GameMaker Raspberry Pi

Tulloch

Member
There's been talk of RPi support in Game Maker for a couple years now. It seems YYG's interest for it has faded?

Perhaps it was to focus on GMS2's development, but I am interested to know if there was any recent talk regarding its status.

I recall Sandy expressing public interest wasn't high enough to consider it cost-viable at this point in time.

Are you guys interested in developing games with Game Maker Studio 2 on a low-cost pocket sized computer?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and concerns as both a developer and from a buisness perspective.

Here's a few thoughts to start the discussion:
- Would this be too niche?
- How much would you be willing to pay for a module?
- Is there a market in RPi games? Should this affect your decision on a price point or YYG's interest?
- Is there competition?

What do you guys think?
 
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zendraw

Guest
i had to google, whats an raspbery pi, maybe that answers your questions. and altho ive been a 100% pc master race and a bit from the nes race when i was yung, i know whats a ps4, xbox, wii-me,you,and every1 else.
 

Tulloch

Member
Well, a Raspberry Pi is a computer for the hobbist. It has quite a bit of applications from running an arcade emulator to home automation. The RPi itself is a niche product, but a lot of people/companies are using it in portable game systems and educational devices, but alas.. there isn't a program that offers the simplicity to develop for it as Game Maker Studio could.

Aside from that, a simple Google search yields many DIY projects that shows the popularity of the device.
 
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zendraw

Guest
id say put some effort in it and keep it independant, its faar better then to become a slave to a company. look at gimp its on par with photoshop, and with a little more effort im sure it wuld destroy photoshop. what your asking is a lazy solution for which you wuld be sorry and complain later.
 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
YoYo Games demonstrated several games running on Pi earlier, I assume to gauge interest.

I do not recall any news since that event though, so can only guess that the act either did not have enough impact to justify development of a complete module, or they are busy enough as-is (I think that was developed in Mike & Russell's "free" time).

IIRC some people did get GMS' HTML5 games to work on Pi, but that's obviously going to be slightly more constrained in terms of performance.
 
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Dengar

Guest
whats the difference between using a raspberry pi and just a 30$ android phone? moreso whats the benefit of the raspberry? other than say video outputs and actual usb ports
and also, cant you use an android operating system on raspberry and then compile your game for android and play it?
 

Tulloch

Member
id say put some effort in it and keep it independant, its faar better then to become a slave to a company. look at gimp its on par with photoshop, and with a little more effort im sure it wuld destroy photoshop. what your asking is a lazy solution for which you wuld be sorry and complain later.
I'm not fully understanding what you're saying, my apologies.

YoYo Games demonstrated several games running on Pi earlier, I assume to gauge interest.
I do not recall any news since that event though, so can only guess that the act either did not have enough impact to justify development of a complete module, or they are busy enough as-is (I think that was developed in Mike & Russell's "free" time).
IIRC some people did get GMS' HTML5 games to work on Pi, but that's obviously going to be slightly more constrained in terms of performance.
That makes sense. I understand at a business perspective that it may not be the best choice to do such a thing, considering it IS very niche. I'm interested in how many people actually want it.

UWP for Pi does not do graphics properly, as the UWP engine has no HAL DirectX engine so everything is done in software - badly. It's a waste of time.
What was the process of porting those games to the RPi? Would you be opposed to a community effort to further develop it?

Thanks all.
 

Tulloch

Member
YYG (as a company) never did have any interest in making a stand alone Pi exporter.

You may be misinterpreting the efforts that @Mike put in, in his spare time as a hobby project.

From posts I have read from @rwkay, you can already export to Pi if you have the UWP module for GMS2 anyway. So, effectively the exporter has allready been done for you. You just need to buy it.

Just found the post - Question about the UWP export

So there you go, you can already build games for the Pi with GMS2.
Well, it's not misinterpreting it. Mike is an employee of YYGs, who developed a method of porting GMS games to RPi and hosted his results on YYGs in hopes it would gain enough interest to fully develop into a product.
It may have been a hobby project built during his spare time, but that was probably a result of his interests against YYG's interest. "We don't find it financially viable, but you're more than welcome to do it off the clock." ;)

EITHER WAY-- I'm not sure what the case was, but your message might be very misleading to users who think they should buy UWP to develop for the Raspberry Pi. It's not going to work very well (if at all)--as Mike pointed out.
I do appreciate your input though!

