Ten things I dislike about Game Maker

You got some points that are reasonable, and some that are simply annoying.

Really, icon sizes are something you hate? Honestly that’s a bit annoying, but nothing I really hate. Prof. Overmars have stated that the single image 32×32 icon is simply a matter of difficulties of which he have tried to resolve, but didn’t succeed.

Filesizes has been a problem for as long as I remember, and I joined some time after v. 4.3 was released.
I can’t see why there’s still this fuzz about dial-up modems. To be honest, if one doesn’t want to upgrade to a faster connection then that person automatically says no to a lot of the Great World that we call the Internet.
Just take a look at all those Flash-websites there’s popping up everywhere.
And as you said, one can download demos that are 800 mb, but that’s because the games needs to be this big. The new technology requires newer software and better graphics to make the game run decent.
Just as Game Maker will need to.

Open Source?? Game Maker is a private developed tool created by Mark Overmars in his spare time. There’s no organisation or company working on it. Why should it ever be open source? Would you give away your hard work so everyone can use it? Especially a project of this magnitude?

“but he also expects us to develop our own plugins for it.” No, that’s untrue. He doesn’t expect us to make them, he encourages us and gives us the possibily to use plugins. I for one have never used a plugin, because I have simply not found the need for one yet. And I’m quite certain you can use GM for huge project with a lot of great functionality and gameplay without the use of plugins.

The advertisement is maybe a bit…misplaced yes. For registered users it should be possible to turn it off.

“I am very disappointed at this release and consider Mark to be very greedy”
I find the release a bit disappointing too, but why call Mark Overmars greedy? The money he makes from registrations are used to keep the forum alive, which is quite a money-spender.

I hope this was at least usefull.

You are a VERY sad person.
You don’t like it, big deal more people do.
And most of your reasons are pathetic.
1. Beta’s often come out before the release and you should have GM properly registered anyway
2. Ooooh, wow 7Mb. That makes such a difference on a 60,000Mb+ Hard Drive. And don’t bother bringing schools into this my school has a hard-drive of 1Tb (1024Gb) and 512Mb or Ram which is MORE than enough
3. As i said before.
4. Well, that’s not a bad point
5 and 6. There is an extention maker, it’s in BETA 2. And if you don’t want to make extras then don’t use extras
7. It’s a small tiny little ad which you can turn off. Getting worked up over that is pathetic.
8. Fair Point
9. Alpha is easy
10. Fair Point

You are a sad person. Like Brookers. Brookers is bad. You are bad. Get over it. Stop whining.

Dan1, Not all School’s are the same - we only have 40gb hardrives and 512mb of RAM in our newer computers.

And while Alpha may be easy for you, its not for people who don’t know how to code

Gm runs fine on my comp, and so do the 3D games.
Specs:
1.5ghrz processor
256MB MEMORY - 32mb gfx card=224MB OF MEMORY
32Mb! GFX CARD!
Keep you opinons self contained, then we will all be happy.

Here’s the thing…

First off, as far as open source goes, I’m all for free stuff now and then, but really, people do need to make a profit… also, if I had something as Unique and Easy to Use as Game Maker, I would definitely not want to release it out into the wild, where anyone and their brother could copy it and call it their own.

Second, I actually agree with you on the icon thing. I have been using Vista for, oh, 1.5 years now, and it gets really annoying when icons arent properly sized (Vista default icon format is 256×256x32 PNG). In fact, the icon for iTunes never even showed up until version 7.0.1…

And third, I think the extension system was intended to be an easier way of implementing .dll type stuff, and not a method of keeping Game Maker up to date.

Just my thoughts, I hope I wasn’t a complete asswipe like the rest of the people who have commented… (doesnt flaming suck? that’s why I don’t go to the GMC anymore…)

I one hundred percent agree with you. Im sick of GM noobs thinking they can make GM MMORPG’s with this stupid program. Marks an asshole, for never doing anything, and his “additions” to gm7 are crap, good for nothing buttons which do nothing when you click them. As for loading time aparently gm is meant to be easy to use for everyone. Now, everyone meaning everyone with a 128mb gfx card or higher, or just your average joe with 32mb video, thats the question i pose to mark.

Sum Guy - Exactly my points - how many school computer’s have separate video cards….. What I would like to do is conduct a survey on a site that Isn’t Game Maker and see what specifications people use, whether or not they enjoy to play the occasional game and if they plan to upgrade their computer in the near future.

d722002 - Don’t worry about the comments - We’ll see who’s right when Vista and Game Maker come out - and who can run what games. My Laptop here has only 512mb of ram and is Vista Capable (I’ve got the sticker) That means that if I had purchased it when Vista was released, it would come with Vista - and I’ve used RC1 on this computer and its as laggy as anything. As I had said, people aren’t going to purchase more RAM just so they can play some silly Game Made with Game Maker.

