GM mobile

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Steve Potts

Guest
hi folks, only just started using GM 2. Been playing around for a little bit with it. I`ve now got time on my hands .In the past, 40 odd years ago I published a couple of games (on cassette) .I`ve got some ideas for little games to start with.The sort you would get on an app store. I noticed the Mobile version is on sale 1/2 price, how easy is it to use and convert programs to run on mobiles using said package ? I`m not fantastic on phones (I do the old fashion thing and use them to ring people.) but my kids know. I just would like to get another game out there even for free. Cheers.
 

Appsurd

Member
@Justice I guess the OP means using GMS in general.

@Steve Potts Building a game with GameMaker Studio 2 is the same as for Windows, with a few additions. For a simple game, you could get it made in 1-5 hours, and using the right settings, posting the app on the Google Play Store (Android) takes about 3-4 hours (depending on your reading skill) which costs a one-time $25 btw. For Apple (iOS), things are a little more complicated and require a little more money ($99 per year).

Nevertheless, GameMaker is a perfect tool for 2D games on any device. And there's a 50% off right now, it's surely a good timing to buy it!
PS: They also offer a free version of the program to just play around. It can be found here: https://www.yoyogames.com/ If you are unsure, try it first, it gives a good impression what the program can do.
 
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Steve Potts

Guest
@Justice I guess the OP means using GMS in general.

@Steve Potts Building a game with GameMaker Studio 2 is the same as for Windows, with a few additions. For a simple game, you could get it made in 1-5 hours, and using the right settings, posting the app on the Google Play Store (Android) takes about 3-4 hours (depending on your reading skill) which costs a one-time $25 btw. For Apple (iOS), things are a little more complicated and require a little more money ($99 per year).

Nevertheless, GameMaker is a perfect tool for 2D games on any device. And there's a 50% off right now, it's surely a good timing to buy it!
PS: They also offer a free version of the program to just play around. It can be found here: https://www.yoyogames.com/ If you are unsure, try it first, it gives a good impression what the program can do.
cheers for that matey
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
No. Just no.
While I too think a counter-narrative is beneficial for this topic, this unreasoned response just isn't effective as one.

I can see several reasons not to use GMS 2 for mobile development, but instead of putting words into your mouth, I'll give you another chance at the soapbox.
 
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Guest

Guest
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have bothered if I wasn't going to put any effort into it. But I didn't want to rant. Hey, let's rant!

First, $400/$200 on sale doesn't buy you a click-and-export mobile solution. The initial setup instructions have been improved since I started from "very bad" to "bad," but still require a cross-reference to another page of instructions, including finding and installing an archived version of the Java JDK. As we are all more-or-less bright and clever monkeys, this isn't a huge hurdle, but it's silly.

What's more problematic is that YYG doesn't provide basic functionality in a timely manner. On iOS, GMS2 currently returns the incorrect resolution for the iPad Pro, see bug #0030436, meaning a person can't use the full screen. On Android, as I recently wrote in another thread, GMS2 doesn't support Android's built-in function for drawing to the portion of the screen next to a notch/hole punch/etc. The IAP for Android, Google Licensing, Google Analytics, MoPub, and Facebook haven't been updated since 2016 (or wait, maybe FB was finally updated last week?); AdColony since February 2017; and Google Play Services since May 2018. It took until that February 2017 update to add support for rewarded ads---which is completely nuts. We lagged behind adaptive icons for an entire cycle, and instead had a hacky workaround. We're currently wondering whether Google's removal of support for Google+ is going to affect the out-of-date Google Services extension. And I'm just an amateur! Goodness knows what people depending on the Android support professionally are dealing with. (Maybe widespread random crashes that nobody can figure out.)

More generally, I can't understand why anyone would pay money for and rely on GMS2 at all. I dug myself into a healthy sunk-cost fallacy because GML is genuinely easy to learn. But now, two years down the road, I've had my fill of all the shortcomings that overwhelm its ease of learning. Nesting data structures takes backflips--what the heck? Handling data is the most basic, ground-level existential purpose of programming, and GML kind of sucks at it. Every object has a slew of useless built-in variables. Functionality is sprayed across the room editor, code stashed inside the room editor, the object-node editor, and a lengthy hodgepodge of events. It's common advice to avoid much of the built-in "game engine" stuff---built-in collision handling, the "game restart" function, screen-wrapping. A new user doesn't know what to avoid and what to use. Add to that a bizarre two-prong compiling system: VM if you don't care about speed and want to be sloppy, YYC if you want speed but are willing to adhere to an unwritten set of semantic requirements that nobody entirely understands. If you've got the mobile export, you can't test for YYC using the test compiler so you have to wait for a full compile to a device, which, given the sloth-like compile time, gets to be a huge drag after the first forty or fifty times. Now I'm learning C#, and it's just... smarter, more rational, built for people who think firstly in terms of information flow. GML feels like a hacky language that grew from drag-and-drop visual-programming roots.

So, all that would apply even if it were free. But it's not, it's really expensive. And there's nothing that GMS2 provides over and above [popular open-source 2D engine] or [popular free-with-logo 2D/3D engine] that cost $0.
 

JeffJ

Member
Yeah, probably one of the absolute worst parts about GM is how extremely far we're always behind on just about everything (especially mobile).

Adding to what Justice said, another issue is that typically, a lot of features aren't "just" way behind; they're simply not there at all. And the problem is across the board, not just mobile. For example, we recently released a game on Switch. The game has a level editor that works on Steam by enabling sharing of levels via Workshop. Switch has their own similar online based system that could handle this but, surprise surprise - GMS2 does not support it. It simply does not exist. That's a feature that would massively help improve the longevity of the game, but... Once again, as is always the case, we're given the most basic functions and everything else is completely ignored, so we can never fully support a platform like other tools. Mind you, this is a $799 export. Which is missing core features.
 

Gradius

Member
If you just want to play around, paying hundreds of dollars for a mobile export that takes effort to use and isn't always up to date is kind of insanity. Plus that's assuming you just want to do android, if your kids have iPhones then I've no idea what supporting both is like. Granted, Android development as a whole is kind of a pain due to the huge number of devices of various versions of Android.

Several platforms, including Unity I think, provide a free way to create mobile games (outside of publishing fees and Apple dev licenses). Game Maker's price only really makes sense if you're doing this commerically and have titles you wish to port over.

If you just want to mess around, there are a ton of engines with free mobile exports including Unity. They're not really that much harder to use.
 

SnoutUp

Member
For someone who planned to get GM2 only to support my existing mobile releases (I don't think my next new project will be GM), this thread isn't very motivating at all. I don't know why but I assumed that GM2 would have everything up-to-date and smoothly running now, since 1.4 builds will soon be not publishable on Google Play and more mobile devs will be forced to upgrade. Not surprised that's not the case, just disappointed.. again.
 
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