What is something you WISH you knew ?

D

dragonsaurstudios

Guest
What is something you wish someone told you before heading into the marvelous world of GMS ?
 
What tutorials are taught by people who shouldn't be making tutorials.

What developers, musicians, artists, and or publishers are utterly toxic, like who to avoid, because they'll always use you. There's a lot of great people out there, but my first few years, I found the worst in the development community.

That it would take a long time before there was Nintendo support of any kind, but now Switch support is available.
 
Last edited:
that it's gonna make my future be an endless stretch of banning spam bots
Can I help?

What is something you wish someone told you before heading into the marvelous world of GMS ?
gmcallback_ (basically a way to make JavaScript and GML talk to eachother.) If I knew about it in 2012-2013 I would have been able to close deals with five different HTML5 game publishers which would have given me a budget for my next title, and allowed me to build relationships with publishers during the gold-rush. Sadly, I wasn't able to implement their API's... but that's a personal problem

This link has some great insights: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/common-pitfalls-in-mid-large-scale-projects.72096/ if you're a beginner, some of these may be above your understanding... but it wouldn't hurt to read through them, anyway. The road ahead of you is long and winding, but knowing what's ahead may help you find your way.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Last edited:
Run away while you still can.
Nope, I hate to run. Also, I like it here. Actually, it's my favorite place in the world wide web ... this is the only exception

Anyway, I'd have appreciated someone telling me to ignore DnD and go straight for GML. Couldn't get the hang of DnD at all, it was too cumbersome for me to keep switching between mouse and keyboard all the time. When I tried GML a few months later, it went much smoother.
My experience was exactly the opposite. Everyone and their cousin told me to learn GML when I was starting out... and here I am 13 years later with an "intermediate at best" understanding of it. Maybe a few more years of DND would have been good for me while I learned the fundamentals of programming. It's hard to say... I think some people are hard-wired for programming; others simply aren't. My advice is to do what's most comfortable for you.

Either way, this is probably a good link if you are struggling: https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/540/education-learning-to-program

- - -
 
Last edited:

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Come to think of it, It would've been nice to have a tutor, or rather.. don't leave that programming job!
Buuut yeah.

Either way it would've improved my understanding of programming, and I'd have a lot more research material in my brain
 
CTRL + S often (this was especially true in the case in GMS 1.4, not as critical in GMS 2.0, but I still recommend it after you make any important changes, as some things like editing a sprite are not committed to disk immediately)

Make sure you have a good backup system. Use source control if possible.
 

ceaselessly

Member
Stick with it.

Used GM a lot in the GM5 through GM7 era, fell off around GM8 and bought GMS2 in 2017. There was about six or so years in there that I didn't touch Game Maker at all, and I wish someone had encouraged me to stick with it.

No use fretting over lost time, but still something I would change if I could. :)
 

Let's Clone

Member
I wish I found about about game development, or programming in general, waaay sooner in life.
I was in my early 20's (almost 30 now) when I randomly decided to take my first programming class at university (Processing). It was the perfect outlet for my affinity towards math and art and the younger me would have had an absolutely blast with it!
But the time lost hasn't changed the fact that this is something I will be doing for the rest of my life.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I wish I knew initially there are other tools available that suit my needs. While I like working with GameMaker, and still do, I like working with multiple game engines, languages, and communities. It helps me build more experience not being confined to one engine/language. But I'm going to keep the rest on that topic to myself.
 
Go to college for computer science.

Well, actually... a lot of people told me that.

... still, though. I'm probably a LOT more successful in the timeline where someone got through to me. Even if I flunked out (which is almost a certainty) I suspect that having SOME SORT of foundation would pay dividinds. My inability to program limits my ability to design on a daily basis.

The honest truth about my career is...

nothing.gif

It's purple... the same color as all the other ribbons.
 
Last edited:

Freddy Jones

Your Main Detective
I wish someone told me it would be impossible to find anything like Game Maker again paid or free. You will never find anything that does what Game Maker does as conveniently, with reliability, so many targets, and with as good of performance as Game Maker. I spent so much of my life thinking I was a good programmer and that what I enjoyed was programming - but nope. A wasted a good chunk of my life moving away from Game Maker because the tool started to crash on my computer all the time and I had nothing else to go to. I felt pretty much trapped and thought I should start venturing out to "real projects" and "real languages". God, I wish I knew what I knew now because I would have never went into computer science or looked to learn all the languages I learned which was just completely useless for me. Even looking into all the other engines and frameworks, it's all terrible. Like, I know how to use them and I solved a lot of the "hardships or get used to's" but literally nothing will satisfy the absolutely clear simplicity of the workflow Game Maker provides. It's got everything you need to make a game and doesn't (or at least it didn't) force you to write your code any one way and didn't yell at you when it thought you weren't doing things right.

