Game Creation Thread

So for the next day and a half, Humble Bundle has a cheap deal on some shitty games as usual, but more importantly this deal includes a copy of Gamemaker, which is a seemingly entry-level game making application. The bundle altogether is only $12 to get the Android Export portion which I'm guessing means you can publish your games on Android for like 10 zillion people to not see. Here's the link: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly to the bundle.

I watched a couple tutorial videos about the absolute basics, doesn't seem too crazy. The code is something I've never delved much into, though I can dabble and not fuck shit up too much (I can use Processing okay for a beginner, and I could usually do really simply HTML shit...)

Anyway, is that actually a good deal? And would I be getting in over my head? Like, I'm thinking of it as a means of just trying my hand at getting some simple/weird game ideas down, not like making Call of Duty for Android or anything. And more so just to try my hand at some more advanced code-style project stuff. Obviously Gamemaker's whole appeal is that you don't need to know code, but I'm quite sure I'd have to use some to really get through to an end product 'finished' game.

Has anyone used Gamemaker? Or, have any of you made little games yourselves? Advice, thoughts? I mean, yeah, it's only $12, but I'm just curious about any thoughts on that system or if I shouldn't waste my time unless I would really wanna go head first down that path of making games (which I don't).

Sounds pretty cool. Ambermonk might be into this. It's weird that you say you want to try it though and then say you don't want to go down the path of making games...??

I used to make really shitty "games' in QBASIC. I don't think any of them were actually playable. It's kind of a lot of work unless you make something simple like 2048.

Well obviously I'd want to make a 'game,' but I'm saying that I'm not like trying to become a game designer as a career or anything, just considering this as a relatively casual hobby.

Basically, I don't want to even bother if it's going to take 100+ hours to get 20 seconds of a working level designed.

  On 9/23/2015 at 3:32 AM, auxien said:

Basically, I don't want to even bother if it's going to take 100+ hours to get 20 seconds of a working level designed.

lol, this ratio sounds right about on the money for the games I did. Probably different for something more algorithmic/generated or arcade-style but anything story driven is going to have pretty diminishing returns.

Yeah this caught my attention alright. It's an idea I was obsessed with over a year ago, but realistically I think you'd have to start small and simple, especially if you're developing solo. I've had several ideas over the years, but it seems like it's a venture I've pretty much let go at this point.

Gamemaker might be worth checking out. I understand the indie platformer Risk of Rain was made using Gamemaker: Studio, which is one of the better indie titles I've played.

If you get serious about this Auxien I'd be curious to know how you're getting along. Might consider picking the ball back up myself.

You can easily create flash games with the tools available these days, I've read, but unfortunately, flash seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. Flash is responsible for giving us games like World of Goo, and was a great tool for college and technical students to try out gameplay experiments cheaply online to discover what works and what doesn't in the 2000s. I hope that toolset doesn't disappear. Can the same results be replicated in HTML5? educate me.

This is where World of Goo originated, when the developers were still in college, try it out: (they even use Tomorrow Corporation's font, which I think is a tribute to the most successful developer to come out of this project so far)

http://experimentalgameplay.com/