C2 and GameMaker8 - pros and cons

Cheers!

I can imagine that this has been taken up earlier, but i'd like to give it a go.

I'm on my final year of my game desgn bachelor now, and in my upcoming subject, game prototyping and testing, we will be using game maker. I tested game maker earlier this year, but i personally found C2 alot more powerful and easier to use.

Does anyone have extensive kowledge og both the editors? I would love a few pros and cons listed up here, so that i can propose the use of C2 instead, for the entire course.

Not only is this a great business oppurtunity for Scirra, but could mean a big batch of young, clever game design students coming this way to the boards :)

I haven't used Game Maker too much (and am probably too biased to give a good answer), but I've spotted a few GM users who've come over to C2 recently so perhaps they can fill you in.

Well having used (and now using only C2 :) ) both i can tell some pros and cons:

(Comparing with HTML5 version of GM when pertinent)

Construct wins on:

Much better drag and drop event system

Much better looking and well organized interface , more usability, less clicks etc.

Plugins system is imo more powerfull with plugins and behaviors

Cheaper

Better community

Better game performance

Less time between releases

Layout editor is more flexible and easier to use, even if it not support tile maps yet.

Better out-of-the box experience with super useful and more powerfull plugins and behaviors like platform , physics etc.

Overall: Much more productivity

(Obs some of these are personal opinion other are from sources like blog posts)

Construct "fails": (compared to GM 8.1 based on feature list on site)

No internal image editor (hopefully to come soon)

No tile map support on scene editor

No built-in particle effect and editor

No support for 3D (yet to come on HTML5 version of GM)

No support for customizing load screen

Bad font and text capabilities (Hopefully to change soon)

Less/no support for data structures like lists, queues, dictionaries, stacks etc

No built-in path movement and timelines

No built-in AI-Pathfinding

No support for external import of JS code (Uncertain of this one, please correct me if it does)

No support for scripting. (Would be awesome but the event system served me more than well till now).

No built-in support for version control, team work.

Only exports to HTML5 currently

That's it. There're pretty nice features missing but it's not fair since Game Maker has been around for ages past Construct2. But i'm sure C2 will catch up with most of these features eventually.

Yeah, most of those simply haven't been implemented yet. There is a JS plugin somewhere that I think does what you want, though. Also, you can customize the loading screen a little by editing the HTML5 image.

Yeah i'm not sure about importing JS...

About the loading screen, yeah you can customize it externally, but GM has it built-in so i put it on list. Customizing load screen would be two things: Image and Loading Bar basically.

After using both extensively.

Construct 2 > Game Maker

Just downloaded demo of GM to better see how things are. And i must say : GM's image editor/animation editor is very very good. Path to success : just base C2 editor on it. Some things can be taken out for now such as effects and transformations.

i agree with mammoth and kiyoshi

construct is way easier to use

and is more powerful

even if its in the beta release

i recommend scirra on game maker

note:ive been tring game maker and construct 2 for time and time

and i think even if construct 2 is in beta release its more powerful and better

kiyoshi - some of your points are covered by third party plugins, and for importing JS/using scripting you could try the SDK. I guess it's a fair list though. Hopefully the second list will be a lot shorter in a few months.

Yeah :) You guys are doing a great work !

About the plugins yeah i know there's Mipey's plugin very nice by the way but unfortunatelly it is not enough for me. Of course it may be more than enough for others. So i've been researching for a better way. I hope to come up with something soon. I've been busy with my game though so it could take some time.

List of third party plugins and behaviors

The plugin Call JS by Joe7 sounds like a real integration of javascript calls.

And also like Ashley said, the SDK allows you to make your own custom plugin/behavior to really fit your needs.

I think it's quite a powerful combination that does not remove

"> No support for external import of JS code (Uncertain of this one, please correct me if it does)"

But surely removes

"> No support for scripting. (Would be awesome but the event system served me more than well till now)."

Also

No built-in support for version control, team work.

The use of version repository (svn) is totaly doable since the projects are in XML format (when saved as project folder).

There isn't indeed an option "load from repository" in C2 but is that truely necessary ? (honest question, I haven't worked in team using this method).

There really is no contest. For me, half the battle of Game Maker was getting around its annoying limitations. If you want to make a decent game in Game Maker, you have to use scripting extensively.

Construct's only limitation is the fact that it has been in development for a matter of months and that there has been one person actively developing it.

That makes game maker look really bad, and anyone choosing Game Maker over construct (unless they simply can't wait for some of the advanced features, most of which can be replicated with events) has not made an informed decision.

Thanks for the input fellas! I'll look into it and talk with the school administration. I think this is what the subject could need: simpler than GM8, and more powerful.

I'll dig a bit more into it before i suggest it.

I can say the only let down is that C2 only exports to HTML5. Other than that, you should ditch GM.

kiyoshi: for fonts, you can use the webfont plugin.