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GameMaker vs Unity vs other? (Read 647 times)
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prolow
Newbie
Posts: 6
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I'm pretty new to programming, and game design for that mater, and I'd like to work out some prototypes for a few game ideas I've had rolling around, some 3d some 2d, though all the 3d ones could be initially done in 2d to get the concepts worked out assuming it's faster to work in 2d, from a programming perspective.
All that being said, what would you all suggest as a quick and easy format for a code novice to use to work out game ideas? -GameMaker, Unity, or some thing else?
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hymerman
Global Moderator
Gamedev guru
Posts: 6750
booboo-be-doo
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Unity seems an excellent fit for your needs, it'll get you off the ground quickly and is pretty powerful. I'd recommend it over GameMaker, at any rate. Next best thing you might not have thought of is XNA, which might be worth a look.
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LittleCodingFox
Full Member
Posts: 107
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Side Note: I think it should be said that game maker is, as the name implies, a Maker program. And like many Maker programs, it's very limited.
However, Unity is a game engine + Integrated Development Environment in the form of an editor, which is much more flexible (as in, you can do plenty more things with Unity than using a maker program since it's far more extensible or customizable), and you can even get the Indie version for free with most of the features you'll find on the professional version, while the free version of Maker programs either have a time limit or a limit on most of their features.
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walkingfish
Newbie
Posts: 3
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I must disagree with the two posts above concerning the question wether GameMaker is a good development tool or not: it absolutely is! Instead of what a lot of people think YoYoGames GM in its current 8th installment may look like Click & Play but on closer inspection you will find out that it is much more than that.
Beneath the surface GM offers an object orientated programming language (called GML) which allows for any 2D game (including multiplayer games) to be developed and even 3D titles (though I must admit that support here is only rudimentary but 3D was never the authors intention). I´ve worked with it for several years now and can´t recommend it strongly enough for beginners because you can start developing right away without any knowledge of coding and then dig deeper step by step - something that will definitely help you on the way to making good games.
The IDE is well organized and allows for a smooth workflow, allowing you to create games for any Windows platform. And if you take into account that GM is also a very stable application and comes at only $25 for a full license (the demo version is absolutely free) you should definitely give it a try, especially when you need quick results to evaluate your design ideas. Sorry if I step on somebodys toes with this but taking GM for childsplay is quite a common misconception - don't fall into that trap ;-)
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LittleCodingFox
Full Member
Posts: 107
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Last time i checked, and that was last year, mind you. Though i can't remember if it was Game Maker 8 and a lot may have changed since then, GML can get incredibly slow, only supports 2 data types (double and string), doesnt support structures or classes (therefore isnt as object oriented as you expect), and can import DLLs but they can only work with doubles and strings too.
And believe it or not, flexibility and extensibility is very important in game development, which is where makers are usually very limited on. If you want to make anything serious, there's a chance that Game Maker, or pretty much any other maker program, isnt really what's best for you. For one thing, i'd hate to work on raw doubles instead of structures for 2D/3D vectors.
Take unity for instance. Unity lets you work with multiple languages that were previously created for pretty much any application development, which makes it very good for extensibility and flexibility. And by that i mean that their languages werent created exclusively for Unity. There are standalone versions of them.
Unity also supports plenty more features than GameMaker, and it supports both 2D and 3D development of games. And there's no demo version of Unity, it's all free. Sure, there's the Professional version, but you can do plenty more with Unity any day.
You can also deploy your games for multiple platforms, not exclusively the PC. This way you can also spread your games all over, unlike GameMaker that is limited to Windows.
That's pretty much it i've got to say. Consider both sides carefully, and dont get tempted to try something just because it looks "easier". You'll be happy you didnt.
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walkingfish
Newbie
Posts: 3
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All you say is correct, LittleCodingFox, but this is the Beginners board and prolow clearly stated that he is new to programming. And I´m not sure if a highly complex tool like Unity is the right start for a code novice. I'd say spare yourself the rocket science (at least for the moment) and start with something simple like GM (http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/). Max GML out and then go for the "serious" engines like Unity or XNA. That way you will have a solid foundation on how game creation works and what to look for in the perfect solution for your design needs.
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LittleCodingFox
Full Member
Posts: 107
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Disclaimer: Whenever i refer to game makers with capital letters ("Game Maker"), i'm referring to game maker. Everything else, i'm referring to game makers in a global manner.
I´m not sure if a highly complex tool like Unity is the right start for a code novice.
Unity is used both by coders and artists, so i wouldnt call it highly complex or bad for novices.
That way you will have a solid foundation on how game creation works and what to look for in the perfect solution for your design needs.
