OFFICIAL YoYo Games Is Now Part Of Opera

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Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
So I am really questionning why YoYo Games chose to add Opera to their team and I would really love to know how it will make Opera and/or GMS better.
YoYo Games did not add Opera to the team... Quite the reverse actually! YoYo Games was sold by Playtech to Opera... so the question is why did Opera buy them? I do think this is addressed somewhat in the QA video, but to be honest, the reasons I think are less important than the results, and so far it seems a positive move for GameMaker.
 
YoYo Games did not add Opera to the team... Quite the reverse actually! YoYo Games was sold by Playtech to Opera... so the question is why did Opera buy them? I do think this is addressed somewhat in the QA video, but to be honest, the reasons I think are less important than the results, and so far it seems a positive move for GameMaker.
What caught my attention is more the fact that a browser I have been avoiding for years, because of it's huge lack of customization and strict interface, baught a software I love and since I do not like the mindset of Opera, I am very scared of the futur of GMS knowing that they are now behind the wheel. I also cannot stop myself from seeing that even if companies boast things like free browsers and other fun stuff, they still are capable of buying whole companies such as YoYo Games. And again, as I can also see, it's a question of money because why sell a good game making software that is popular and having a nice futur? Well, if another company offers some nice money, why refuse it. So I am not too impressed by this move, all I hope is that my beloved Game Making software will not boost it's prices up to pin me down using an old outdated version again because I won't have the means anymore to buy the new versions. I miss the simplicity of the days where Mark Overmars was still the owner of Game Maker. Things were simple and less money-making-y. But again, more resources also means more possibilities of releasing our games on solid platforms and gaining ourselves money from our creations. I am very puzzled and stressed about this futur because I have big plans and I hope they won't get destroyed.

I guess only time can give answers so, I'll do like everyone else. Wait and see.
 

Zhanghua

Member
What caught my attention is more the fact that a browser I have been avoiding for years, because of it's huge lack of customization and strict interface, baught a software I love and since I do not like the mindset of Opera, I am very scared of the futur of GMS knowing that they are now behind the wheel. I also cannot stop myself from seeing that even if companies boast things like free browsers and other fun stuff, they still are capable of buying whole companies such as YoYo Games. And again, as I can also see, it's a question of money because why sell a good game making software that is popular and having a nice futur? Well, if another company offers some nice money, why refuse it. So I am not too impressed by this move, all I hope is that my beloved Game Making software will not boost it's prices up to pin me down using an old outdated version again because I won't have the means anymore to buy the new versions. I miss the simplicity of the days where Mark Overmars was still the owner of Game Maker. Things were simple and less money-making-y. But again, more resources also means more possibilities of releasing our games on solid platforms and gaining ourselves money from our creations. I am very puzzled and stressed about this futur because I have big plans and I hope they won't get destroyed.

I guess only time can give answers so, I'll do like everyone else. Wait and see.
Yoyo has more oversea marketplace now
 

gnysek

Member
I would not connect browser (and it's features) with gaming department in any way. It's same owner, but they just have several businesses.
 

Toque

Member
What caught my attention is more the fact that a browser I have been avoiding for years, because of it's huge lack of customization and strict interface, baught a software I love and since I do not like the mindset of Opera, I am very scared of the futur of GMS knowing that they are now behind the wheel. I also cannot stop myself from seeing that even if companies boast things like free browsers and other fun stuff, they still are capable of buying whole companies such as YoYo Games. And again, as I can also see, it's a question of money because why sell a good game making software that is popular and having a nice futur? Well, if another company offers some nice money, why refuse it. So I am not too impressed by this move, all I hope is that my beloved Game Making software will not boost it's prices up to pin me down using an old outdated version again because I won't have the means anymore to buy the new versions. I miss the simplicity of the days where Mark Overmars was still the owner of Game Maker. Things were simple and less money-making-y. But again, more resources also means more possibilities of releasing our games on solid platforms and gaining ourselves money from our creations. I am very puzzled and stressed about this futur because I have big plans and I hope they won't get destroyed.

I guess only time can give answers so, I'll do like everyone else. Wait and see.
It’s more likely game maker will do well. The sale is a good move. And all is well.

but it’s human nature to expect the worse......

I find comfort in owners with a diversified portfolio, deep pockets and some experience in software development. Home run.
 

