Game maker for Linux...

[Stealth]

Hey, has anyone ever heard of Game Maker (http://www.gamemaker.nl/)? It's an awesome program that allows regular users to create games in a very simple environment. I was wondering if anyone knows of alternatives or would even want to create one for Linux?

Right now, I think anyone who wants to make a game has to know quite a bit of coding. For instance, I learned some Python, hoping to learn Pygame, but I'm still to much of a beginner to use it at the moment. Game Maker has 2 systems, a drag and drop coding, for those very new with the program, and then you can use actual code (some say it's like Delphi but simplified) and both are extremely easy to start up and get to making a game.

If we had a Game Maker for Linux, probably built on Pygame, that would allow people to easily add sprites, backgrounds, sounds, code up their levels and such, we could get a lot of games popping up. Plus, being built on Pygame, people would be able to learn Python and apply it in other places (unlike Game maker's code, which you can only use in GM and just gives you a basic idea of how programming works).

I only know of one similar program, Game Editor (http://game-editor.com/) (but it's commercial),

[ZylGadis]

The problem with such games is that they are highly unoriginal. If you want to create a good game, you must learn programming. If you just want to show off, you'd better create a web site or something.

[Stealth]

Yea, most games created are simple platformer clones of Mario or some copy of 1942 with addons, but the great thing is that Game Maker is still a VERY powerful tool, and there have been some great games created with it. Look in the Staff's Choice forums (http://forums.gamemaker.nl/index.php?showforum=30) and you can see a lot of them. Ark22 (great RPG), Hovertank 3D (uses the simple builtin 3d functions to create an amazing game), Bacteria (addictive puzzle game), and Dim (unique and hard platformer) are some I've personally tried and liked very much.

If anything, I'm trying to see if it's possible to get an IDE (for Pygame, or whatever other programming language with a nice game library) but catered directly to game creators, and allows them to organize their projects better.

[leech]

I would go over to the forums on www.happypenguin.org and ask for something like this. They'd know much more about game development.

One thing that they're talking about over there now that really makes me happy is the FreeSynd project. Basically it's a project to make Syndicate (which was a fantastic game) work natively on Linux.

Leech

[xxKiba]

Yes! I've heard of Game Maker!
You can make alot of good games with it...
You can even make them better with DLL's too.
I hex edited my MBR, like a month ago and now I'm using Linux..
I know of a couple of GM remakes:

G-Java, G-Flash and LGM ( I assume "Linux Game Maker" ).

The Game Maker forum has a topic on Linux Game Maker here (http://forums.gamemaker.nl/index.php?showtopic=232846)

[Shiroku]

I'm agree with Stealth.
I think that a 'game making' application could be an interesting application for Linux.

[bastiegast]

Yes! I've heard of Game Maker!
You can make alot of good games with it...
You can even make them better with DLL's too.
I hex edited my MBR, like a month ago and now I'm using Linux..
I know of a couple of GM remakes:

G-Java, G-Flash and LGM ( I assume "Linux Game Maker" ).

The Game Maker forum has a topic on Linux Game Maker here (http://forums.gamemaker.nl/index.php?showtopic=232846)

Reading the reactions on that forum almost made me cry:


Gamemaker is for windows which 99% of all gamemaker users use.

You will confuse people if you say it is for linux. They may have many problems and will come here looking for support and they will not be able to get support.
He's right but please allow the one percent of non windows users to have a nice tutorial without having to read those stupid complaints

This wont work with GM6,only Gm5+4, Because LINUX DOESN'T HAVE DIRECT X!
If you don't even know half what your talking about you'd better say nothing or at least admit your not sure.

well there is emulators for everything there are emulator for things on the psp there are lunix emulator for windows
so it is imposable to use gm on lunix just you havt to have a little of windows to do it
it is posable to have two operating systems on a computer a once (i dont know how) and they be the real things not emulators

Not sure if this guy's even serious.

:lolflag:
And there was nobody to fully correct them. I feel like registering there... oh well! Why should I. At least it's good linux gets some attention.

[tenkabuto]

This is a pretty old topic, but I would like to know if anyone on here uses Game Maker on Linux. If someone does, can they tell me how difficult it would be to make a side-scroller with throwing weapons?

