Alright, for quite a while now I have turned my nose up at anyone that decides to use GameMaker instead of coding. Now I don’t know much about the program so I would certainly not like to go around like this if you have to code while using the tool, so what are everybody’s thoughts on it? Are they to lazy to code? Is it a useful tool to get things done fast and easy? Or something else? Go at it 
It is a very high-level game generator (I’ve used it, very shortly, once), but it does allow for editing in C, I believe.
Do you think that people that use it to make games extensively don’t want to spend their time learning to code? For a while I presumed they were just too lazy… I hope I am incorrect
GameMaker can be great in many cases, just to toy around with things and see what you can do with it.
I’d think of it as a bit of a learning tool, to see how skyboxes essentially work, how terrain is created, etc.
Hey, makes sense. Any other opinions?
I like GameMaker well and I think it is so useful to learn how a game is working with the events and some predefined actions. It suits well for beginners and for people who want to develop games without coding (with less). The language is so nice but since it’s an interpreted one, I feel the game runs slight slow than to the native compiled games. Actually try this, the script can be in C like syntax and also in VB like syntax. For example,
{
// A comment
}
is equal to
begin
// A comment
end
Infact, I’m trying to build my own GameMaker like tool and hence GameForge. I’m currently stuck at writing a working translator to translate the GML code to my valid C# code based in the premade engine.
Oh so it actually uses its own language! And good luck on your engine, it sounds like no small undertaking.
While good for newbie (and occasionally novice) projects, to actually make a decent game you have to get into GML anyway.
So you might as well learn a programming language and have all the tools available to you.
Agreed
well it’s just a tool, it has it’s limit but also has benefits specially for non-programmers, however, till now i didn’t saw any successful/commercial game build completely with game maker (DustForce prototype was created with GameMaker but then they wrote their own engine)
so i think the “lazy-to-code” cannot be true because real game developer who want to develop successful games must have programmers on their team to do the coding, and i really don’t think that there is a programmer that don’t want to code (lazy) otherwise he is not a programmer :emo:
so in my opinion GameMaker is a great tool for young people to get into game development (i used it when i was 13 ;D ) also for designers to show their prototypes, so shortly, it’s not meant for programmers, cause you know …
programmers are the best 8) ! YEAH !!
what ever : …
Made my first games with Game Maker version 3 something. Had a few epiphanies with it. Haven’t used it in years (8+), not since Version 5.3 I believe. Now it’s owned by some company and I’m not sure the original author is any longer developing for it (Mark Overmars).
You could do platform games quite easily and with GML (Game Maker Language) you could really make professional ones too. It always lacked in it’s portability though, although that’s probably changed, and if you wanted to do anything fast you’d need to code a dll for GM to use. Multiplayer for instance was horrendously ineffective so everyone used the 39dll (which was made by a user called 39ster iirc). With that I made my first functioning mmo with sprites ripped from zelda games. I was very proud of it.
AAaaanyway, Game Maker got me into the fun of making games as opposed to playing them.
Don’t know how it’s like today but I think I’d prefer libGDX with what I already know. However, for a beginner I can imagine GM being something perfectly reasonable and preferable. As long as you don’t dream of making 3D games or mmo’s :))
I think of GM simply as a different approach to making games that’s no different from using a different language or a different framework or library. Not that someone is too lazy learning to code; but rather, those who use it simply embrace whatever advantages or disadvantages it may present and see it as the most efficient way for them to make games.
Two of the more known games to have been made with Game Maker are Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Jonatan “Cactus” Söderström’s Hotline Miami — and both are great games. IIRC, Derek Yu is a Computer Science graduate though he doesn’t consider himself a good programmer, and using Game Maker enables him to create the games that he creates in spite of that. Another well-respected game designer - Anna Antropy - has said that discovering Game Maker in 2004 was life changing for her and has empowered her to create games in the way that she believes they should be made.
So based on what I know about it and having seen games that have been made with it, I would say it’s a powerful and useful tool. Even for those that like coding their games, it can serve as a means for fast prototyping. For those not so good at programming, it can simplify the game-making process a bit. It simplifies programming but doesn’t eliminate it. You still need to be fairly skilled and knowledgeable at programming to make a game in game maker. Engines save time by eliminating the need to code low-level stuff like collision checking, pathfinding, sprite animation, etc., but you still always need to code game logic, entity behavior, AI and so on… no engine can eliminate that need as far as I know.
Not 100% sure how serious this post is, but fwiw, there are been a handful of good games which were critically and commercially successful, created with GM:
Spelunky
Stealth Bastard Deluxe
Gunpoint <<< this was just released this week, looks fun, has been selling very well and is getting great reviews
Hotline Miami
Immortal Defense
Also, Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter) makes a lot of their games on GM, and a lot of their games have been successful as well.
The problem is that GM is so restrictive.
While it’s not as restrictive as big publishers, it’s not as much freedom as there should be. 
It’s not because the creators of GM are evil, it’s just an issue balancing ease of use and freedom of use.
I guess one of the major points of consideration that will always come with choosing an approach to making a game will be the balance of freedom/flexibility vs. ease/speed. I found that with LibGDX, some find it with Game Maker, others find it with LWJGL and some create their own engines from base/pure Java — not that one approach/tool/framework is better than the other, it’s just a matter of finding what works best for your goal and what gets the job done.
Creating your own engine, while it may take a while at the start, in the long term is far more productive and less restrictive.
If someone was crazy enough to create a their own OpenGL binding, they would be far more efficient at graphics coding than all of us using LWJGL/JOGL and for some, LibGDX on top of that.
I don’t think so, not always. It depends from case to case. If some people are able to turn their vision of their game concept into a reality in the time-frame that they want to with Game Maker… and their philosophy for making games is complemented by something like Game Maker… then using Game Maker would be the best choice for those people.
Fun fact: When I was 10, I once used GameMaker to make a Pacman game
Apparently some studios use GameMaker, if you want a TINY bit of proof, here’s a video a few of us might have once saw when we got into game development:
In all honesty, I hated this video.
c0o6BPYKBiA