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[UPDATED] Tutorial: Getting Started With Fangame Development

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Katz:

--- Quote from: lawatson on August 18, 2015, 08:09:44 AM ---I've been sticking with 8.1 for quite a while, and it looks like there's a lot of technical weird changes in Studio, but Studio has shaders and new functions as well as a lot more extensions on the gamemaker community, so I would suggest Studio to be your engine.

--- End quote ---

The graphical aspect could might as well be foundational to the game's "wow" effect. IIRC a lot of the effects included in the Hotline Miami franchise were replicated in a similar fashion using Studio. Like this.

Studio's definitely the way to go if the engine's stable.

Derf:
I'll be honest with you: if you're just starting out it doesn't matter all that much.

I use GM 8.0 and have done since it came out; I get on just fine with it and for the most part I don't find a whole lot is out of my grasp. You'll either need 8.1 to run the Seph/Lemon engines or have to use this nifty program on the .gm81 files to turn them into 8.0 compatible .gmk files.

What lawatson is talking about with "weird technical changes" between Studio and the GM 8.0 range is that many features of the latter have been deprecated as the manufacturers of the program shifted their attention from a application that could produce windows games to an application that could produce a range of games on different operating systems and devices. Many functions in GM 8.0 are only really applicable to producing games for windows, for instance the ability to execute dos shells from within GM, so these are predominantly the ones that have been removed. The main change however is to do with something called "sandboxing", which refers to the fact that Studio is unable to save or load files outside of the games main directory which is forced into the hidden %appdata% folder; long story short, in many ways it limits file manipulation as a games producer and pares down/removes many useful functions. Here's a list of all functions that have been deprecated, though I'm not sure how much this will mean to you. What I will say to round this point about deprecation up is that while some of these functions are cool, the vast majority did need to be deprecated as they are now useless/obsolete and not only that but if you're just beginning it's unlikely you'd be experimenting with much of that stuff anyway, so it's likely to be inconsequential.

Studio however, is imo a much better program than GM 8.0. A lot of new features are nice and useful, the gui is similar but much more user friendly and, as Katz said, there are shaders which are cool graphical effects you can find examples of on gmc everywhere. The only reason I stick to GM 8.0 is because I use some of the old functions and right now it's not feasible for me to move back to Studio even though I have used it to much success for projects in the past, including an interactive HTML5 game which is sadly no longer with us.

The way I see it is like this:

GM 8.0/8.1 & Seph/Lemon engines:
+Robust engines with a lot of community support, proper physics and nifty features.
+GM 8.0/8.1 games tend to run on a wide range of windows computers.
+No deprecated functions.
-No shaders or new functions.
-Rusty but usable GUI.
-Impossible to obtain legally unless you bought previous.

GM:Studio + Studio engine:
+Lots new functions with constant updates to software.
+More user-friendly GUI.
+Standard version is free.
-However it has a splash screen advertising Game Maker that you cannot remove.
-Good engine but not as many features as Seph/Lemon and there are complaints about the physics which can turn some people away.
-Games published this way have a tendency not to run on older windows machines.


For me the distinction comes down to this: GM 8.0/8.1 is better if your main focus is to create IWBTG games as the engines are better and there's more community support for them, but if your main focus is just games in general then GM:Studio is by far the best choice and a nice way to future-proof yourself as it's constantly being updated. I want to end this by reiterating my original statement though: if you're just getting into it then shaders and deprecated functions etc won't mean a lot to you and won't really affect your game designing process at all, so either option is completely viable and fruitful.

Hope this helps!

infern0man1:
The latest version of Lemon's engine works with 8.0, just an FYI.

Kyir:
There's no reason to not use GMS. Just politely request someone who has the full version to compile it for you if you can't deal with the load screen on the free version.

Wolsk:
The reason not to use GMS is that the engine isn't complete, so the physics still have some issues.
I've been wanting to start on a fangame, but I won't until the Studio engine is improved.

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