(Whoops, sorry for double post.)
 

Tulloch

Member
i meant rpi hobbyists shuld make theyr own 'game maker'.
Well, that's aside from the point. I personally don't want to build a "game maker" so I can make games for RPi-- for the same reason I don't want to do it for Windows, Android, etc..
There are good game engines out there and GMS is a great candidate thanks to it's ease of use and large community. I'm a game developer, not a software developer. :)
 
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zendraw

Guest
yea i understand that, but as you can see yoyo has no intention to do somthing specific for the rpi. thus the best option in my opinion is to develope it. as for community, i think the rpi community wuld also be the rpi game maker community and i dont think that making software is somthing impossible, like i sayd, if the rpi hpobbyists put some effort and organisation, they can learn and make it, it wuld be tedious but not impossible. + its an adventure.
 

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
What was the process of porting those games to the RPi? Would you be opposed to a community effort to further develop it?
These were tests, and do not use the UWP module, but a dedicated Pi module. This can not be released at this time - as we've said. I'm still working on getting some kind of business case for the Pi, but until that happens, there won't be a Pi compatible module. It's far from dead however, we're big fans of the Pi here.....
 
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Kuro

Guest
yea i understand that, but as you can see yoyo has no intention to do somthing specific for the rpi. thus the best option in my opinion is to develope it. as for community, i think the rpi community wuld also be the rpi game maker community and i dont think that making software is somthing impossible, like i sayd, if the rpi hpobbyists put some effort and organisation, they can learn and make it, it wuld be tedious but not impossible. + its an adventure.
I follow Mike's attempts to get GM stuff working on the Pi with great interest while simultaneously having no interest in rpi community open source game engine projects. It's not that I expect there will ever be a target for Pi because I recognize there are viability issues. But it's the intersection of two areas that interest me (GM & Pi) and so by its very nature is interesting to me also. By comparison, I think most of what you're referencing above is a seperate world unto itself.
 

Tulloch

Member
These were tests, and do not use the UWP module, but a dedicated Pi module. This can not be released at this time - as we've said. I'm still working on getting some kind of business case for the Pi, but until that happens, there won't be a Pi compatible module. It's far from dead however, we're big fans of the Pi here.....
Ah, I understand. I'm glad you guys are interested in it.

On one side, I'd love to see a dedicated device/os that natively supports Game Maker games. (Perhaps a hardware version of the Player). I'm not sure what kind of market there is for that. If anything, a preconfigured device/image for those not savvy with RPi would be neat.
 
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Kenjiro

Guest
Hibba dibba da dibba do.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I didn't know there was a Raspberry Pi export in the works. That sounds pretty interesting! Will it come with the Desktop Edition or a separate purchase? Any guesses (not promises) on what the price will be? Considering I can get an actual Raspberry Pi for as little as $50 on Amazon, I can't imagine needing to pay more for the module than buying the actual platform's hardware.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
@Kenjiro from what I can tell from his post, there is, they just can't release it yet.


You left out the first half of his post:
These were tests, and do not use the UWP module, but a dedicated Pi module. This can not be released at this time
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
And if you saw his post, you would know that whether yoyogames related or not, he seems to be planning on releasing it at some point, and he may or may not be charging money for it.

Therefore, yes, there is a Raspberry Pi export in the works. If you're going to try to correct someone, at least make sure you know what you are talking about before hitting the post button. Notice my post didn't mention YYG. :p
 
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Kenjiro

Guest
Hibba dibba da dibba do.
 
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Kenjiro

Guest
Hibba dibba da dibba do.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
No, I didn't know that. I thought since it would be somewhat based on the Ubuntu module, it wouldn't take anywhere near that long to make. :(
 
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Kenjiro

Guest
Hibba dibba da dibba do.
 
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Kuro

Guest
Maybe @Mike can weigh in on this then.

