How feasible is it to make a longer game in GMS?

[jakejake_]

I say longer in comparison to a good portion of GMS games that don’t use story or “levels” or anything, but are just kind of fun games like Nidhogg.
Say, you take a route like MegaMan, or Shovel Knight. You have an overarching story with a set number of levels, each having their own unique environment and enemies. Can this be accomplished well in GMS, or will resources start to bulk up and slow the game down?

 

[YellowAfterlife]

You can take a look around the showcase for a sample of what games can be made.

As far as raw volume of content goes, "Swords of Ditto" and "Hyper Light Drifter" are probably one of the largest GM games, though a plenty of other games have the total number of assets go into thousands.

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

Very feasible. GM's a great engine!

 

[Khao]

Can definitely be done. My most recent game has 10 fully unique levels and they each take about 10-15 minutes to complete, assuming you don't ever lose and know exactly where to go. And that's on top of having 53 optional challenges that can each be completed in about a minute, or more if you try to complete them with some demanding bonus objectives. It takes about 3-4 hours or more for a full 100% playthrough. If we had been specifically going for length there would've been a ton of ways to extend that time.

 

[vdweller]

I made Gleaner Heights in 20 months. I worked almost every day, however, including weekends. The game ended up with over 100k lines of code and over 16,000 individual images (sprite subimages, tilesets, individual graphic assets etc). I have a potato PC (obsolete quad core, 4 GB RAM). It's doable.

 

[Niels]

Think heartbeast posted a vlog about gamemaker not suitable for longer games unless you really know what you are doing.

Right now I'm doing a HD graphic storybased game, will tell you how well GMS2 is suited for it in about 20 months

 

[jakejake_]

Yeah, I actually saw heartbeast’s vlog mentioning how it might not be suited for longer games. It kinda spooked me since the game I’m making will be something more like Khao’s, level and lengthwise, perhaps a little bit longer.

From what I’ve heard here, it sounds like a longer title is definitely doable. Maybe Ben was speaking about bigger connected worlds like Hyper Light as opposed to several separated levels.

Also, @Khao, what’s your game called? I’d love to see it!

 

[YanBG]

Link to the blog? Not sure what he'll mean by that. Granted i have only experience with GM but i could have released 10 big games already. Usually the issue is to make the game popular.

 

[Niels]

Link to the blog? Not sure what he'll mean by that. Granted i have only experience with GM but i could have released 10 big games already. Usually the issue is to make the game popular.