Except you forget that everywhere in the world, game development is done with very different languages, very different concepts, and very different idioms than Game Makers.
You won't have a solid foundation on how game creation works. You'll have a solid foundation on how Game Maker works. Every maker works differently, and believe it or not they're all very very different from actual game creation.
Makers hide a lot of details, which "real" game development tools/libraries don't try to, mainly because those details are important in any game, which brings back the topic on flexibility. You want to make a game the way you want to, not the very specific way game makers force you to.
That's why generally speaking, everyone dislikes game makers in the end and prefer to go for the other approach, that of using either game engines or libraries and/or using real languages to do the job. You can't be expected to make many game genres like 2D RTS/MMOs with Game Maker. It just can't handle the pressure of having a lot of units/NPCs being processed each frame, and it just isnt flexible enough for that kind of a job.
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« Last Edit: February 16, 2010, 09:32:38 pm by LittleCodingFox »
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exploreRPG
Full Member
Posts: 139
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I work as a professional developer, and I have been working on my own RPG Editor for quite some time. There is something to be said from both sides.. However, what is being ignored seems to be the "bloat" that is accompanied by this "next gen" game editors.
ie. UNITY.. it supports .NET, XML, & C#.. all of which are slower than native C. (If you want to learn "serious" game development.) - Break free from .NET, and all of M$ tools and grab a simple C compiler, OpenGL / DirectX.
Many people who are runing Core2Quads and 3+Ghz processors with over 1GB video will pretend like these engines are fast... buy clearly they are not. The game industry is suffering because they have hundreds of games on the shelf that can't be played by PCs bought just 2 years ago. (insane)
I have 800Mhz, 1.2Ghz PC, a 1.6Ghz laptop, and they all run great.. I have a 1.8Ghz with vista, and it takes 20mins to boot. The bloat of wndows and .NET will limit who can play your game.. Using C, will keep you agile to Linux, Mac and Windows.
*my 2 cents*
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« Last Edit: February 17, 2010, 01:42:01 am by exploreRPG »
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LittleCodingFox
Full Member
Posts: 107
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You forget that those languages are JIT compiled (at least .NET), so they arent as slow as you're trying to promote.
Not to mention that new technology is being discovered/released semi-annualy, which makes most computers not support it. Heck, last year or two we had some fancy DX10 cards, now we have DX11 games that are tremendously amazing, and yes, also fast.
It depends on how well game developers adapt, and you can bet that at least some engines do run smoothly. It still depends a lot on your computer, of course.
Steam's hardware report shows that almost 50% of everyone on steam has DX10 cards. And believe it or not, steam has a lot of clients. They've been doubling their sales at least for over 5 years now.
Another thing to be said about how "fast" games are... I have a crappy laptop that has a video card that was not developed with games in mind, not to mention it (the laptop) heats to the point of going up to 108ºC (aka, crappy piece of tech).
It's video card is a NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS, which was not made for gaming as it said on their site, even if it has DX10 support. It has 8 stream cores, while the top GF9 has 128.
And i can play Unreal Tournament 3 on some pretty decent framerates. Something around 30-50 FPS on 1024x768 with medium details. I can't even begin to imagine how fast it'd run on a card that's 16 times more powerful than mine.
Sure, the res is not all that large, but what's important is that i can play something on minimally decent resolutions, not watch it on 1680x1024.
I have a 1.8Ghz with vista, and it takes 20mins to boot.
Excuse my english, but... Are You Fucking Serious?
My sister's computer has 768MB RAM and 1.4GHz running windows 7, using ~350MB RAM on boot and it takes at most ~3 minutes to boot.
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exploreRPG
Full Member
Posts: 139
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LittleCodingFox,
I'm not trying to "promote" that JIT & .Net is slow.. It simply IS. Anything less then ASM is slow.. Simply put.
ASM is faster than C.
C is faster than C++
C++ is faster than .NET.
(period)
DirectX11 was made in a low-level language. Probably ASM & C/C++.. So if you really are interested in learning programming / game design why use anything less? .NET has tons of baggage..
Also, you comparison of Win7 and WinVista proves my point. Vista was 'rejected' by consumers because it was slow a bloated. Windows 7 I am told is much faster. Nevertheless, I only use Windows2000Pro and Linux. I don't need a graphics festival to surf the net. (nor all the security holes.)
To each his own.. I am just suggesting to trim down the bloat in your game. If you think you are the next "Unreal Tournament 3", go for it.. - But I don't believe many of the pros are using .Net for their games. :/
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hymerman
Global Moderator
Gamedev guru
Posts: 6750
booboo-be-doo
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LittleCodingFox,
I'm not trying to "promote" that JIT & .Net is slow.. It simply IS. Anything less then ASM is slow.. Simply put.
