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[A_Fey_Dwarf]

Gamemaker is a program that allows you to easily create your own games using a simple interface and simple coding. For those of you who have never heard of it, here is the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Maker.
The reason I created this topic is because a friend of mine is developing a game in GM 6.0. I helped him on this project but since I am hopeless at GML I was more of an ideas man. His game, tactical tactics, in my opinion is brilliant but it hasn't been very successful because as it is strictly hotseat multiplayer game. It also has a steep learning curve as the controls are quite confusing.

Here it is: http://www.gamemakergames.com/?a=view&id=6415
 It is a strategy with its own map editor. At the moment you will need to make a map before playing. What do you think of it? What needs to be improved on?

I was also wondering if there are any GM pro's here on this forum. What can you suggest?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Simple tools warrant making simple games. For anything sufficiently complex, you need something equally complex. For a tactical TBS/Wargame, you could use The War Engine. For something nonspecific, you could always learn to code in something like Dark Basic or Blitz Basic.

[Tahin]

I used to use Game Maker, up until my switch to Ubuntu. Now I'm scrambling to learn C, and failing miserably. Oh, and I used to be pretty proficient with GML.

[Sowelu]

Tahin:  The single biggest challenge with learning C is finding a good graphics library (and maybe IDE) to use.  Any C programming course you might take either makes you write simple text-based things, or gives you an IDE and graphics library specifically to work with.  If you're starting on your own, it's damn hard to get graphics working.

Still, C is the single best thing you could hope to learn for game-writing.

You're on Ubuntu?  You might want to try getting "curses" to work.  It's the standard C terminal library that historical roguelikes used.  It can be hard to get something curses-like to work on windows though.  SDL is a good library for more general purpose graphics stuff.

Of course, nobody says you need to learn on graphics.  Go download the source to a MUD or something and screw around with it, that's a good way to learn C.


...Getting back on-topic I've never seen Game Maker before but it looks kind of neat, but I also remember the nightmare that was Klik 'N Play.  It truly ravaged the world.  Never again.  :x  But at least Game Maker seems to allow actual programming, so cool!

[Lazer Bomb]

Is Gamemaker anything like The Games Factory? I was pretty good at that, even though I only got the free trial then deleted everything every 30 days.

[qwertyuiopas]

C works fine.
Pure opengl for graphics works(mostly).

I have seen game maker and it looks okay, but it appears to run slower that it could...

I know that a great example of it would be battleships forever, although it is currently being moved onto a more powerful game engine.

[Tahin]

I've been playing around with curses. More than anything, I just don't have a solid understanding of C, which limits me in figuring out how to use libraries. I've been messing around a little bit with SDL, too, though to a lesser amount. I'm much more interested in minimalistic text-based stuff, anyway, so curses is perfect for me. It's just that some of the C stuff makes no sense to me.

[Keiseth]

I played a (great) game made with Game Maker once called "Samurai Railroad Mansion" -- as part of a Random Name contest. Simple but fun, yet... it used I think 300mb of RAM for some absurd reason (according to the Windows task manager.) Is that a flaw with GM or the game itself?

I've been playing around with curses. More than anything, I just don't have a solid understanding of C, which limits me in figuring out how to use libraries. I've been messing around a little bit with SDL, too, though to a lesser amount. I'm much more interested in minimalistic text-based stuff, anyway, so curses is perfect for me. It's just that some of the C stuff makes no sense to me.

Same. I started with C++ and SDL, and now I'm using primarily C++ and PDCurses. I don't know why, but it's so much more fun to make a game in ASCII. There are, I think, several programmers on this forum, I think if you started a topic with a few questions they* would be happy to help out!

*(I say "they" instead of "we" because I'm more likely to make things worse, hehe. When it comes to spaghetti code, I can be a real pastamancer.)

[Tahin]

I played a (great) game made with Game Maker once called "Samurai Railroad Mansion" -- as part of a Random Name contest. Simple but fun, yet... it used I think 300mb of RAM for some absurd reason (according to the Windows task manager.) Is that a flaw with GM or the game itself?

I've been playing around with curses. More than anything, I just don't have a solid understanding of C, which limits me in figuring out how to use libraries. I've been messing around a little bit with SDL, too, though to a lesser amount. I'm much more interested in minimalistic text-based stuff, anyway, so curses is perfect for me. It's just that some of the C stuff makes no sense to me.

Same. I started with C++ and SDL, and now I'm using primarily C++ and PDCurses. I don't know why, but it's so much more fun to make a game in ASCII. There are, I think, several programmers on this forum, I think if you started a topic with a few questions they* would be happy to help out!

*(I say "they" instead of "we" because I'm more likely to make things worse, hehe. When it comes to spaghetti code, I can be a real pastamancer.)

Game maker games tend to be pretty bloated, if I remember correctly, but it's still a nice tool for just hammering a simple game out in a few hours.

And I might just try that.

[qwertyuiopas]

I managed to get a full 80 by 40 text/tile display in opengl using the DF font.
It also gives me any color text on any color background.

I have not made anything out of it yet, but if you want it...

[Cthulhu]

When I was like eleven I made a game with GameMaker, called Samurai Jim.  You were this stick figure who threw massive daggers(They were as big as him, but later I made them smaller) at the enemies.  The first level was just a maze-like thing, where you fought ghosts, and then a zombie, there was a jeep at the end of the level, and it took you into a desert, where you killed more ghosts, and then a dragon boss that would kill you in one hit, and took 20 hits to kill.  The third level was another maze, this one ending in a helicopter you had to shoot down with a jeep.  Fourth level was the boss, this giant guy who shot fireballs, and then the game was over.

Maybe I should download GameMaker again.

[Wiles]

...Getting back on-topic I've never seen Game Maker before but it looks kind of neat, but I also remember the nightmare that was Klik 'N Play.  It truly ravaged the world.  Never again.  :x  But at least Game Maker seems to allow actual programming, so cool!

I remember making a klik 'n play game when I was younger 

I think it involved killer flying weasels...

I also fiddled around with RPGMAKER 2000 a long time ago.

[Cthulhu]

That was another fun one.  I only managed to finish the first dungeon there, I wasn't very good with it.  Of course, it was a long time ago, the only thing that would probably stop me now is lack of interest in finishing it.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

OK you need to make a multiplayer isometric tactical game where the terrain can be deformed by spells and attacks. THAT WOULD ROCK SO HARD GARBLEHEHEG

And players could take turns setting up pieces of the battlefield in the opening phase. So no two maps would end up the same. Or you could use pregenerated ones.

[Cthulhu]

And the pieces are customizable, with a large library of sprites.  It could be completely open-structured, with no actual rules.

Call it, Tacitus...

It could actually work, it'd be so empty of structure it'd take like a day to make in GameMaker.  It's not too terribly likely, but I just might try this if I get bored enough.