[jorgerosa]

I´ve made 2 games in Game Maker, a really , really cool piece of software (drag and drop, very simple scripts, powerpoint like) i miss that... But only on windows (i guess)...

[tenkabuto]

I´ve made 2 games in Game Maker, a really , really cool piece of software (drag and drop, very simple scripts, powerpoint like) i miss that... But only on windows (i guess)...

A few posts from the first is this link (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=232846) to a tut on how to install it on Linux..

[jorgerosa]

Sorry post this in your thread, Stealth. BTW guys, any linux "clone" for 3D Gamemaker (http://t3dgm.thegamecreators.com/) ?

[Shiroku]

I'm interesting in rpg maker or game maker "clone" that works on linux, too. (without emulation!)

If somebody know same 'clone', please tell me.

If there aren't software 'clone', we can create one! :)

[Extreme Coder]

Right now, the closest thing we have is Game Editor, and its creators didn't make a full version yet :/

Extreme Coder

[dark joev]

I am currently working on a game maker for linux. I am looking for more people to help becaues there is currently no contributers. It is called "Alpha Z3l3" you can look here (http://azsentgames.quotaless.com).

[KhaaL]

There's also mokoi: http://mokoi.sourceforge.net/

Dark Joev, maybe you should consider contributing to that project? you know, joint effords go a long way :)

[evymetal]

I know this thread has been dead for a few weeks, but some of us from these forums (Wybiral, pmasiar, myself and others) are working on a python based game-maker style program called "Game Baker" (http://code.google.com/p/game-baker/)

(I know this is a shameless plug, but it's free and open souce)

Currently it's in a very early stage and you have to use a python script to create the game definitions, but you can browse lots of the objects using a GUI, and I like think it's easier to get started with than pygame.

You can make full games using it, even in the sate it's in. We have two basic demo games, "catch the puppy" and "pong".

Be aware that this is early, and the source has not been frozen, so games written for the current subversion release may break when another release comes out. (But if you're ok with the current features then you can create games as it is).

[KhaaL]

Cool! Looking forward to follow your projects progress :)

[Dojan5]

Hi!
Sorry to bump this...
There are a rpg maker which i know about (Currently the download is down though :lolflag:) which works for Linux and Windows (Without WINE) Link (http://www.rpgds.com).
I bumped into the owner at a forum for another RPG maker called 001 (It is an EXE for Windows...) which the owner(s) there say that it works with WINE.
Thats all i had to say.
And sorry again...

[Abras]

I really like Game Maker... I used to use it all the time when on Windows, but then had to start learning python + pygame when I switched to Linux. Python is a great language, but it just doesn't offer the amount of simplicity I want as a hobbyist game developer. It's worth noting, though, that GM 7, the latest version, is now working with Wine. It was not supported for a long time, because of a new security feature it uses called (I think) "softwrap" but now it is. I've tried it out this way, and it works well enough, but not perfectly as you can imagine.

The developers are working on rewriting GM in C++ from Delphi. This is ostensibly to port the project to Mac, but there seems to be no major reason why it couldn't run in Linux. A staff member actually wrote a blog post a few months ago talking about how he was able to get an early build of this new rewritten GM to work on Linux. So clearly it's not a technical problem that's stopping them from announcing an official Linux release. We'll have to wait and see.

A lot of people have decide to do more than just wait and hope. There have been many attempts to create some kind of competitor to GM but none of them have made it past the fairly early stages. I believe this is mostly because building game development software is much more labor intensive than they realize. \If they all got together and worked in a big group maybe they could really get something off the ground. *shrug*

[Sockerdrickan]

I'm doing a Pokemon clone in C++, maybe you guys could use it and mod it?

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/4/6/2/f_SkrmbildPokm_a625686.png

edit: the map on the picture looks like this

70 90 90 90 90 50 90 50
00 80 00 10 10 10 10 60
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
10 10 10 40 10 10 10 10
10 10 10 00 10 10 10 10
20 10 10 10 10 10 30 10
00 10 10 10 10 10 00 10
link 8 2 "map_002.map"(link is for link to another map and uses frame based position)

[SimpleC]

Check out the game creation application called Stencyl (http://www.stencyl.com/about/) it's currently under development and it's available for linux.