Alice

Darts addict
Forum Staff
Moderator
Having a game development company bought by a browser company doesn't sound too bad either, considering it was sold by a gambling company, though. ^^'

And for what it's worth, GM:S releases seem steadier recently, so considering what happened recently I'm carefully optimistic about what future holds.
 

JeffJ

Member
Right now I'd prefer slower but more stable releases. They come out much quicker yes, but for the moment it seems to be at the cost of stability.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
Right now I'd prefer slower but more stable releases. They come out much quicker yes, but for the moment it seems to be at the cost of stability.
This does seem to be a thing. I'm hoping that now that they seem to actually have more resources to push things faster, they will be able to find the right balance of speed and stability.
 

JeffJ

Member
I would like that as well. In the GMS1 days we could go long periods of time without new stable releases, but the flip side of that is that back then, they seemed to have a much higher standard for what was declared "stable". Fast releases accomplishes nothing if it comes at the cost of stability, and the entire GMS2 phase (from beta to now) has only taught me to fear updates. I would love for that to change and once again find more consistent stability.
 

rIKmAN

Member
They could/should have pushed it to the Beta channel first, then released to Stable once the reports had come in and any issues been fixed.
Not sure why they didn't this time.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
I would like that as well. In the GMS1 days we could go long periods of time without new stable releases, but the flip side of that is that back then, they seemed to have a much higher standard for what was declared "stable". Fast releases accomplishes nothing if it comes at the cost of stability, and the entire GMS2 phase (from beta to now) has only taught me to fear updates. I would love for that to change and once again find more consistent stability.
Well, I definitely remember people complaining about how unstable GM:S 1.4 was... And I also remember a LOT of people complaining about long times between updates and getting lots of new features at once and saying "can't we have more frequent updates with fewer features?".

At this point, YYG just can't win regardless of what they do... 😂😂😂😂
 

curato

Member
Well, I definitely remember people complaining about how unstable GM:S 1.4 was... And I also remember a LOT of people complaining about long times between updates and getting lots of new features at once and saying "can't we have more frequent updates with fewer features?".

At this point, YYG just can't win regardless of what they do... 😂😂😂😂
It is the internet. You can't win. You only can lose less :p
 

JeffJ

Member
Well, I definitely remember people complaining about how unstable GM:S 1.4 was... And I also remember a LOT of people complaining about long times between updates and getting lots of new features at once and saying "can't we have more frequent updates with fewer features?".

At this point, YYG just can't win regardless of what they do... 😂😂😂😂
I get what you're saying. Now let me tell you a little story.

For the past week I have made zero progress on any of my 3 main projects, because I have been spending all that time fixing features and code in all of them that were already working before updating. No changes to code, just update of runtime and IDE. This has been anything from basic animations to collisions (which has now been broken in my projects for the third time since the shift to GMS2) to even specific level designs.

Today it culminated when I made the dire mistake of updating once again the newest runtime and IDE. I was told I might be able to fix some of the collision and level designs that were broken (again, not by my own doing) by the conversion process if I could replace certain Spine sprites in a converted project with the old non converted version of said sprites, so I thought I'd give it a go, since I had both collisions and levels broken by updates. In particular an old level was broken by the collisions breaking, and I wanted to bring it back.

So first I updated, then imported the Spine sprites from and old nonconverted version. Since the level that was broken was no longer in the new version of the project, I had to import it from an old version. First I did it using the "Import existing" feature. The room referenced objects that were also in the newest version of the project, and they all had the exact same names and sprites, but rather than identifying this, GMS2 chose to ignore that and create exact duplicates of every single asset referenced in the imported room, opening every single one of them in the process. Now the IDE became so unresponsive that I could not even open the room folder in the asset browser.

This obviously wouldn't work anyway, since the room had duplicates of the referenced assets in the room rather than the originals it was supposed to use, so I chose to bite the bullet and recreate the room manually instead. Once again, I updated the Spine sprites, and rather than having to create an entire new room, I wanted to use an existing level as template. So I selected a room in the asset browser and pressed Ctrl+D to duplicate it. I don't know if that happened, since somehow this managed to make my asset browser completely empty - even the search feature could not find any assets in it. I have no idea what happened.

