Construct / multimedia fusion / game maker ?

Well, I'm testing the soft, and the premade movements are quite cool. The programmer seems to like it, so we'll see like in 2 or 3 weeks.

Thank you all for your answers . I'll personally use construct for a personnal 2d a-rpg project (really small, ~10 min of gameplay).

here is my comparison based on my experience with the 3 programs.

Game Maker 8:

strengths :

1.it's not as limited as people claim. I've there are a lot of good games made with it.

2.GML(Game Maker language) is rather easy. definitely easier then Python.

3.all events and actions are object based. meaning that, you don't need to reprogram the object for every room,layout or frame.

4.all resources are kept in the project file

5. *has a built in save function

weakness:

1.it attracts a lot of noob and 8 year olds because of it's easy to use DnD system .

1a. the site(yoyogames) if full garbage that out numbers and obscures most of the decent and better games. can be avoided by posting games on the gmc(Game Maker community ) instead.

1b.noobs can't take constructive criticism.

2. not so long ago a person released a decompiler for Game maker 8 which can take an EXE and convert it back into a GMK . however some one also made an anti-decompiler which works.

2b. anti-decompiler isn't very easy to find by that i mean it's not in the game maker download page

3.yoyogames has yet to address this issue. there are to busy with there yoyostore.

4. games eat up a lot of ram

*5. the save function doesn't work good if you save during a level

6. most extension are useless.

7.GML can be come a bit hard later on

The Games Factory 2/Multimedia Fusion 2/Developer

strengths :

1. Games consume much less ram and space.

2.most resources are kept in the project file.

3.does not have any written programing language.

4. has good extensions .

5. some tasks such parallax are much easier in MMF2 then in game maker.

6. has useful easier objects that game maker has alternatives to.

7. doesn't attract as much noobs

weakness

1. expensive even the most simplest edition TGF2 cost about 56 bucks the developer edition cost over 200 bucks .

2.lack a drawing event which is something i need for a series of games.

Construct:

strengths :

1. everything i said about multimedia fusion 2.

with addition of

2.bugs get fixed a lot faster

3. is free

4. all extension are useful and work.

5.all games upload here so far are good with effort put to them .

6.the behavior system is superior to MMF2's.

weakness

1. some resources such as sound and music aren't kept in the project file

2.you"ll need multiple sound objects in order to play sound FX simultaneously with music.

-the end-

also I"m planing to make a game with Construct. but, i"m a bad artist and even worst at making music. that's the only thing preventing me from using construct.

[quote:3i6kitfa]weakness

1. some resources such as sound and music aren't kept in the project file

Um..

This is actually a strength. Makes it much easier to share caps.

Sounds and music added from resources are included in the exe.

You can load anything you need from an external source, and (via plugin) you can package anything with it as well.

[quote:3i6kitfa]2.you"ll need multiple sound objects in order to play sound FX simultaneously with music.

Might want to take a look at the wiki on channels in the xaudio2 object.

There's like up to 64 channels so that should not be an issue.

I will say the object's use is an issue.

Its very confusing for new people.

One other thing that I call a weakness for Construct is the lack of making folders for objects, it get's harder to have multiple enemies objects and you cannot store them in a folder and I wish they will take care of that soon, it helps finding multiple objects much easier.

Also don't prevent yourself from using Construct just because you're not an artist, I am not one either but I still tend to create my own sprites (which as you can guess are not high quality) and make a game with them, I haven't released anything about my project yet and I can't work on it now either, I don't have time but I do tend to release something someday.

Whether you like sounds and music embedded within the file or not is a matter of preference and necessity. I prefer MMF2's way of handling that myself, and dislike Construct's way, but that's about the only thing I like about MMF2.

The problem with MMF2 for me is that, while I learned it well enough, I just feel like a number of things are made a bit more complicated than they need to be. The things I can do in Construct very easily required some more detail in MMF2 and it just seemed like overkill. I also hate MMF2's event system. It's hard to explain but it feels outdated to me. Construct's event system just reads better to me. The event setup in Construct is just straightforward, no nonsense, no BS, the way an event system should be.

As for Gamemaker... I can't stand it.

Construct is like the promising rookie who's having a great season so far. He makes mistakes along the way, but he plays well enough to stay on the field and help his team win. I truly believe that if things keep going upward as they are, Construct can be better than all of them when it's all said and done.

Don't be fooled by everyone comparing GML in gamemaker to python in construct, they're completely different things, and ill tell you why.

GML is in the form of a written language, and has syntax, because of that people are quick to act as if its a real language, with the real power of a language and... its not. The power you can get out of GML is the same as what you can get out of construct events, in fact for the machine its doing the same thing to go through construct events as its doing to go through GML scripts, which only means the stuff is harder to edit, read and overall use compared to construct. Events are the same as using GML and making calls, except you dont need to write individual little things and have to worry about syntax errors in the sheet, and you dont need to memorize every single call/action/condition for every object, theres an easy to use list. Plugins or ".dll"s which game maker uses are the exact same thing in use as a plugin in construct would be through events, it has actions, conditions, expressions, etc that you can use through "scripting" (events).

So basically, construct events are usable in the same way as GML script, except in an easier way. I would even go so far as to say their BETTER because they seem to run much faster and better than any Game Maker stuff I've seen, which is overall generally laggy and glitchy.

So: in a construct comparison: GML<Events, "Game Maker DnD"= shit, Python= actual programming language where you can use REAL libraries that run using REAL script, but entirely unnecessary for most users even advanced users unless you really need something thats not possible using events.

MMF is a good program, but construct is a lot better, and its free.

Sorry, but I find Game Maker's framework infinitely times easier to work with than Construct's. And while GML doesn't even have a fraction of python's power, it feels very integrated to Game Maker where python currently feels attached to Construct with scotch tape.

Also, I disagree that GML is completely inferior Construct's event sheets. While it may be easier to figure out how to do something with event sheets the first time, if you understand GML's syntax and functions then it's much faster to code something with GML than use event sheets.

Game Maker will never touch Construct's performance and extensibility though.

I find Gimp's interface infinitely easier than Photoshop's, and that's because I know it.

Likewise I often hear those who try to migrate to Gimp complain that it's interface is hard to understand, they then ask if they can make it more like Photoshop, even though it couldn't make any difference in it's actual performance.

The same thing has happened here.

Scripting might be easier for those used to it, but when it comes down to it, a plug is just a better solution.