[Abras]

Well yeah Stencyl certainly seems like the most promising of the GM-alternatives, but there's nothing to see right now. It does have a large(ish) community that is waiting patiently for the first release, but there's only so long people will wait and it better be a pretty knockout product with all this hype it's generated. If it doesn't come in the next six months I think most people will mark it as vaporware...

[doorknob60]

Oh, I used to make so many games in Game Maker. If you're curious, I have them here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=234946 They're not that great, but considering I was like 12 when I made them , they're not bad :) EDIT: I think the whole yoyogames thing ruined the community, makes it feel more proprietary, so I don't like it nearly as much as I used to, and of course there's no Linux support either.

[Shiroku]

I found this:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/kollagame?content=59953

[Zeotronic]

I remember Game Maker... while more games of low quality is the last thing we need for Linux, something like it should probably be done... not that I'll be wasting my time to do it mind you. :lolflag:

[bconover]

Game Maker 5.3 and lower works perfect on linux, under WINE. The exported EXEs also run fine.

Honestly, 5.3 isn't all that far from 6, other than it doesn't use Direct X, and some of the more advanced 3D functions won't work. If you're making a good old 2D game it works great, though.

[evymetal]

Just for a note, we released Game Baker 0.2.0 a week or two ago:
http://code.google.com/p/game-baker/

We've got loads of new features if people want to have a play. The only major features we're missing so far are:


Sound Effects
A way to edit graphics in the GUI
"No Code" scripting option


(i.e. you have to write some simple python in the event handlers, and you need to define sprites in a yaml file)

Features that we do have are:

Sprites
Fully usable scripting API
New Demo (Restaurant Game, still in development)
Objects have Paths objects they can follow
Basic Physics using real-time
Objects can inherit events
and much more . . .



If people try it out then feel free to post bug reports or join us on the developer mailing list.

[KhaaL]

Just for a note, we released Game Baker 0.2.0 a week or two ago:
http://code.google.com/p/game-baker/

We've got loads of new features if people want to have a play. The only major features we're missing so far are:


Sound Effects
A way to edit graphics in the GUI
"No Code" scripting option


(i.e. you have to write some simple python in the event handlers, and you need to define sprites in a yaml file)

Features that we do have are:

Sprites
Fully usable scripting API
New Demo (Restaurant Game, still in development)
Objects have Paths objects they can follow
Basic Physics using real-time
Objects can inherit events
and much more . . .



If people try it out then feel free to post bug reports or join us on the developer mailing list.


Awesome work! please do keep us posted on the improvements and new releases :-)

[Mickeysofine1972]

I might also mention that I have a goal of making a similar type of program in the next years but I have to complete iSoccer (http://sourceforge.net/projects/isoccer/) first!

The code that I will have after thats done should be good for making a few others including a GameMaker type program and also a Dark Basic type system too

But like I say its gonna take time

Mike

[evymetal]

Awesome work! please do keep us posted on the improvements and new releases :-)

Thanks, we've been working hard on it.

There are a whole load of Summer of Code people working on PyGame related things, which should be done around October, (e.g. webcam and force feedback support) - so I'm really looking forward to what else we can access when future PyGame versions come out (we want to keep the required libraries down).

Personally I'm a bit busy for the next month or so, but I'm sure the rest of the team will be doing some work on it. We'd be very interested to hear what people are doing with it, so if you make a game then please post a link (or any questions) to the mailing list.

Don't know if I mentioned it before, but one of the priorities is to be able to run all created games on the OLPC ("$100 laptop") - although being in Europe I can't get my hands on one to develop yet (and an emulator's just not the same).

[ty12345]

I have a Presario 4410CA with Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP...I installed The Game Maker in Wine and it did't work very good...

I recently installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my friends Mac and the Game Maker emulated well...

You could try Wine... But a few problems I've noticed are:

The Ubuntu clipboard isn't understood by Wine
The resolution detection of the games aren't correct
The audio codecs for Ubuntu aren't understood by Wine

Another way...I guess, would be running Parallels for Ubuntu and installing Windows. But then, you'd have have to have a copy of Windows.

:(But it isn't updated for Ubuntu 8.04 yet...