So after once again restarting the IDE and reopening the project, and this time successfully duplicating a room to use as template, I wanted to finally test if I could actually unbreak my collisions and bring back the level that was broken by an update. When I went to compile, I got some very odd compile errors that didn't really make sense. After investigating a bit further, I found out that now GMS2 had somehow decided to erase code from 3 different events in a very important object - all 3 events were there, but they were empty. No idea how that happened either. Looking at the files in the project folder, the GML files for the events still contained the actual code, but GMS2 refused to recognize this. So I tried restarting again, but still nothing. Then I tried making some manual changes to the code in the events (such as adding a comment) and saving. The object YY file was updated (as shown by Windows timestamps), but again, the GML files were not. They even showed the asterisk * in GMS2 (but the projects' own asterisk disappeared to indicate a successful save). Then, after backing up the code contents of the GML files, I tried to delete the 3 events in GMS2 via the IDE and saving. This actually removed the GML files in the project folder. Yay! Then, I manually added the events back via the IDE, and added the code into the events. Finally, GMS2 would allow me to save the YY file as well as the code, and it would actually load back up again. But now, the project simply refused to compile, with no compile errors, but a lot of internal stuff in the compile log which I have never seen in 17 years of GM use, and which clearly had nothing to do with my code. Restarting changed nothing.

All of this was just to test if I could be so privileged to bring back a level that was broken (again, not by me, but by YYG), but I never even got to the point where this was possible to test, even though essentially all I had to do could be boiled down to:
1: Replace Spine sprites
2: Import room
3: Test room

Instead, I am now left with a project that is somehow more broken than before and won't even compile, and is refusing to save code, and even deletes it seemingly at random, when it isn't hiding all resources in the asset browser. Not exaggerating when I say this is behaving like a beta product right now.

Before today, I've spent the rest of the week trying to fix animations and other fun stuff that were also broken by updating (not by any changes by myself). So I have managed to waste an entire week of my life where no progress was made on at least one project, but all time was used chasing my own tail, trying to get back to square one. My projects are now more crippled than before, and I am nowhere closer to doing actual work - quite the opposite, my work has regressed.

And all of this is just a quick glimpse of the past week, but this is basically how it's been ever since the shift to GMS2 to varying degrees. We've all had our ups and downs with GM through the years (again, user of 17 years here, no marriage is perfect), but this is beyond extreme. At no point in the GMS1 days was it like this. I have to go back all the way to when GMS1 was in beta to remember when it was this broken.

I realize this may sound slightly ranty, but I am legit nearing a serious breaking point. We need to address the lack of stability that has been increasingly drastic for the past 3 years or so now, and while it's all fun and good to chuckle about how we can never please everyone, this is, if nothing else, a serious look into what just one week looks like for one user with enough years in the bank for some high level perspective.
 
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True Valhalla

Full-Time Developer
GMC Elder
Well, I definitely remember people complaining about how unstable GM:S 1.4 was... And I also remember a LOT of people complaining about long times between updates and getting lots of new features at once and saying "can't we have more frequent updates with fewer features?".

At this point, YYG just can't win regardless of what they do... 😂😂😂😂
GMS 1.4 was undeniably unstable even up until the final release. YoYo Games has never once found the right balance between stability and overextension...I think it's their biggest weakness.
 
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gnysek

Member
I'm also thinking that YYG made a bad move, releasing "hotfix" last week, without releasing it first to beta channel.

But the truth is, that initial stable release was based on beta, and while I won't gonna get into which of bugs was also there and which not, I think that since beta exists, we also have some responsibility for stable versions quality. QA can make 10000000 tests, but may not come to some specific code which we have in our project, and causes some trouble now. There's too many possibilities. So we're that final buffer, which is best for finding edge-cases.
I think that many people doesn't check beta, cause they don't want to break their projects. But as beta is a separate and can be used parallel, there's no problem in duplicating project folder*, and opening it in beta, without touching any other projects. Simply running a game and checking if it works normally, is really a big help for YYG.

But, this have no connection to acquiring by Opera in any way.

*(In fact you always should have backup or versioned (git) version of project, no matter what).
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I feel like the odd one out here, I've never had any major breakages in my projects because of updates... and I've made hundreds (81 here, but definitely over 100 if you include the unreleased and currently in development stuff). Like, the straw that broke my camel's back on 1.4.9999 was the default color constants being messed up, not any code behavior changes.