Person - Have you tried to run Game’s Maker with Game Maker 7, I have a computer exactly the same and while that can run Game Maker 6 Games, I can’t see how it will run GM 7 versions

you need to get your facts strait
and he releases betas to test bugs because he dont have enough time

why the heck would it be open source. that would take way longer to go through changes people made and then change it how it is supposed to be and that would probably ruin game maker
and for number 7 he said he was going to ad an option to turn that off

ya u got a few points but just because u dont spend time learning about gm doesnt mean you should yell at it.

Garion, the way you reply shows only two things:
that you are immature and don’t care to get the facts right.

And Sum Guy, why do you call Overmars an asshole? If you don’t like GM, don’t use it. Game Maker is free (though some of the cooler effects can only be achieved by registrating for a reasonable fee) and just an amateur program created for people who wish to create small amateaur games.

If Game Maker 7 is that big a problem, don’t use it. You’re acting as if Overmars was an evil overlord who wanted nothing more than to force you into working 24/7 with a intentionally lousy program just to torture you.

About the requirements GM7 has… what can we possible do? If Game Maker is going to get up with the technology and adding new possibilities, there’s nothing we can do but raise the requirements.

May you all have a nice day.

Alonzo - It’s my blog, I can do whatever I damn well want to here.

I don’t use Game Maker, because of those reasons, and I haven’t now for almost a year.

And as for the requirements, you can protest, thats what I’m doing, WHAT NEW POSSIBILITIES???? Apart from coding your own extensions, you’ve basically got version 6.1 with bug fixes

If Game Makers a beginners program why are all of these scripting things introduced, and if it’s for advance users, why doesn’t it have more advanced features???

GM 7 does indeed not offer many new possibilities, I agree with that. As far as I know, the requirements are meant to make it work on Windows Vista.

GM is made for many types of users. Users who have never before made a game and want to try it out, hence all the drag-and-drop actions, and users who have moved on to coding it all in GML and finally users who wishes to add extensions to GM in order to achieve new things in GM.
GM is meant to be for everyone, that’s why it lacks certain advanced features and why it includes others.

What I really wonder about is why do you post this when you’re not even using GM anymore?
If you had some suggestions for GM or had an alternative program that would offer the same features, then I would understand your post.
But this just seems a bit pointless.
If you were still using GM I could understand why you would want certain things to be changed (like the icons), but you’re not.

It is not my intention to sound rude or anything, but it just seems you’re complaining about losing 25$.

I just want to answer/debate a few of these comments:

@Garion:

“If Game Makers a beginners program why are all of these scripting things introduced, and if it’s for advance users, why doesn’t it have more advanced features???”

They may well have been added to a beginners program, but really, an avarage game uses about 40,000 lines of code. In GameMaker, you have code, people who know GML code, but its incredibly basic code, i’m sure 90% of all these people could never even get a couple lines of code down if they were working in C+ for example.

My Point is, GML is a basic coding system, aimed at beginners, just like GM is, C+ etc. is aimed at advance coders.

True dude! Your blog your rules. I just pity you for spending so much energy on an issue that’s worth as much as a nude pinup of Gandalf in an army barracks.

GM is an excellent program by any standards.
So it has flaws .. good grief .. so does the Eiffel Tower!
We buy expensive cars, houses .. well I do and we pay for bloated features etc. Its life.

Eventually there are cycles of being where we go back to minimalism etc.

I agree with some of your points and also with others who post here:
“use it, don’t use it” … your choice.

As for the GM community, can’t generalize and say they suck or whatever. Haven’t ever met one. If i do have the choice I would rather meet the luscious Charlize Theron, seeing that she was also born in SA where we spend time working around issues rather than waste energy in venting against the inevitable.

have fun guys .. and if you worry too much about software … go get girlfriends … much better “software” in general.

1. Who asked you to download it?? It’s a BETA, you DON’T have to test it. And only registered users can use it because registered users usually aren’t n00bz, thus Mark will not get any bugs that are actually user made. And it is very easy to remove that registered check in GM, with unregistered GM.
2. Get over it.
3. OMG!! I wouldn’t mind if empty GM game would be 10mb. This is 21th century man. Get a normal HDD.
4. Well, he added less then would be expected in a year, but still enough. He can change number to whatever he want. He can call it GM10 if he want, there are no rules about numbering.
5. Extension mechanism is the best feature ever. I wanted it for like 2 years now. It will get VERY handy. If you are a n00b and don’t use scripts then that is your problem. You DON’T need to use features you don’t need. But more features there are, then better. It is like complaining that GM can use DLL’s… it’s just idiotic.
6. He needs money to continue development of GM. And he doesn’t MAKE you pay. If you don’t like, don’t use it.
7. This is most stupidest thing EVER!!! It is meant for n00bz (like you apparently) to get to the site faster. (thus forums, and extension/example/game pages too)
But not only that, it takes 3 sec to turn it off, and you won’t see it anymore.
8. This is the ONLY point I can agree with you. But he will change it sooner or later.
9. He is going to update the image editor in the near future (read it somewhere). Until then, it isn’t such a pain in the ass to use easy to understand GM functions.
10. If you wouldn’t be that much of an idiot, you would know that this has been added. Quote from Mark “- You can now fill in the version information for the executables, as some people requested. (Same will happen for the extension package installers, although with less options.)”. It is will not be in beta thou.

