Question - IDE Old GM8 user with some questions about upgrading to Studio.

[megaspit]

Hey, I've been a GM user since the early days. But, my current project was started in GM8 and porting it seemed to be a nightmare as it used a lot of old extensions and DLLs. So, I just never did. But, after this project is finished I will look into it. So, I have a few questions if that's alright.

1. Is support for GM8 extensions and DLLs completely gone?
2. Has GML changed much? I know GM8 changed a lot from previous versions, like view_left to view_xview. But I'm not sure how many changes Studio has undergone.
3. How hard is it to port games to other devices? Porting to android, PS4, and Xbox are of huge interest to me. But, I never know if I will finish a project, so buying those versions of studio seems like a possible waste of money until the late stages of development. But, would I need to start developing for those platforms from the very beginning? I have no idea if those versions run off of the same GML as any PC version would. I really have no idea where to start in general.

Thanks for your patience, I hope this can clear some things up for me. Any help is much appreciated.

 

[YellowAfterlife]

1. Is support for GM8 extensions and DLLs completely gone?

DLLs still largely work, expect for those which relied on GMAPI (used-created DLL API which allowed deeper interfacing with GM internals, but relied on enormous amount of work by the author, and was eventually abandoned). Select DLLs don't work properly unless migrated to extension mechanism from external_define calls. And, obviously, DLLs will only work on Windows.

2. Has GML changed much? I know GM8 changed a lot from previous versions, like view_left to view_xview. But I'm not sure how many changes Studio has undergone.

GML remains largely backwards-compatible, save for a few things like "instance creation code" in rooms executing after Create event now and some functions being deprecated (usually with workarounds). There's a large number of new things though.

3. How hard is it to port games to other devices? Porting to android, PS4, and Xbox are of huge interest to me. But, I never know if I will finish a project, so buying those versions of studio seems like a possible waste of money until the late stages of development. But, would I need to start developing for those platforms from the very beginning? I have no idea if those versions run off of the same GML as any PC version would. I really have no idea where to start in general.

Desktop platforms are largely the same, and will work without too many quirks.
Mobile platforms (iOS, Android, PS Vita in GMS1, mobile HTML5 games) generally require developing the game with them in mind from early on, since performance differs, and there are more oddities.
Consoles do not share performance issues with mobile platforms, but generally will require spending some time debugging system-specific oddities. Nothing that can't be done though, and console development most often only starts later on because approval for development takes time and is per-game in Sony's case.

 

[Rukiri]

My advice is to try and recreate your project with the GM:S2 trial (basically it's the free version but with limits obviously) if you can get it working you should be able to port your project and even try importing it into GM:S2 and see if that works.