The stuff that's broken has always been library code someone else wrote originally (like some 3D maths code from an GM8-days example that just stopped working under YYC). But I'm also extremely focused on writing as safe code as possible... no fancy shortcuts that lower code readability, using basics like arrays and for loops whenever possible, having a reasonable (or guarantees-crashes-as-soon-as-possible) default value for things that might not get set, always doing 1 operation per line of code. Sure, it might just be Stockholm Syndrome because of some past experiences, but overcompensating for the execute_string deprecation hasn't done me anything bad so far.

But yeah, you absolutely always under all circumstances should have a Git backup of your work (with a cloud / separate drive upstream repo)... not only is undoing unwanted changes trivial, you can mix and match files from different versions, easily make tests of destructive changes with 100% ability to scrap them if they didn't turn out right, and a lot of other cool stuff.
 

Cpaz

Member
I feel like the odd one out here, I've never had any major breakages in my projects because of updates... and I've made hundreds (81 here, but definitely over 100 if you include the unreleased and currently in development stuff). Like, the straw that broke my camel's back on 1.4.9999 was the default color constants being messed up, not any code behavior changes.
I'm in a similar boat myself. Outside of the betas I've opted into, I've yet to have an update explicitly *break* something. The closest thing is a runtime that borked the gui layer/draw event at one point? But that was years ago, and it was incredibly brief.

But yeah, you absolutely always under all circumstances should have a Git backup of your work (with a cloud / separate drive upstream repo)... not only is undoing unwanted changes trivial, you can mix and match files from different versions, easily make tests of destructive changes with 100% ability to scrap them if they didn't turn out right, and a lot of other cool stuff.
Also 100000% this. Life has been much less stressful since I set up a git/bitbucket repo (paired with local backups, of course). Pair it with a git client like Fork and you have an incredibly clean and visually cohesive setup.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
I was one of the many victims of the faulty DRM back in the day that added skull and crossbones on our sprites. That counts as a game-breaking update right?!?!
 

JesterOC

Member
Hoping that things like this:
get resolved.... rather than pushed under the rug like in the past... GMS 2.3 still can't load .gif files from url?
 
I have no problem with evolution and making a software better. BUT, to me, the best GM apps for creating games were GM 5.3 and GM 8.1. When GMS 1 came out, I found the IDE much slower and when GMS 2 came out, although I bought it, I am still unable to get used to that horrible interface. I was VERY comfortable with the GM 8.1 interface. It worked perfectly for me. When GMS 2 came out and still today, I feel I wasted all of my GM experience and have to learn an entirely new language and interface from scratch. The transition was NOT smooth and nothing good for me. GMS 2 refrained my will to use GMS even up to this date. I love Game Making so much but every time I open GMS2, I'm discouraged. It's not inviting. I also utterly hate the obligation to connect with my account and the obliged ads at the top. You know, I BOUGHT the app, please spare me these ads. I also hate the obligation to absolutely create a working folder before continuing. Before, I could just fiddle around in the app, then decide to save the project, now, just for basic tests, I NEED a test folder and another one, and another one for different scenarios.

Yes, I'm weird, but I aim for simplicity and GM 5.3 was what I consider the easiest and most simple and powerful game creation tool. When 3D hopped in GM 8, OUFF, things started to slow down and GMS 1 killed the last bit alive!

So, yeah, I just hope this transition will make it worth while and make GMS 2 more fun to work with in the future because for now, I am still TRYING to create a project and work in it. Not that it's complicated, I know what to do, I just cannot bare that interface. It's like if there is too much information on the screen that I don't even know where to look first. AND that's in every single window, from object creation to sprite drawing, tiles and backgrounds and room editor, there's just too much going on in one view.

I maybe old-school, I know I have no choice but to continue evolving so I will one day get used to it I guess. I just hope this new move will make things easier.

Another thing I am trying to do is create a new theme for GMS 2. Pouahaha! The ENORMOUS amount of images, icons for every single little piece of window parts is just ridiculous. Where is the day where all we had to do is change a few colors? You know, 3D object outline, inline and actual color, an accent color with outline and inline to be fancy? Ouff! Sorry!

