is easier.
Personally I prefer XNA for my 2D projects, but I can hardly say its the Unity of 2D since it has no fancy interface to make things easy for artists or people new to C#. XNA with an Editor Window would be a fun project to work on though! :3
After how they treated me I will never trust them again...
At least, they pushed me to learn Lua, and now I work with Corona and I am proud of it :) (also Novashell, for PC).
They had one in the past so they know its possible and if they really want to allow iOS devs to do their job there is just no reasonable way around it (that network remote access stuff is inacceptable. Thats even worse than Air to iOS and UDK LLVM cross compile)
Spent most of last year building a full 2D game in Unity, and contrary to claims made above the 3rd-party sprite management tools are intuitive, powerful, and fit nicely into the pipeline.
It's also amusing how rapidly last year's outrage over GameMaker has dissipated.
Having said all that, the more tools there are the better for everyone who wants to make a game. Just pointing out that comparisons like this are kinda asinine.
P.S. I'm totally biased.
As far as Unity and 2D goes: its extremely powerfull. But it still has one major drawback and thats that the subset of PhysX features implemented + the fact that its always 3D and never 2D make it just 'less suitable' for 2D physics titles as its a massive effort to get trivialities like ropes going (its impossible with pure physx as joint chains will overshoot mathematically).
Thats a thing that seriously helps GameMaker but so does it Corona which I consider more powerfull if you do just iOS + Android.
If you do it for all platforms then GameMaker is surely a major player (its the only 2D tech that supports android, ios, soon WP8 as well as html5 canvas and win - osx) and it always had a superb expandability.
Unluckily it lost its major appeal it had under Mark Overmars lead in the old days and thats an unbeatable price. At the current price they have to speed up seriously, in terms of releases and in terms of features and bug freeness. And as mentioned before, naturally also on getting the IDE to osx, without it its worthless as a wanna be iOS - OSX tech for its intended userbase which is obviously 'nonprogrammers'