So I found GameMaker7.exe from 2009....

[allanonmage]

So I found GameMaker7.exe from 2009.... Man, I feel old. I was taking a game development class at University, and I didn't realize it was from 2009. I think the hard drive with my game file is having issue though. I bought the software back then, does that qualify me for an upgrade discount or anything? IIRC it was like $35 at the time.

Mobile was brand new at the time, so crooss compiling was not even heard of, but now I see that this makes all kinds of cross platform stuff. I even saw something about a marketplace, and they both sound awesome.

I keep seeing RPGMaker MV go on sale on Steam, is there a recent comparison anywhere I can check out?

I'm kind of a filthy casual, I don't even play the games I have lol, so who knows if I will actually even make a game, but it does sound like a good idea to showcase my programming chops.

 

[allanonmage]

I recall having to make my own GUI and HUD from scratch, which I thought was pretty complex to do, so I was proud of my achievement. Are there built in functions like that now?

GUI being a loading screen, what the different choices do, etc.

HUD being weapons, health, life, etc. That normally show up in part of the screen and don't move. Bottom in my case.

 

[rIKmAN]

So I found GameMaker7.exe from 2009.... Man, I feel old. I was taking a game development class at University, and I didn't realize it was from 2009. I think the hard drive with my game file is having issue though. I bought the software back then, does that qualify me for an upgrade discount or anything? IIRC it was like $35 at the time.

Mobile was brand new at the time, so crooss compiling was not even heard of, but now I see that this makes all kinds of cross platform stuff. I even saw something about a marketplace, and they both sound awesome.

I keep seeing RPGMaker MV go on sale on Steam, is there a recent comparison anywhere I can check out?

I'm kind of a filthy casual, I don't even play the games I have lol, so who knows if I will actually even make a game, but it does sound like a good idea to showcase my programming chops.

No, your $35 purchase from 10yrs ago surprisingly does not qualify you for any discount.
There is a current Winter Sale which is 20% off though which may interest you, details of that along with comparisons of the different licences can be found here: https://www.yoyogames.com/get

No idea about RPG Maker as I've never used it, but Googling may give you some articles that compare it against other engines including GMS2 - not really sure.

I would suggest you take a look through the manual to see what features and functions are available along with trying out the GMS2 30 day trial version and having a play around to see what you think.

The trial is fully featured (except exporting) so you will be able to use it to import projects from demos and tutorials, follow the official tutorials and YT tutorials and such, as well as write your own code etc and see if you like it and want to go on and purchase a licence

 

[Yal]

I recall having to make my own GUI and HUD from scratch, which I thought was pretty complex to do, so I was proud of my achievement. Are there built in functions like that now?

GUI being a loading screen, what the different choices do, etc.

HUD being weapons, health, life, etc. That normally show up in part of the screen and don't move. Bottom in my case.

You can draw arbitrary raster graphics and a number of vector shapes, so you can draw whatever you want. There's a number of built-in convenience functions like draw_healthbar and a D&D node to draw the number of lives as a series of sprites, but you usually get better results designing your own HUD. For instance, draw a circular healthbar by using some trigonometry and drawing line segments (in different color each iteration, in my example, making it gradient too!)




As for the GUI, there's a "GUI Layer" now which is screen pixels instead of game pixels. This leads to a bunch of interesting quirks (like needing to resize the GUI layer if you want it to stay consistent with the game if the resolution changes), but one of its main features is that you don't need to compensate for the room moving around anymore, GUI elements always stay on the same place.