Talking about Opera, I've been on Opera GX since I saw the announcement here. I switched from Edge to Opera to see the advantages. I also chose to join their Discord channel and it's just a plain mess to go there. We do not feel any implication from Opera at all, the suggestions submitted are littered by hundreds of others which look like kids or others that seem to do web development as their main hobby and the amount of channels on the server is just incredible. The list is just sooooo long, you don't know where to go and it does not look serious.

I love the Opera GX sidebar with Messenger and discord integrated. Hangouts, GMail, Skype??? Nope. You can get a GMail extension to install but GX will not offer this built-in for some reason. Also, that stupid Speedial, I do not understand why after SOOOOOO many years, no browser has ever even though of AT LEAST offering an option to use your HOMEPAGE as the default new tab page. Seriously??? It did not cross the mind of ANYONE? Opera GX boasts hordes of customizations from colors to some positions, but nope, the new tab page is just too complicated to integrate.

I just hope that developers will be more attentive to users. Some may feel listened while as others are ignored or bashed by the community for their excentric ideas...Sigh...Society and me. Let's see what the futur holds for YoYo Games and GMS, I'm looking forward in seeing what's becoming of this app that is the FIRST app I ever bought in my life by the way, before Game Maker, I had never bought any apps. So GM and I have a little personal history because I do not spend for apps, so spending for an app was a huge jump for me and I had a very personal connection with my game creation app back then and I felt terrible when an "S" was added to the initials of my beloved app. But, I'll be back and see what I can achieve...very slowly and with lots of learning AGAIN...and hope for the best for GMS with this new owner.

Did I just publicly spill my heart out concerning my frustration with GMS and Opera???
Oh! It seams so...I'm sorry! 😯
Long live GMS and Opera! 🥳
 

lost

Member
I get what you're saying. Now let me tell you a little story.

For the past week I have made zero progress on any of my 3 main projects, because I have been spending all that time fixing features and code in all of them that were already working before updating. No changes to code, just update of runtime and IDE. This has been anything from basic animations to collisions (which has now been broken in my projects for the third time since the shift to GMS2) to even specific level designs.

Today it culminated when I made the dire mistake of updating once again the newest runtime and IDE. I was told I might be able to fix some of the collision and level designs that were broken (again, not by my own doing) by the conversion process if I could replace certain Spine sprites in a converted project with the old non converted version of said sprites, so I thought I'd give it a go, since I had both collisions and levels broken by updates. In particular an old level was broken by the collisions breaking, and I wanted to bring it back.

So first I updated, then imported the Spine sprites from and old nonconverted version. Since the level that was broken was no longer in the new version of the project, I had to import it from an old version. First I did it using the "Import existing" feature. The room referenced objects that were also in the newest version of the project, and they all had the exact same names and sprites, but rather than identifying this, GMS2 chose to ignore that and create exact duplicates of every single asset referenced in the imported room, opening every single one of them in the process. Now the IDE became so unresponsive that I could not even open the room folder in the asset browser.

This obviously wouldn't work anyway, since the room had duplicates of the referenced assets in the room rather than the originals it was supposed to use, so I chose to bite the bullet and recreate the room manually instead. Once again, I updated the Spine sprites, and rather than having to create an entire new room, I wanted to use an existing level as template. So I selected a room in the asset browser and pressed Ctrl+D to duplicate it. I don't know if that happened, since somehow this managed to make my asset browser completely empty - even the search feature could not find any assets in it. I have no idea what happened.

So after once again restarting the IDE and reopening the project, and this time successfully duplicating a room to use as template, I wanted to finally test if I could actually unbreak my collisions and bring back the level that was broken by an update. When I went to compile, I got some very odd compile errors that didn't really make sense. After investigating a bit further, I found out that now GMS2 had somehow decided to erase code from 3 different events in a very important object - all 3 events were there, but they were empty. No idea how that happened either. Looking at the files in the project folder, the GML files for the events still contained the actual code, but GMS2 refused to recognize this. So I tried restarting again, but still nothing. Then I tried making some manual changes to the code in the events (such as adding a comment) and saving. The object YY file was updated (as shown by Windows timestamps), but again, the GML files were not. They even showed the asterisk * in GMS2 (but the projects' own asterisk disappeared to indicate a successful save). Then, after backing up the code contents of the GML files, I tried to delete the 3 events in GMS2 via the IDE and saving. This actually removed the GML files in the project folder. Yay! Then, I manually added the events back via the IDE, and added the code into the events. Finally, GMS2 would allow me to save the YY file as well as the code, and it would actually load back up again. But now, the project simply refused to compile, with no compile errors, but a lot of internal stuff in the compile log which I have never seen in 17 years of GM use, and which clearly had nothing to do with my code. Restarting changed nothing.

