Home › Forums › Locomotive Engineers

Game Develop - A great 2D gamemaking tool (something between Construct and KNP/TGF/MMF)

Tue, 01/10/2012 - 10:42 — Darkhog

I know that you're interested in playing games, but did you even wanted to make one? Here it goes...
--------
I've recently stumbled upon this gem. It is great game making tool. It is also free (as in free beer) to use and very easy. Let's say that if you worked with Clickteam's TGF/MMF series or Construct, you'll quickly learn it (matter of few hours).

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR LINUX USERS: Temporarily Linux version is broken (I've found bug preventing it from working), so you'll need to use this download link: http://www.compilgames.net/dl/gd2010543linux.tar.lzma.
--------

Above message was posted by me on other board (except of first line and "-------" things) and because of that this post have some degree of inconsistency.

Anyway, this program is very good as it require no programming knowledge AT ALL - you can make game without coding a line! But, if you want, you can use C++ code in your project. Because of that this tool is very flexible. And you can make your game for all most used platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux). Very liberal license also allows you to sell games made with this tool without paying any royalties to CompilGames (of course it would be fair to donate them - I'll do it whenever I get paid this month and I rarely buy software/donate software projects)

‹ Game for new GDC 2012 Pirate Kart...only works properly online TAKE THIS - editor + source code ›
Tue, 01/10/2012 - 15:53 — Danni
Danni's picture

I'm not interested in using

I'm not interested in using something where the Linux version is prone to random breakage as you just now mentioned.

IMHO using C++ for game scripting in a 2D data-driven engine is the wrong way to go. Better to use something like Lua or Python where you're virtually guaranteed to be writing cross-platform code (unless, say, you try to do something REALLY stupid in Python). Those languages are safer, more robust, are faster to initialize after editing (you just have the JIT - no lengthy precompile process) and all-around much more suited toward easy content creation.

Wed, 01/11/2012 - 03:22 — Darkhog

No, Linux version WAS prone to random breakage

Also not everyone wants to write their game from scratch. I've tried several "coding" engines including Ika, PyGame, LOVE (lua equivalent for pygame), several C++ game engines, and even tried to code game in FreeBASIC which is known for making game making from scratch easier. Neither of them was good for me (like you have code scrolling yourself, etc.).

Also GD has JIT on its own - games aren't compiled from c++ to native code, but instead to bytecode (.egd files). Then runtime compiles it in JIT way to native code.

This way you can use all C++ libraries which may or may not be available for other languages while you basically clicking out your game (like in Construct or MMF/TGF/KNP - if you had experience with any of them, you'll quickly find your way).