So stop waining and grow up. (From you texts it seams that your about 9).

I haven’t heard of gm7. If you hate it so much why don’t you just use gm6? I know you said you stopped using it but if it is better than gm7 use it. Why don’t you just registered, you could then get the beta version. I would recommend getting registered version. you know what, you could just stop thinking of game maker so you don’t have to make fun of it. I think it is quite cool.

I hate Gm7, but you’ve just gone to far.

Ok, first off ppl need to quit bashing Mark, all he is guilty of is creating a tool to allow and introduce ppl to gam,e development, and sorry to say greedy or not if it was your work that you yourself had put so much time in on it would you let it be open source ” Hell No” And yes Game Maker has its flaws but bashing Mark because you dont like the flaws doesnt change anything, the best way to go about it, is to email his support and tell him what you think could improve the product and do it in a calm and respectful way, after all he just made the product, he didnt make you buy it, thats why there is a demo version if you dont like it dont buy it, my personal opinion I give Mrk a “High 5″ with his product it allows young and old alike to develop game and learn the fundamentals skills to become developer, I have seen games made with Game Maker most suck because they are just clones but I have seen and played original Games Made by ppl who put the time in to learn the program and the language, and some are very impressive, so Instead of bashing Mark, help him make it better, thing cant change and get better with bashing and rude comments its acheived by everyone co-operating to make it into what they want it to be after all Mark made the program for others not himself, so cut him some slack.

If GM were open source it would be much better, because all those unresolved issues Mark could’t solve would have been solved by someone else. Open source is about that, putting your hard work to the benefit of everyone, and benefitting from the other’s hard work invested on it.

Also, I think most of Garions’ complaints are not worth complaining about, but he has the right to complaint about whatever he wants on his own blog.

1. It is free if you want make maker 7.0
it cost 25$ for pro
2.You are a sad man

A lot of why you dislike Game Maker is because of Microsoft Windows Vista. But I agree with the rest.

Hey,

One point I totally agree with you on is the small icon point. I mean really, how crappy is your game going to look with a single file 32px icon?
Believe me. it looks terrible.

Your other point are a bit exaggerated but everyone needs to get over it. Its your blog after all and they choose to read it.

And those who are insulting Mark Overmars need to, quite frankly, shut the hell up.
If you dont want to use it, dont.
This program is a great way for beginners to make their own games.
Yes there are some annoying features, but again, if you dont want to use it. Dont.

Cheers for interesting post anyway.

I read similar article also named hings I dislike about Game Maker - Garion’s Blog, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me

I think you have a number of good points regarding the weaknesses of GM. Game Maker can be frustrating to use and also very enjoyable.The engine is being ported from Delphi7 to C++ which..possibly could solve some basic weaknesses in future releases,but that is perhaps optimizm on my part.For what it is,Game Maker really is the one of the finest tools available…I would love to see a really powerfull c lone of this tool even commercial…I would buy it.There is so much this program could do but can’t, and one weakness is the GML Language which is a novelty but lunky and awkward when performing higher level functions, perhaps this comes from the Delphi root. Vista of course furthers the frustration which is just another Microsoft blunder of whistles and bells. Prof. Overmars has created a really unique tool….I think there are quite a number of “work arounds” to your complaints but some are valid.

Game maker is a really good tool to make mario clones that use over 150 mb of ram (just for the record the Doom 3 demo runnning at the lowest quality setting uses around 240mb) and run at 13 fps. Come on!!! The human eye can only perceive 9 frames per second anyway!!! 13 fps is more than enough for ANY game!!!!!!!!!

Wow, its nice to see how the Mark Defense Force showed up and completely tried to nullify this man’s valid opinion. Lets get some things straight.

The extension system is crap: It uses D&D, the entire community agrees its incredibly foolish to use D&D as its much slower

The scripting is crap: Its one of the weakest interpreted languages out there.

The DLL support is crap: It only supports two types of calls and returns…in this day and age…really?

GameMaker is a shoddy program that you use to get used to the swing of development, but after a while ANYONE with true ambition should have the common sense to graduate to a better choice of options: Torque, XnA, Raw C#, Ruby/SDL/RubyGame, PyGame, etc etc.

GameMaker is in no way a decent or unique tool, its out of date and over credited.

Preparing to flame me?

In that case, go look at GarageGame’s T2D, Torque X, TGB.
All create 2D games and support code once which allows you to port your games not only from Windows to Linux/Mac but also to 360 using XnA, if you pay you get full source code on top of other things, sure GG seems money hungry with the stuff packs and registered user only forum sections, but other than that, it blows GM to hell.