All of this was just to test if I could be so privileged to bring back a level that was broken (again, not by me, but by YYG), but I never even got to the point where this was possible to test, even though essentially all I had to do could be boiled down to:
1: Replace Spine sprites
2: Import room
3: Test room

Instead, I am now left with a project that is somehow more broken than before and won't even compile, and is refusing to save code, and even deletes it seemingly at random, when it isn't hiding all resources in the asset browser. Not exaggerating when I say this is behaving like a beta product right now.

Before today, I've spent the rest of the week trying to fix animations and other fun stuff that were also broken by updating (not by any changes by myself). So I have managed to waste an entire week of my life where no progress was made on at least one project, but all time was used chasing my own tail, trying to get back to square one. My projects are now more crippled than before, and I am nowhere closer to doing actual work - quite the opposite, my work has regressed.

And all of this is just a quick glimpse of the past week, but this is basically how it's been ever since the shift to GMS2 to varying degrees. We've all had our ups and downs with GM through the years (again, user of 17 years here, no marriage is perfect), but this is beyond extreme. At no point in the GMS1 days was it like this. I have to go back all the way to when GMS1 was in beta to remember when it was this broken.

I realize this may sound slightly ranty, but I am legit nearing a serious breaking point. We need to address the lack of stability that has been increasingly drastic for the past 3 years or so now, and while it's all fun and good to chuckle about how we can never please everyone, this is, if nothing else, a serious look into what just one week looks like for one user with enough years in the bank for some high level perspective.
Couple of tips from a guy who gave up on GameMaker in 2014, and bought into GMS 2.3+ and still is cautious:

1. Use Gitea, it's a "local" github. Then, commit your code and sprites (the whole shebang) to Gitea w/ LFS enabled so you have a private local backup and can trace back commits, always. Even in GMS 2.3+ I've had it screw the pooch and mess up all of the sprites and other files for example, requiring me to manually resync every sprite by recreating them manually. Costs next to nothing to set up other than about 15 minutes of time. I have mine auto starting every time my Windows starts, so I don't even have to think about it and can push to my local github.

2. Get used to it. I have stuff that I first ported from GMS 2 to GMS 2.3 and it worked when 2.3 was young, but now totally needs rewritten because even their compatibility code isn't consistent. I don't feel like going into the gross details, but I've got hundreds of lines of hacky code on my hands that doesn't work and I feel I would have written an entirely different way if I had what 2.3 offers. It's just not a 3 year problem, it's a lifetime problem with GMS. That's why you have orphaned 1.4, GMS "1" and "2" and then "2.3" .. backward compatibility is not a thing here. I recently went through the updates too and you'll notice they made a mistake a week or so ago. They put out one release then another real quick to fix the previous release. Sad, sad times.

I hope they get enough funding to be a little more reliable in the future. I've been using Opera longer than GameMaker, and I hope they have a true home. Opera GX is OK, by the way, but it has some bugs with it, too. Luckily they fixed it quickly. I hope they can bring some sensibilty to YoyoG, or at least that YYG can relax a bit and just keep the updates flowing instead of announcing GMS 3 and another pay wall. You know I paid $500 for GMS Master Collection (aka 1.4) and they left it in such a sorry state at the end that I had to upgrade. I'm sorry I paid $500 for it, I thought I was getting lifetime upgrades like FL Studio Pro. Turns out it was just major version upgrades -- not exactly worth the 5 c-bills.
 