@Samuel Venable - As much as I'd love to see it, I can't really see it happen. You know Mike has been working on this since 2015, right? You just need to follow the progress on Twitter.
And Pi keep releasing new, more powerful, versions. Seems that eventually Pi's capabilities and Mike's ongoing project may converge.
 
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Kenjiro

Guest
Hibba dibba da dibba do.
 
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Hyomoto

Member
i had to google, whats an raspbery pi, maybe that answers your questions. and altho ive been a 100% pc master race and a bit from the nes race when i was yung, i know whats a ps4, xbox, wii-me,you,and every1 else.
You have this bad habit of assuming you are the center of the universe. Your lack of knowledge on a topic does not equate to everyone else's. You are like a living embodiment of the Kruger-Dunning effect.
I was never questioning the processing power of the Pi. Mike has certainly done wonders on the (now) older Pi's.
To be fair, @Mike has made games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I'm sure he used even earlier computers. The Pi might as well be a super computer. He reminds me of a cook I know. I'm pretty good, and I can make due with what I have, but this guy can cook a full three course meal with some tinfoil and a convection oven. Making pies and stuffing from scratch with nothing but his bare hands and a butter knife. It's ridiculous. That's what I think Mike looks like coding. Give him a potato and I'm sure we'll get Glados.
 
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zendraw

Guest
what he said to me was extreemly short-sighted, the raspbery pi is not popular for the general population atall. maybe in some local areas but not globally. get over it. and check if you dont have that bad habbit.
 

Mike

nobody important
GMC Elder
what he said to me was extreemly short-sighted, the raspbery pi is not popular for the general population atall. maybe in some local areas but not globally. get over it. and check if you dont have that bad habbit.
Actually... they are. They've sold around 10 million, and while many users buy several, they are pickup up across the world now.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/08/raspberry-pi-10-million-sold/

However.... they aren't really "consumer" units, they're for hobbyists. Thousands of GM users want an export to play with them for themselves, not necessarily to release and sell games. This is even more interesting as I added some basic GPIO features to the Pi version, allowing you to do some basic interfacing to electronics, from SD cards to arcade joysticks.

It's niche market certainly, but still "possibly" a sizeable one, which is why we're still working on an angle for an export.
 
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zendraw

Guest
my point is, no1 will buy a raspbery to play games on it. like you said, its a hobbyist product. and these 10 mils didnt sell in one year. its probably a good product, but its not established yet like an iphone or smthin. when mobile games became a thing how long did it take yoyo to make game maker able to export to them?
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
It doesn't have to be hobbyist, and if GMS 2 is truly as accessible as it claims, it should work just fine with enterprise audiences as well.

Obviously there is a demand for this in school programming courses/clubs and stocking stuffers at Christmas time. But my vision for this extends to arcades, theme parks and tourist attractions --- places where computerized controllers provide interactive experiences. This is what GM was built for, and this is where it can go next.
  • What if YOU get to brand the product yourself?
  • What if YOU get to build special promotional levels/features?
  • What if YOU get the support of a general programming community instead of a tiny clique for a proprietary controller?
  • What if YOU get the carte blanche on the ROM?
Raspberry Pi remained hobbyist because it kept stressing its low cost and use in recreational/educational coding. It has not made a serious effort branching out. But a lack of effort now doesn't mean you can't help make an effort later.

Last year, I saw a collaboration topic from someone programming an electronic scoreboard with GMS and the Arduino extension. There is prior art already. With not much time left on 1.4 and the potential of work on the Pi export dying off with it, I'd love to see this get a chance to move forward.

Especially given that YoYo is now the subsidiary of a gaming technology firm, YoYo is in a prime position to capitalize on this.
 

Tulloch

Member
This is exactly what I'm talking about and I couldn't have worded it better myself.

I was afraid to mention what you have, as I would have butchered it. I imagine a near infinite amount of possibilities for this, and a ton of profitability for YYG if done correctly, perhaps even through a partnership with the RPi Foundation.
 