[calimer]

I think its almost important to mention that Gamemaker really focuses on 2D games, not 3D games. It certainly isn't an all in one game creation solution. I am almost interested in what projects people are working on in this thread for game making because I'm working on one of my own that is kid friend and is being used in some schools and such. I think someone mentioned it already, but RPG maker is an excellent tool for RPGS, but again for 2D. I think its really tough to make a game maker to cover all the bases and there probably shouldn't be because then it loses focus. I've heard really good things about torques 2D game maker from Garage Games as well but I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, has anyone else? Take care.
-mike

[Stratok]

Actualy u should have seen how it ran on 2007... u would be amazed of progress with wine... sound may be the new sound server in ubuntu which actualy is a problem with a lot of programs... will probably be fixed in ubuntu 8.10... in october resolution problems have a half solution...
the hor resolution has no probblems onli vertical vertical will work if you use the exact vertical resolution(of ur current display) in your room window height... or... you can configure wine to work on a virtual desktop and use the vertical resolution as the window heigh(titlebar wont be shown)... in full screen horizontal resolution does not work also... , avoid full screen, and resize...:lolflag:

[lunarcloud]

Yes! I've heard of Game Maker!
LGM ( I assume "Linux Game Maker" )

Lateral Game Maker, actually.

http://www.ismavatar.com/lgm/

[Shiroku]

Lateral Game Maker, actually.

http://www.ismavatar.com/lgm/


Does someone tryed it?

[TimboUK]

There has been quite a bit of interest in this Gamemaker Software being ported to Linux, as well as claims by Yoyogames that it was at least being considered at some point in the future.

After testing the latest Gamemaker version through Wine, I can report that it does appear to work with certain limitations. Firstly the D3D is apparently unhappy when the window is full screened. Secondly, if you have registered the software it does not appear to accept that registration within Linux.

2d wise there appears to be no problem. Due to Gamemaker not actually compiling your code, simply attaching a executable runner, there appears to be no probs with your creations. After installing Ubuntu on a friends machine I had occasion to test his lads Gamemaker installation on it.

There are concerns I have with the use of Gamemaker software, firstly on a performance side, it is slow, regardless of if its being run in Windows or Linux. The spec of your machine is not proportionate to the quality of game you can produce. Secondly there are many, and in my opinion better products out there which are free. My background is in C and assembly, however recently Ive found the advantages of tackling projects with Python. In my opinion its very robust.

The last thing I would want to see would be an influx of impatient Gamemaker creators flood the Ubuntu community.

The majority of Gamemaker users are quite young, and the forums in which they populate, are full of insults, flame baiting and pranks. If you ever have the time, skip on over to the official site and check it out for yourself. I dont believe an influx of Linux converted Gamemaker users would be of benefit to the Ubuntu community nor Linux in general, and I believe these users are best suited to staying with Windows.

[xer0kill]

Well I personally had a lot of fun with GM in Windows. I even had a game in progress that was coming along rather nicely. It's frustrating to me now, being in Linux, that there is no similar application that allows me (a non programmer who does not have the time to learn programming) to easily make games. Any suggestions as to what's the easiest way to make games in Linux currently?

[Shiroku]

Any suggestions as to what's the easiest way to make games in Linux currently?

RPGds (like RPG Maker):
Official English Website: www.rpgds.com (http://www.rpgds.com)
Italian Website (my website) (http://www.nonsologuide.altervista.org/altro/rpgds/index.php)

[linuxguymarshall]

There is Alice but honestly, if you want to make good games learn to program

[TimboUK]

Well I personally had a lot of fun with GM in Windows. I even had a game in progress that was coming along rather nicely. It's frustrating to me now, being in Linux, that there is no similar application that allows me (a non programmer who does not have the time to learn programming) to easily make games. Any suggestions as to what's the easiest way to make games in Linux currently?

You cant really get any simpler than Python using PYgame. Its a very easy to learn language with a wicked community and a wealth of potential.

If you are looking for game design packages (rpg maker types), it does beg the question, why not consider using Windows for this type of development? Its always said to use the right tools for the right job, and for this type of development I think Windows platform is far better supported and catered for.