So yeah, I wish I knew what it was I liked about GM and what I couldn't get back leaving it. I wish I understood what made me so passionate in life before leaving GM. It's not the same for everyone, I dedicated a lot of my time and life to GM just to leave it and realize there was no point. Now I'm just in a limbo with nowhere to go.

Edit: Fixed text, I cursed??
 
Last edited:

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
I wish someone told me it would be impossible to find anything like Game Maker again paid or free. You will never find anything that does what Game Maker does as conveniently, with reliability, so many targets, and with as good of performance as Game Maker. I spent so much of my life thinking I was a good programmer and that what I enjoyed was programming - but nope. A wasted a good chunk of my life moving away from Game Maker because the tool started to crash on my computer all the time and I had nothing else to go to. I felt pretty much trapped and thought I should start venturing out to "real projects" and "real languages". God, I wish I knew what I knew now because I would have never went into computer science or looked to learn all the languages I learned which was just completely useless for me. Even looking into all the other engines and frameworks, it's all terrible. Like, I know how to use them and I solved a lot of the "hardships or get used to's" but literally nothing will satisfy the absolutely clear simplicity of the workflow Game Maker provides. It's got everything you need to make a game and doesn't (or at least it didn't) force you to write your code any one way and didn't yell at you when it thought you weren't doing things right.

So yeah, I wish I knew what it was I liked about GM and what I couldn't get back leaving it. I wish I understood what made me so passionate in life before leaving GM. It's not the same for everyone, I dedicated a lot of my time and life to **** thing just to leave it and realize there was no point. Now I'm just in a limbo with nowhere to go.
I actually get this 100%. I've spent a good portion of the last couple years dabbling elsewhere(Unity specifically) because I'm attracted by the extra power you get. But having that power and being able to actually use effectively and quickly are two different things. I made a decision to stick with GMS instead, as I was always more comfortable, it has enough power for what I want, and as you say, it gets things done much faster than anything else I know of.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Game maker for me has been a learning tool. It tough me about programming, graphics, physics and much more.

So for me, I wish I had known that I could go out and learn what game maker does myself. That I could understand other languages like C and C++, use OpenGL myself, do networking myself.

I was never in it to actually make games and release them. For me game development has always been about learning new skills and developing existing ones.
So I wish I had known that none of these things were ever out of grasp, and had started to develop those new skills sooner.
 

hughrock18

Member
How to maintain my focus on a single project (until completion).

Starting 10 dif projects (usually because I was either bored of the last, or getting really excited about a new concept or game idea) is so detrimental.

My wife partially keeps me on one project. However, she is NOT a programmer, and all of my project's code "look the same" to her when glancing over my shoulder. So... almost an answer...
 
T

Two Tail Fox

Guest
I wanna know what love is... jks! Unless...

But seriously, maths and physics equations. If I knew game making had ANYTHING to do with maths at that point in my life I would have paid soooooo much more attention 😢
 

Rob

Member
Not using arrays or data structures when making any kind of game that will use more than a few stats WILL TAKE YOU HOURS TO UPDATE THOSE STATS! I'm talking about Pokemon style games, JRPG's, Simulation games etc.

You might get the initial vars copy/pasted in 10-20 minutes when you first set them up but in a week, or a month, when you make inevitable changes, good luck with changing everything again for the 20th time. For loops + arrays/data_structures will save you so much time, once you know how to use them properly.
 

gkri

Member
I wish I knew earlier that when importing a sprite with a filename that ends with stripX (and correct size), automatically the sprite will be sliced at X frames...

edit: Example, a file named player_strip6.png will automatically imported into a sprite with 6 frames.
 
T

trashnerd

Guest
How to remain motivated. Which is really the only thing I lack.
i feel you. it's a struggle to stay motivated at times, which is weird because i like coding and i want to do it. but sometimes the amount of things i don't know that i don't know coupled with unreasonable perfectionism is rough... just gotta keep at it, right?
 

drandula

Member
Hold ALT to select area in text, or select column to write on multiple lines of text at same time.
I don't know when this was added or always have been there, but I saw this on tweet maybe year ago and I was like "huh, didn't know". Makes editing easier.

Edit. This is a thing which I wish I knew earlier, I have been using GMS for years, and never really consciously thought I needed, but still wanted.
 
Last edited:
Just wish I knew I was going to be doing alot of reading and rereading of the same manual documents and still be overwhelmed due to the examples not matching what I was trying to do and end up wasting alot of time using poor research skills to try to find something close to what I was trying to find out if it would be possible to do in the software or allow me to progress somehow.
I feel like I waste more time reading and watching tutorials than actually learning 'on the job' and making any real progress with any of my projects.

That and the fact I always find something new that I want to implement so I suppose I'm forever chasing my tail
 

Sabnock

Member
I wish i knew how to code games like God of War, Red Dead Redemption II, The Last of us or Shadow of the Tomb Raider 🙏

In answer to the OP is wish someone had told me how much of my life GMS would suck out of me lol
 
Top