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Kuro

Guest
my point is, no1 will buy a raspbery to play games on it. like you said, its a hobbyist product. and these 10 mils didnt sell in one year. its probably a good product, but its not established yet like an iphone or smthin. when mobile games became a thing how long did it take yoyo to make game maker able to export to them?
You're comparing totally different things. You can't do that. What you just said is equivalent to saing that because 114.13 million metric tons of bananas are shifted anually, then lemons and citrus aren't established because they only shift 16 million metric tons. You're comparing apples with oranges (Or in this case literally raspberries to apples). It's interesting to note that the Master System only shipped 10 - 12 million units over its 10 year lifespan, you'll be telling us next that that it too is "not established" since it also didn't enjoy the astronomical success of the iPhone?
 
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zendraw

Guest
yes, they are different, iphones have mobile games and a big market, raspbery doesnt, get it? get the comparison?
and the intresting thing bout master system is that its a thing from the 80ties great success then is not nececerly a success today. so you cant compare a master system with a raspbery. try comparing it with the wii u which is specificly made for gaming and it has terrible sales.
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/267...-u-global-lifetime-salesfebruary-2017-update/
 

Hyomoto

Member
@blacklemon - The 'mobile' market. "Oh, it made 19 billion dollars last year!" Let's examine that, shall we? The market is roughly 3 billion 'users' or so. But there are a few key statistics. 1, there are 12 million mobile developers world wide. 2, only about 5% of users spend money on apps. So, first off, if every developer got a even cut of yearly revenue, they'd only make 1,500 US. Second, and I tried to find a good statistic but this is the best I could do, is the top ten grossing iPhone games rake in 2.5 billion or so a year. And the iPhone only makes up about 20% of the smartphone market meaning that ~40% of all revenue is spoken for by 10 apps on the iOS store. Ten apps. Nearly half of all the revenue on the iOS app store is consumed by ten apps. Good news if it's your app of course. But if not, that means you compete directly with 11,999,990 other developers for 60% of the revenue. Suddenly that 1,500 dollars a year looks more like $108 dollars. Assuming that the other 60% was evenly divided, which of course it isn't. There are a considerable number of apps that bring in less than a few dollars in revenue a year, and no first world developer can live on even that generous 1,500 so you better break the top 100 if you want to make it your job.

On the other hand the Pi is a hobbyist market where the major sales seems to be in accessories, not software. There are a lot of DiY projects and a high demand for specialty parts to do them. That said, a enterprising person might see that as a good opportunity since the competition for high quality software on the Pi is largely non-existent and even if you only sold 10 copies of your game for 10 dollars, you'd have matched the revenue your app would achieve on the iOS store. It's almost like they are completely different markets. Not to mention other fallacies in your logic. Sell-through rates on Xbox, PS4 and Wii U are often ~30% even on under-performing titles, where mobile sell through is at best, at best, 5% and more realistically less than 1%. That means on mobile less than 1% of the population will ever even see your app, let alone use or make a purchase with it. Where as on consoles, the Wii U included, visibility is closer to 60% since not only is there less software to keep track of, fans of those consoles tend to keep up with upcoming releases and engage with the platform through events such as E3 or dedicated publications. On the Pi, there is also a dedicated base and assuming you made the right product, there's no reason to expect you couldn't easily sell 10,000 copies and blow that mobile market right out of the water. Of course, that assumes you understand what market saturation is and bothered to understand what you are talking about.

Lastly, let's address that part about 'terrible sales'. The Wii U was an under-performing console, there's no doubt about that. However, the Wii U cost an estimated 228$ to make per unit at launch and was sold for 300$. That means Nintendo made ~216 million dollars on the Wii U at launch. Not bad for terrible sales, eh? On the flip side, the PS3 cost an estimated $690 dollars or more to make and while the exact figure is not known, what is known is that Sony reported a loss of 2 billion dollars because they didn't have a high enough sell through rate on software to make up for the losses on the hardware. So while Nintendo did indeed end up taking a loss on the Wii U, it was from unsold units. Sony could absorb the losses in their gaming division because they are a large company that has a lot of divisions, Nintendo similarly absorbed their losses similarly since the Nintendo DS/3DS line has been consistently profitable, but their software also has unusually high sell-through rates.