ASM is faster than C.
C is faster than C++
C++ is faster than .NET.
(period)
DirectX11 was made in a low-level language. Probably ASM & C/C++.. So if you really are interested in learning programming / game design why use anything less? .NET has tons of baggage..
Also, you comparison of Win7 and WinVista proves my point. Vista was 'rejected' by consumers because it was slow a bloated. Windows 7 I am told is much faster. Nevertheless, I only use Windows2000Pro and Linux. I don't need a graphics festival to surf the net. (nor all the security holes.)
To each his own.. I am just suggesting to trim down the bloat in your game. If you think you are the next "Unreal Tournament 3", go for it.. - But I don't believe many of the pros are using .Net for their games. :/
What a load of tosh. No language is any faster than any other language. You probably mean "Programs written in assembly can be faster than equivalent programs written in C when each is programmed by an expert in their respective field", the important part being the word 'expert'. That's ignoring a lot of other costs, mostly the increased learning, development and maintenance costs associated with lower-level programming.
As for Win 7, it's not a "graphics festival", it's a good operating system that's more secure and has more useful features than older versions of Windows. Slating it but not trying it is just ignorance. Frankly I think it's brilliant, and not just because I work for Microsoft (which is an annoying fact when I'm genuinely advocating Microsoft products).
Back to the point; what it should come down to is what product offers you the best combination of flexibility, ease of use and performance, in roughly that order. I think Unity is a good cocktail of the three, whereas Game Maker is firmly lodged in the 'ease of use' camp. So for me it's obvious; use Unity. If you know what you're doing and have thought about it carefully, use C++.
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exploreRPG
Full Member
Posts: 139
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hymmerman
I *am* and expert in my field. I am a Sr. Software Engineer for the #1 telecom company in the world. I work with other developers who are experts in Java, C# etc.. Just because a language is slower doesnt mean its "bad". But simply, use the best tool for the task. Any professional developer will tell you that.
For game development, not many pros will use .NET (period) I had interviews with a game company is Cali a few years back. The were very clear that .NET is not for game development.
Look.. Im not a Mac fanboy. And I dont "hate" Microsoft. But if you think that M$ is doing a "good" job in comparison to Apple with respect to innovation.. you are dreaming.
If you think that an OS with over 300+ security holes (XP) is a good job.. And the numerous security patches in Vista.. common..
The only reason Win7 doesnt have many patches is because its less than a year old.. Give M$ a little more time, they are already talking about Windows8.. (Its just stupid to chase the same old operating system) And to push system requirements with no real benefit.
All the .NET bloat has contributed to this.. I simply wont follow this trend. I think that if you/others learn C and see "how its done" you can appreciate the efficency it can offer.
My OpenGL graphics framework is only 5MB.. Its simple extendable, and directly makes scripts to opengl 100% portable. Its for 2D but 3D is a possibility.
Dont be defensive.. I'm just trying to encourage more *reading* the source of all this techno-OOP and frameworks.
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« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 02:28:33 am by exploreRPG »
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hymerman
Global Moderator
Gamedev guru
Posts: 6750
booboo-be-doo
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You may be an expert in your field, but prolow isn't. If he were to write two programs, one in C and one in C#, I doubt there would be much of a performance difference, and I doubt even more that it would matter. I completely agree that you should use the correct tool for the job, which is why it's confusing that you're seemingly advising prolow to use C. For a beginner, wanting to get off the ground quickly, I don't think C is the correct tool - Unity is a better choice. For myself, a professional programmer at a AAA game company, C++ is the correct tool - our old C codebase is being phased out since it is difficult to maintain and extend. We do use C# for some tools though, since ease of development is a higher priority than performance.
I didn't actually comment on XP, just Windows 7. You're not really putting forth a rational argument against it - how do you know that 7's age is the "only" reason it doesn't have many patches? I could say Linux is only secure because the vulnerabilities haven't been found yet. It's just not a valid argument. It's not stupid to "chase the same old operating system" - that's a silly sweeping statement. I personally am all for revolution and throwing out backwards-compatibility, but I still appreciate that there are plenty of reasons for building on existing solutions. And I don't know where the "push system requirements with no real benefit" bit comes from - Win7 is actually quite sensible in terms of hardware requirements. Most PCs bought within the last few years should be able to run it I'd imagine. It sounds to me like you haven't really given Windows 7 a try, so perhaps you should before you slate it like this.
Last thing; I'm quite familiar with C actually, I encounter it daily. It's a huge pain in the arse; messy, disorganised, arcane, hard to read, doesn't support the way I like to work. I don't really see much of a reason to write any new code in C; C++ has the performance and language features I want.
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