Hello! Momfus here with the second Project NN Dev Diary. I’m the main programmer of Crios Devs, and if you don’t know much about our new game, you can read our previous post here.
In this second chapter I want to talk to you about a very controversial topic and something my colleagues always ask me: Why am I using Game Maker Studio 2?

So first, I’m going to give you a little introduction about the engine. Game Maker Studio 2 is an engine for video games, especially oriented to 2D (you can do 3D but the engine does not specialize in that, and there are others engines more suitable for 3D). This tool originally made to teach programming was created in 1999 using the Delphi language. By the middle of the 2000 it was changing and taking new versions, until Yoyo Games acquired the license and began to use the C ++ language.

If you are interested, there are historical data on how the engine evolved (I left the info here) but the actual version is GameMaker Studio 2, which has a fundamental change in the interface of use of the tool and better support. You can “program” with a methodology called “Drag & Drop” wich make the  engine very popular; but the most important thing (and what I recommend) is to use its own language called GML (Game Maker Language). To give you an idea, is a mixture of C with Javascript. The engine currently allows export to various platforms: PC (Linux, Mac and Windows), Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Web, Android, iOS and more.

Now that you know a bit about the tool, let’s move on to the most important thing: what are the weak points of the engine? What is good about Game Maker? It’s so different or inferior to the other development engines?
All I’m going to say is my personal experience and remember that no matter what engine you use, the most important thing is that you should make your choice according to your objectives and the type of product you want to develop. Each graphic engine has it’s strengths and weaknesses and if it is well used, incredible results can be achieved.

STRONG POINTS

• It has a very friendly and intuitive interface.
• Specialized in 2D development.
• Solutions can be prototyped very quickly and intuitively
• There is a very good english community to search for solutions, as well as tutorials by Patreon, YouTube and other media; as Shaun Spanding, HeartBeast or FiendlyCosmonaut
• It has a very good integration with git and internal tools (the editors of sprites and rooms are very good and integrated)
• It has integration with Steam Api, Amazon, Twitch and more.
• Market of very good assets like Tweenline, that improve some shortcomings that the engine has.
• Discord community and free repositories to use.
• If your game has commercial potential, yoyogames itself makes you a publisher.
• Very good debugging mode.
• The engine has future growth projection, adding new improvements (view roadmap)
• It has a very complete manual and in several languages (you can see it here)
• Some examples and complete base tutorials to get started in the use of the engine

WEAK POINTS

• The free license is very limited and makes many people move away and use other engines
• It only supports GML (you can not alternate with another language like unity or godot) although libraries and aggregates can be made in javascript, python, c, c ++, etc.
• The marketing of YoYo Games is bad, the problems are fixed by the community before the official support.
• It’s weakly typed. This produces that sometimes is difficult to find errors and previous statements (learn more about this here)
• Network connection, online multiplayer game and 3D, needs more work to function efficiently.
• GUI not very adaptable, unlike Unity and Godot.
• Thinking “event-oriented” instead of “object-oriented” can be confusing if you come from an environment such as Java or C #
• Lack of an internal editor and specific scripts for animations.
• The Spanish-speaking community of GMS is not very collaborative.

Having objectively commented on the strengths and weaknesses of Game Maker Studio 2, these are the reasons why I chose it against other engines:

• Experience using the engine
• The game we want to make is 2D
• There is a history of successful games with mechanics and genre similar to ours.
• YoYo Games makes constant updates and improvements.

As you will see, like other engines it has several strengths and several weak points. But depending on the product you want to make and the preferences that you have in terms of programming, Game Maker can be an excellent choice. Especially if you are starting, but this doesn’t mean that professional and commercial games cannot be made with this engine. And now I show you a list of successful and profitable games that were developed with Game Maker.

• Undertale
• Hotline Miami
• The Swords Of Ditto
• NidHogg
• Nuclear Throne
• Va-11 Hall-a
• Rivals of Aether
• The Red String Club
• Super Hydorah
• Maldita Castilla
• Gods Will Be Watching
• Gunpoint
• Death’s Gambit
• Spelunky
• Hyper Light Drifter

Again, everything depends on the type of product you want to make and your preferences, the important thing is the programmer and not the tool. Game Maker like many others is very useful and you can develop great video games. I hope I have managed to eliminate some prejudices regarding Game Maker and if not, I hope to convince you through the development of our project.
To follow our progress you can subscribe to the sidebar of this post and if you have any questions that we can answer you, leave us a comment or send us a message, I would love to hear your opinions.


Goodbye and good gaming!

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