The Best Game-Maker?

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ID:152506
 
Jul 27 2006, 8:46 am
I've recently purchased The Games Factory Pro, and installed it in my PC yesterday.

It has some nice tools, such as:
  • While in 'sprite editor', you can move around all the sprites without having to exit the actual sprite.

  • The conditions ( 'if', in BYOND code ) are always working; you dont have to set a specific moment for something to happen. (like, you set a condition, it will be always activated)

    BUT, it is in fact, very limited. There are only 7 movement styles, and the conditions don't have much options to set.

    ----------GOOD----------
    BYOND games can be uploaded fast and people can play your game in just a few minutes after you make it. It can become popular just in a few days.
    TGFP games can be online OR single player, and can be sold as 'official games'.

    BYOND is very flexible.
    TGFP is very easy to use.

    BYOND games can be found easily, and you have many gaming options, Adventure, Action, etc. It is all focused in one website.
    TGFP icons aren't limited to 32x32 pixels, and you can move around the sprites while editing a sprite. And, you can set the speed of animation, and how many times it will loop.
    ----------BAD----------
    BYOND requires some knowledge on language.
    TGFP isn't as flexible as BYOND.

    BYOND games can only be played by Dream Seeker.
    TGFP games usually lag, and most of the times crash.

    BYOND animation is limited to 10fps, and icons over 32x32 can be hard to edit as a single animation.
    TGFP icons usually crash, since the icon size can be edited, sometimes the 'player's pixel_x or pixel_y' appear somewhere else on the screen(lets suppose you are on location(1,1,1). You press LEFT. The animation of your mob walking appears at location(3,3,1), but when the animation is finished, you are at location(2,1,1). In other words, animations get lost in position.)

    VOTE!
    What is the best game-maker?

  • Build Your Own Net Dream
  • The Games Factory

    Post your choice:
  • What program is the best.
  • Why do you think it is the best.
  • Why do you think the other is not teh best.
  • What could be improved in the other.
Jul 27 2006, 10:23 am
BYOND is astounding in its expandability and customization, and I firmly believe that it is the world's best at what it does -- which is to allow for the creation of neat little network games in not a lot of time.

BYOND 4 will take further steps towards making things not "only run using dreamseeker"; that is, DS will be a tool and not so much a "browser". BYOND games will require DreamSeeker only in the way that many popular games require QuickTime or DirectX. And as of about 5 months ago, it was SERIOUSLY going to be out in a couple weeks, a month at the most. =P
Jul 27 2006, 12:46 pm
In response to PirateHead
PirateHead wrote:
BYOND is astounding in its expandability and customization, and I firmly believe that it is the world's best at what it does -- which is to allow for the creation of neat little network games in not a lot of time.

BYOND 4 will take further steps towards making things not "only run using dreamseeker"; that is, DS will be a tool and not so much a "browser". BYOND games will require DreamSeeker only in the way that many popular games require QuickTime or DirectX. And as of about 5 months ago, it was SERIOUSLY going to be out in a couple weeks, a month at the most. =P

I believe that BYOND is one of the best Game Maker's out there. I found a link to BYOND on a forum when I was 12, I started to play games on it, and I was interested. I started to learn how to code, and in about a month and 1/2, I knew how to code a game. It's easy, it's customizable, AND IT'S FREE!!!!! :D

On a scale of 1-10 compared to most other Game Makers, BYOND scores a 14.
Jul 27 2006, 2:23 pm
In response to KirbyRules
It'd have to be on a scale of 1-14 to score a 14. In that case, it scores a 12.
Jul 27 2006, 2:31 pm
In response to PirateHead
PirateHead wrote:
neat little network games in not a lot of time.

After trying to get a multi-user Java chat program working for a couple months, Byond's easy networking is a definite plus. I hear its even worse with C++. Byond is easy and you can do a lot with it (networking, CGI, etc.), though I believe Byond's going to advance farther as we go on with all these new systems some people are making. It's got a nice little community going with a lot of support (which is important), and its not teh ub3r hard to start off in. After working with Basic for a bit, I just modded out a few demos to teach myself and started from there.

Setting up networking in Java, OMG. So much code than I'm used to in Byond. "Insert InputStreamReader A into BufferedReader X, yada yada..." (not right but I'm just giving an example)
Jul 27 2006, 2:44 pm
In response to Toxicosis
Well if you have to be so literal.

I give it a 100 in a scale of 1-5..
Jul 27 2006, 3:21 pm
In response to SSJ-Chao
Remember to keep your votes unbiased :D

- GhostAnime

8.9000000*/10 (Nothing could be a perfect 10... unless it was too good to be true ;/)
Jul 27 2006, 4:29 pm
In response to EGUY
EGUY wrote:
Setting up networking in Java, OMG. So much code than I'm used to in Byond. "Insert InputStreamReader A into BufferedReader X, yada yada..." (not right but I'm just giving an example)

Setting up anything in Java is like that... see my rant on the subject. ;-)

I recommend Python. Networking still isn't nearly as easy as BYOND (nothing I've used makes networking as easy as BYOND), but Python at least sweeps all of the crud out of the way and lets you get down to the business of making it work, rather than forcing you to fight the language in order to get anything done.
Jul 27 2006, 4:38 pm
In response to Crispy
I recommend Python. Networking still isn't nearly as easy as BYOND (nothing I've used makes networking as easy as BYOND)

I haven't tried it, but I bet it wouldn't be too hard to write a Python library that more or less DID make networking as easy as BYOND's.
Jul 27 2006, 4:42 pm (Edited on Jul 27 2006, 4:53 pm)
In response to nick.cash
It probably wouldn't be any harder than writing any other game networking engine. But you'd have to test it and debug it and get it working solidly, which is a lot of work.

