01-22-2024, 07:07 AM
Ah, Game Maker. It's nostalgic for sure.
I became kind of resentful towards it when I started moving on to Unity and seeing how much better it was compared to Studio 1.x, but I think my hate was overblown.
I didn't really give the engine enough credit. While it taught me many bad coding habits, it also taught me coding in the first place, and back when I first discovered it during the GM7 era, it was quite an advanced tool for the time. Unity also has way more staff so I guess it is somewhat unfair to compare the two engines, and GM has apparently become a much better engine in recent times, which is nice to hear.
I've been using Game Maker from 2008 until as late as 2018, so a whopping 10 years from when I was 13 until I was 23. That was quite a defining time of my life (I can't believe my 10 year anniversary with Unity is coming up too next year!). I made lots of projects I was passionate about, and that still mean a lot to me. Not everything I made has aged gracefully but I'm still proud of what I made, and there are some ideas and games that I still want to follow up on at some point.
At first I wasn't even interested in programming; I just wanted to make games. My first project was a little jump'n'run made with the help of a YouTube tutorial and pictures stolen from Google. My first released game was Space Case, which you can still download from the YoYoGames sandbox if you're curious. A friend at the time helped me out from there, by programming stuff I couldn't do, until I learnt to pick it up myself. I ended up really enjoying coding, to the point of where it became my profession. In a way, I have to thank Game Maker for that.
Will I ever return to Game Maker in the future?
Unlikely. I'm mostly interested in 3D game development these days, and while it is impressive to make 3D games in Game Maker and as much as I'd like to show off, Unity is simply the better choice. When it comes to 2D Game Maker might be a competent alternative to Unity these days, but I will still stick with Unity. I simply prefer C# to GML, and publishing to Nintendo Switch with Unity is free unlike Game Maker. Since Game Maker is free for mobile games though, I might end up using it for that purpose though.
![[Image: UcpbhBy.png]](https://i.imgur.com/UcpbhBy.png)
I became kind of resentful towards it when I started moving on to Unity and seeing how much better it was compared to Studio 1.x, but I think my hate was overblown.
I didn't really give the engine enough credit. While it taught me many bad coding habits, it also taught me coding in the first place, and back when I first discovered it during the GM7 era, it was quite an advanced tool for the time. Unity also has way more staff so I guess it is somewhat unfair to compare the two engines, and GM has apparently become a much better engine in recent times, which is nice to hear.
I've been using Game Maker from 2008 until as late as 2018, so a whopping 10 years from when I was 13 until I was 23. That was quite a defining time of my life (I can't believe my 10 year anniversary with Unity is coming up too next year!). I made lots of projects I was passionate about, and that still mean a lot to me. Not everything I made has aged gracefully but I'm still proud of what I made, and there are some ideas and games that I still want to follow up on at some point.
At first I wasn't even interested in programming; I just wanted to make games. My first project was a little jump'n'run made with the help of a YouTube tutorial and pictures stolen from Google. My first released game was Space Case, which you can still download from the YoYoGames sandbox if you're curious. A friend at the time helped me out from there, by programming stuff I couldn't do, until I learnt to pick it up myself. I ended up really enjoying coding, to the point of where it became my profession. In a way, I have to thank Game Maker for that.
Will I ever return to Game Maker in the future?
Unlikely. I'm mostly interested in 3D game development these days, and while it is impressive to make 3D games in Game Maker and as much as I'd like to show off, Unity is simply the better choice. When it comes to 2D Game Maker might be a competent alternative to Unity these days, but I will still stick with Unity. I simply prefer C# to GML, and publishing to Nintendo Switch with Unity is free unlike Game Maker. Since Game Maker is free for mobile games though, I might end up using it for that purpose though.
![[-]](https://forums.mfgg.net/images/emerald/collapse.png)