I digress. When people say you are comparing apples to oranges, @blacklemon, they are saying that because you are. What I am saying, however, is that you have no idea what you are talking about.
 
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zendraw

Guest
do you really think i will read all that? :D

tldr, pullin straws like mad, people will still play games on phones, consoles and pc`s, no1 connects raspbery with games.
 
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Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
@blacklemon you're not exactly being nice either. You don't think the Pi is worth an export. We get it. I still think @Mike outlined pretty well why they should continue developing it. If there really are thousands of GM users who want it, that's more than enough reason to support it.
 
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zendraw

Guest
i dont think that some1 will bother making an export for the pi, simply cus its not good business. im not sayn its not worth, if anything im all for expansion even if i wont use it.

its about business, not about hopes and dreams.

hyamoto simply doesnt like me cus i can make his game in 2 days :D
 
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Kuro

Guest
tldr, pullin straws like mad, people will still play games on phones, consoles and pc`s, no1 connects raspbery with games.
Sure, a computer that's aimed at giving young people cheap access to a programmable computer with the aim of teaching them to program... that would never in a million years ever be used by its userbase to play or make games. :rolleyes:
i dont think that some1 will bother making an export for the pi, simply cus its not good business.
Also. Thinking that if YYC did create a target the PI that they would be doing it solely so that developers can target more customers, totally ignores the entire point of the platform in the first place. Arbitrary numbers of games consoles and mobile phones sold are so unrelated to the reason for this platform existing they hardly constitute a valid reason for anything in the context of this thread. :confused:
The Pi was created with the goal of helping young people learn to program. Gamemaker itself owes its origins to the exact same goals as the Pi itself has! Marc Overmars "started developing Game Maker in 1998 when he wanted to teach his children about the concepts of Computer Science but they never used it." source. GM and Pi are like two things that have a potentially symbiotic relationship with each other due to their goals being aligned.

Mojang, company responsible for the second best selling video game of all time thinks that the pi is notable enough to be worth supporting and even created a custom version of Minecraft for it. And they clearly get what the PI is all about: Minecraft Pi Edition "comes with a revised feature set and support for multiple programming languages. You can start by building structures in the traditional Minecraft way, but once you’ve got to grips with the in-game features, there’s opportunity to break open the code and use programming language to manipulate things in the game world." source.
 
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Multimagyar

Guest
People will buy a raspberry of they liking if the want to build a smart house, a tiny assistant, or even home or portable consoles of they liking. There are quite a few clever ones out there. Saying that people do not connect the two and has nothing to do with it, neglect the possibilities of the platform. If all inventor would have that mind set we would not have computers phones or anything really. I'm pretty eager for that target platform ever since I saw Mike sharing some progress on twitter and then later on ported some Game Maker titles on to it. I would love to have a home or portable console I could put my own or other people creation onto or portable and home like the switch.
 
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zendraw

Guest
oh my god, the santimentalaties. it doesnt matter whats the point of game maker if yoyo goes bankrupt, think god damnit...
to afford to do charities requires alot of money, and yes this wuld be more or less a charity, maybe they do want to export to raspbery pi, i dont know, im not a head of yoyo, but CAN they? while remaining in the business and not losing. i alredy gave 2 examples if youd actually read and not cherry pick, how long did it take them to export to phones after mobile games became a thing? i dont know how long, but im sure it wasnt very long.

i can do that game in 2 days cus its simple and i can use game maker efficiently. not fully, but efficiently.
also dont mistake continous work with effort. game making is not my first work/engagment and i know what it is to work with effort, and occupying yourself with an activity.
 
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Throw in my two cents... :)

I think - when there is a pi capable of handling GMS - that there is a great business case for being able to run GMS on a pi for education. A huge user base and if kids learn using GMS, there'll be a lot that then stick with it post education. Huge marketing potential/competitive opportunity.

From my hobbyist perspective, I'd love to be able to export to Pi just for the immensely exciting opportunity of building a handheld console / arcade machine that plays my game(s). Imagine offering that as a special edition, or as a prize?! Might be in my own geek bubble but that'd be cool...
 
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