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Hi everyone. New to the forums, apologies if this is the wrong place to post.
I've been making a 2D platformer for awhile now using the Unity engine, but I'm thinking it might be best to look at some other alternatives due to the current state of Unity. I've boiled it down to two other engines, those being GameMaker and Godot. I've picked GameMaker first since I'm already somewhat familiar with it, including actually releasing a game a few years ago with the first GameMaker Studio. It was a tiny game made more for learning, but a game nonetheless.
I've been spending the last week or so learning GMS 2 and how it's changed from the original. I want to get started porting over parts of my game to test it out, but I have a handful of questions I'm still unsure on and was hoping to get some clear answers.
For context, the game I'm making is, again, a 2D platformer heavily inspired by games like Smash Bros. and Kirby, but unlike what seems like most other games, it uses high resolution, hand-drawn sprites and I'm looking to release on PC and maybe consoles in the future. In other words, no pixel art, no mobile. Aiming for a 1080p resolution.
I've been making a 2D platformer for awhile now using the Unity engine, but I'm thinking it might be best to look at some other alternatives due to the current state of Unity. I've boiled it down to two other engines, those being GameMaker and Godot. I've picked GameMaker first since I'm already somewhat familiar with it, including actually releasing a game a few years ago with the first GameMaker Studio. It was a tiny game made more for learning, but a game nonetheless.
I've been spending the last week or so learning GMS 2 and how it's changed from the original. I want to get started porting over parts of my game to test it out, but I have a handful of questions I'm still unsure on and was hoping to get some clear answers.
For context, the game I'm making is, again, a 2D platformer heavily inspired by games like Smash Bros. and Kirby, but unlike what seems like most other games, it uses high resolution, hand-drawn sprites and I'm looking to release on PC and maybe consoles in the future. In other words, no pixel art, no mobile. Aiming for a 1080p resolution.
- How good is GMS at handling big sprites? I'm more of an artist than a coder, so I'm really particular about these. My default sprite size is 512x512 (Characters and terrain tiles are at this size for example). I make sprites in an external painting program at a minimum resolution of 2048x2048 or bigger when needed, but I never go below those numbers. I then scale them down to a smaller size before exporting the sprite/animation as individual PNG images. This approach worked fine with Unity, but I'm unsure if it'll work with GMS. I know the engine is capable of doing HD sprites, but can it handle multiple sprites with sizes around 512 to 1024, or possibly even bigger (some of my bosses might be huge)? If not, what's the best way to go about it? I read the manual on things like texture groups and pages, but I'm not sure if I completely understand them.
- How big should room sizes and the camera be? From what I've read, I think it's okay to have the camera be 1920x1080 for an HD resolution and if that's the case, some of my rooms are probably going to be really big then. Is that sort of thing going to be compatible with my sprites or is there going to be some problems?
- Finally, do I need to use GameMaker physics? I briefly saw this topic in the manual, but have only skimmed over it. From what I understand, is it like realistic kind of physics, sort of like how Unity works? If it is, I'm guessing I wouldn't want to use it in my game if I'm going for a classic platformer feel, right? I know this is probably a dumb question, but I figured it's best to know anyway just in case.