Elysian Shadows

Sup, New to the forums just signed up today.. watched all the adventures.. series pretty cool.. pretty cool to see not typical nerd dudes making video games, no offence to nerds. BUt yea.. I like games somewhat im a artist or at least I can draw well and im in school for it so I like visual arts and such and I always liked the idea of making my own games.. im not a programmer but I dabbled in Gamemaker in my teen days about 23 now.. I like Game maker i guess but its hard as heck to learn GmL the programming language beacuse there are no books on it and the only way to learn is by tutorials or such and thats just frustrating. So is there anyone who uses Game maker? how did you learn? or what do u use? is it worth learning for like hobby gamemaking? is there any thing better for hobby gamemaking?

Welcome to the forums, Game Maker is rather shunned by most 'real' developers. There are lots of reasons behind this, if you are just looking at game making as a hobby in your spare time it's fine but don't expect any companies to take an interest in it, in fact it might actually be construde as a bad thing if you put game maker on a resume. Also GML is better termed a scripting language then a programming language. If you are really interested in programming learning C++ would be a good idea, though the effort and commitment is significantly steeper then learning how to use a tool like game maker. Using C++ or another programming language isn't all you will need to learn if you are interested in games development either. You would also need to learn some form of graphics API and/or how to interact with one or more operating system/or other libraries. Game maker is also considered on the easy end of things in terms of making games as it hides so much from the user and is not very streamline.

So before continueing ask yourself what route you want to take. The simple click and play games, or the high commitment games. Making a game with a programming language such as C++ won't be nearly as easy as making a game with game maker. It will however be quicker, allow for more development control and give you a skill set that is quite respectable when looking for a job (C++ is a general purpose programming language). If you are having trouble with GML there is an index of functions under the help button. If you attempt to learn some basic programming in Java, C++, C or any othe C derived language you will likely gain a fair amount of insite into how you can go about structuring GML code. Look into itteration (loops) and if then else statements.

Also If your not really interested in C++ you could try a language thats higher level... (I think Visual Basic is higher level then C++)

zeid wrote:Game Maker is rather shunned by most 'real' developers.

True statement. Resort to ANYTHING but Gamemaker. OR WE SHALL SHUN YOU!

Bludklok wrote:Also If your not really interested in C++ you could try a language thats higher level... (I think Visual Basic is higher level then C++)
)

I wouldn't recommend VB as a means of programming games, if we were talking BASIC, I would try a more game-oriented BASIC language such as DarkBASIC or blitz BASIC (no prior experience of the latter)

If you wanted to learn how to program and to make a game(and hell, it would even look good on a resume as the americans call it)
C# might be a good bet, combined with the XNA game studio you could learn both the concepts of programing and also the basic mechanics of game development.

I say this, yet i've never really tried XNA and given it a fair run, but I have tried Visual C#, and it's quite neat for getting applications up and running fast, although my preferred language is C++ (and my university is going to tech java, so i'm exploring that too)

hope this helped.

ha shunned huh?.. lol.. yea ive looked at some basic programs seemed pretty useable It would be cool to learn C++ but i dunno if i wanna invest every hour to learn it but maybe. good ideas thanks

I think the term 'shunned' was a very tough one, I admire all people who are trying their best to make games.

The only thing I would say is, for the most part, the site consists of programmers, some sound engineers and artists, so if you were to learn gamemaker or RPGmaker, would wouldnt really be able to help you much with these programs, as we are mainly a programming community, we deal in algorithms and programming techniques, but don't let that discourage you in any way from still participating on these forums, the more the merrier

The bottom line is, making games is hard work, and whether or not your programming or using a hobbyist game development package like game maker, you have to be prepared to put in the work, even if it is just now and then, things will get difficult, you may will encounter errors (in programming, likely syntax or logic errors, in Game Maker, probably the same if you're using it's scripting features, if it has any)

But I wish you all the luck

correctelly deddally... I don't know why I typed that... Anyways, yeah PIPs right, we focus on code and art, we don't use gamemaker here, we make our own gamemakers! But if you just want to do some games for fun and practice art then gamemaker is for you!

You can show us your art here, in fact we'd much appreciate it! Especially if you'll let us use it in games or maybe help us with some art But we can't help you much on game maker theory.

I read the game maker manual,you can either open GM and click contents in the help menu or go here:
http://gamemaker.info/en/manual

It also really helped me learn by going on these forums here:
http://www.kinsures.ipbfree.com/
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/

Pickzell wrote:

To answer the OP's question, Pickzell is our resident Game Maker user.

We flame scare make him nervous to post and ask for help I mean, we, uh ... help him on a regular basis nevermind. :)