Still, that would be awesome. BYOND's ease of networking plus Python's expressiveness and library support? Sign me up!

Edit: Although Python's "pickling" API would be perfect for synchronising objects... maybe not very secure though. =) Still, Python has excellent reflection capabilities, which would be very useful for the task.
Jul 27 2006, 4:47 pm
In response to Crispy
Still, that would be awesome. BYOND's ease of networking plus Python's expressiveness and library support? Sign me up!

Seriously, if I had time, I would love to recreate something like BYOND that uses Python internally. And it looks like they've made it rather easy to build the Python interpreter into C++ programs and have them communicate back and forth.

Build it on top of XULrunner and it might just be the mightiest program ever created.
Jul 27 2006, 8:38 pm
Another ClickTeam product? lol
Jul 27 2006, 10:02 pm
You should of got Multimedia Fusion (MMF).

So much more then TGF yet pretty much the same.
Jul 28 2006, 3:19 am
Gooseheaded wrote:
TGFP games can be online OR single player, and can be sold as 'official games'.

er...so can BYOND games. It takes a little bit more code to make it single, but it's easy enough to do =P

I can't rate anything but BYOND on game-making, but I give BYOND 9/10...lost a point for being hard to learn and it's a pain to get icons bigger than 32x32
Jul 28 2006, 3:21 am
In response to JMT
"lost a point for being hard to learn and it's a pain to get icons bigger than 32x32"

Uh? BYOND is probaly one of the easiest things to pickup, and I don't see it as a pain to go over 32x32, just a few extra lines.
Jul 28 2006, 4:30 am
In response to Papoose
Papoose wrote:
I don't see it as a pain to go over 32x32, just a few extra
lines.


It took me a few weeks to make sense of those "lines"...
Jul 28 2006, 8:19 am
In response to RedlineM203
http://developer.byond.com/hub/DerDragon/ToolBox

Plug... again

If you don't want to mess with "those lines", ToolBox can do it for you.
Jul 28 2006, 10:30 am
DM as a language 9/10 - I love how easy it is, but if there was a way to add syntax to a variable to cut down on how much memory it allocated, then it'd be cooler. In addition it lacks the ability to pass something by reference, it always passes it by value, which makes things easier to understand, but also makes it harder to program in certain instances.

I also like the datum trees, after trying to study C++ on and off for a year now, I'm so glad I don't have to deal with byond datums the way I have to deal with classes in C++.

BYOND speed - 5/10
It's painfully slow for trying to do any kind of action game (which of course it isn't meant to do, but if we're rating "game makers"...).

BYOND networking 9/10
It's pretty cool how easy it is to get it up and running online. The only drawback I can think of is how poorly documented world.Export(), world.Import(), and world.Topic() are. There's a few examples in the reference, but it fails to specify how they really work together.

Ease of use 10/10
I havn't come across anything that's as easy to use as Dream Maker, the ability to compile your code at a moments notice without having to worry about all the specifics makes my life a lot easier. The map maker, the datum tree, and the icon maker are just plain spiffy.

BYOND support 10/10
No community is perfect, but this is about as good as it gets. I romp all over the internet from time to time trying to find something new, but nothing I've come across has nearly as many resources. In the words of a lost girl from Kansas, "Demos, libraries, support forum, o my!"



Jul 28 2006, 12:28 pm
In response to Rockinawsome
Using Rockinawsome's rubric...

DM as a language 10/10 - Definately easy to learn and to use, but then again... I don't know many other languages... so I'm not exactly qualified to rate this

BYOND speed 8/10 - Like Rockinawsome said, the speed of BYOND for action games isn't that great... but it does manage to run PoA and Antlion Troopers with low lag if the server's got >30 kbps upload.

BYOND networking NA/10 - I'm not qualified to rate this... or rather, I don't think I am. =/

Ease of use 8/10 - I found RPG Maker 2003 much easier to use than BYOND... and the latest version, version 3.5, doesn't have updating thumbnails of the icons in the icon editor. Super annoying when creating pixel art in the dream maker.

BYOND support 7/10 - Our community is segregated (I can't think of the right word. I'll just use this instead). We have the elite on one side, the DBZ noobs on the other, and very few in between. The subcommunities (SS13 for example) can be much worse. The Game Maker Comminity is much better.

Jul 28 2006, 3:31 pm
In response to D4RK3 54B3R
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
BYOND support 7/10 - Our community is segregated (I can't think of the right word. I'll just use this instead). We have the elite on one side, the DBZ noobs on the other, and very few in between. The subcommunities (SS13 for example) can be much worse. The Game Maker Comminity is much better.


I thought it was just the DBZers and the non-DBZers. There are plenty of newbies who don't name themselves SSJ3Goku5834. And you notice, the Game Maker community doesn't have any SSJ3Goku5834s, either... Probably because GameMaker doesn't catre to easy GM powers like BYOND does. As far as I can tell, the BYOND community was just like the GameMaker community before the DBZ craze.
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