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gnysek

Member
I am still unable to get used to that horrible interface
So revamp they are preparing for Q4 2021 with new workflow (they didn't provided any screens yet, but knowing how "inspector" mockup looks, they are probably going into something that reminds some part of Delphi, Visual Studio, Godot, Unity or even Adobe Bridge - 2 narrow columns with asset tree and resource properties (inspector) + 1 wide for code, every asset in separate tab; no more chains - that's my prediction). We'll see, but there will be definitely a big change here (and current workspaces will remain for those who like them, nothing will be removed).
That might be a game-changer ;)
 

JeffJ

Member
The thing is, part of the whole reasoning behind scrapping the Delphi code base and rewriting everything from scratch - the very reason for all the headaches, the horrible workflow, the constant downgrades, the lack of features from GMS1, the instability etc. that all comes with the growing pains of such a huge undertaking - was that they would then have more of the flexibility to change stuff if it wasn't working. I was around from before YYG even existed, so I clearly remember, every time the community asked for a workflow change or something like that, the excuse for them not being able to accommodate it was that the Delphi code base was a nightmare and too unflexible. We all knew going in that the transition from GMS1 to complete ground up rewrite would be very painful (though I never imagined it would still be this painful several years after launch), but the tradeoff would be worth it from the new, more scalable and flexible code base. Or, so we were told. It's a good premise, on paper. In practice, they now have to spend roughly another year to rework a workflow that the vast majority (myself included) has loathed since day 1. On top of that, we are still lacking basic IDE features that we had more than a decade ago. Then what's the point?

Never mind the fact that I actually saw the chained workflow long before it was official - and even back then I raised concerns about it, which were duly ignored. And now it's too late, and we've had to live with it for ages, and at least until next year. And then what? They still won't let us in to give feedback on the new workflow, which opens the doors wide open for the same exact thing to happen all over again.
 

gnysek

Member
They still won't let us in to give feedback on the new workflow, which opens the doors wide open for the same exact thing to happen all over again.
I must admit you're right. They should show us mockups now and ask for opinions (and don't ignore them), otherwise there's a risk we'll end up with two workflows we don't like... They should propose something, we should say our opinions, propose own, and result should be a merge of both.
 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
Hoping that things like this:
get resolved.... rather than pushed under the rug like in the past... GMS 2.3 still can't load .gif files from url?
Another thing I am trying to do is create a new theme for GMS 2. Pouahaha! The ENORMOUS amount of images, icons for every single little piece of window parts is just ridiculous. Where is the day where all we had to do is change a few colors? You know, 3D object outline, inline and actual color, an accent color with outline and inline to be fancy? Ouff! Sorry!
If you want to change colors, I wrote a post about that:

The skinning system is now more complex but also means that you can actually change sizes/paddings/order of elements instead of being locked to what little the Delphi-based skinning engine offered.
 

JeffJ

Member
Is the general consensus these days that the GMS2 workflow sucks? I can't stand it, and to be blunt, I really ****ing hate it. YoYo's stubbornness has been their downfall...and at this point it's probably too late to address such fundamental issues. It's no wonder the company has lost up to half of its value since 2015.

Depressing stuff.
Yes, that's why they're spending so much of this year's road map consolidating internally so that they can offer an alternative workflow next year - look at the road map. They're doing a lot of work to accommodate the workflow change. Which is good, don't get me wrong, but I see 2 major problems:

1: It shows us that the code base isn't nearly as flexible as the intention behind the ground up rewrite was (which, again, was one of the key reasons for that huge undertaking in the first place)
2: They are still as opaque about their internal decisions as ever, so we might yet again end up with a workflow that no one likes and is too late to change

But to be fair about the value - I thought the same initially. Could still be the case, of course, but it seems the significantly lower price has more to do with Playtech getting out of the gaming sector altogether.
Opera has definitely poured resources into YYG, meaning more staff, which is a really good thing. But if they end up operating just as opaque as under Playtech, then we're not necessarily any better off. That's the thing - we don't know, because there has been no further elaborations since the acquisition.
 

rmanthorp

GameMaker Staff
Admin
GameMaker Dev.
That's the thing - we don't know, because there has been no further elaborations since the acquisition.
Not much more to say at this point. We're working away and staffing up as you say and can see by our jobs page. Our roadmap is where our head is at with GameMaker and we will be getting eyes on workflow changes and other new features as soon as they are ready to be looked at. We'll be open to and encourage feedback when we have stuff to share! Russell has been keen for another developer AMA so we'll probably get something together for that soon. For now: We just launched a new tutorial series!
I'm going to lock this thread now as it has been going in circles with some wild speculation. When we have new news or updates on GameMaker Studio 2 to share. I'll be sure to let you all know.
 
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