[xer0kill]

If you are looking for game design packages (rpg maker types), it does beg the question, why not consider using Windows for this type of development? Its always said to use the right tools for the right job, and for this type of development I think Windows platform is far better supported and catered for.

You do have a point. I just wish there was something as simple as gmaker that could do cross-platform gaming. I might check out pygames as well though. From what I've seen of Python, it seems much more intuitive than C++.

[Stealth]

Interesting to see this old thread is still alive. Some of those programs mentioned (Stencyl and Game-Baker) look pretty cool. I also wanted to point out a Pygame-like library, but for Lua, called LÖVE (http://love2d.org/). Lua was incredibly easy to learn with some previous Python knowledge, and would seem like an even easier language to learn from scratch, if you have no prevous knowledge of any.

[Shiroku]

I just wish there was something as simple as gmaker that could do cross-platform gaming.

RPGds is cross-platform :)

[Lusse]

Does anyone know something about game maker on Linux (this Delphi to c++ rewrite). I would really much want to have this because right know I have one computer just to run game maker on and it's a bit annoying to switch computer when I want to work on my games.

BTW.
Game maker 7 under wine isn't working that well because you can't (in most of the cases) save the "execute a piece of code" event and the games needs to be run in full screen mode where they are moved to the top left corner while you still need to click at the middle of the screen(hoped you understand a bit of it at least :)).

//Linus

[Abras]

There's still no official word on a Linux version. One of the developers working on the Mac port reportedly (http://gamemakerblog.com/2008/02/20/gamemaker-on-linux/) managed to get the IDE and engine running on Linux way back in February. The guy said he did it in a weekend so I'm sure it wouldn't require too much effort. Now it's basically a matter of whether or not the company thinks it's worth it.

Perhaps we should start some kind of campaign to convince them. :)

[Stratok]

Ok my dear fellas I found the answer! with some cooperation of our friends from sun microsistems, and ismavatar now we can use
http://www.ismavatar.com/lgm/index.php, with this you can edit games, not run them or compile them, but it alows to save .gmk as .gm6 so we can use the gamemaker 6.1 with the serial Freeware 6f580ac790f2533f22f9343a and compile the program in an exe, then we run the exe in wine but we set properties to the exe so it rins in a windowed wine with the same resolution...


also note thet so save a script in game maker in wine you can simply use the menu of the window decoration bar upper left corner, select close and chose save to the prompting message, it will save as long as the script has no mistakes

[Shiroku]

Another project:
Open RPG Maker (http://openrpgmaker.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php)

[tombom62]

havn't been reading the whole thread, and sure it may have bee n said, but game maker works perfect on wine! I use it all the time.

[Lord Sandro]

This is a program that I been using for almost 7 years now; really it's a great program.

A long time ago...
GameMaker was written and updated by one person, being written heavly in Windows API and running on Direct X, he said he would never port it to other OSs. A few furom members decided to make thier own port for linux, hence LGM.

Recently...
GameMaker was bought by an new company Yoyogame, they have started to port GM to Linux, and Mac OS X, with Mac OS X being first.

Another Note:
The GMC, the furoms, has a mix of people who are very new to programming (and are sometime complete idtiots), and experienced user.

Yet Another Note:
G-Java, G-Flash, and LGM are all Third Party Projects that were started years ago. I havent hear anything that way in a long time. Even if you find the code it won't be worth your wild, there very incomplete.

The only thing we can really do is wait for yoyo to make the linux port. They will. it'll just take some time.

[rimtzg]

Hi, I'm developing an aplication in python called GPEDLinux, for develop simple games in 2D, it is yet in alfa, but I want do that for have a "Game Maker" for Linux and Libre(free).

I think is the only solutions, I don't want a comercial aplication like Game Maker(because it use DirectX) using wine of course.

I don't think that yoyo games port Game Maker to Linux and much less for free.

[ninjasim]

go here (http://forums.g-builder.org) a Linux game maker like program in development

[Shiroku]

go here (http://forums.g-builder.org) a Linux game maker like program in development

the link is broken...

[ninjasim]

link updated.

[Shiroku]

link updated.

thank's! ;)

[Joshw91]

You might want to keep an eye on this project (http://code.google.com/p/game-creator) ;)
-Josh

[Shiroku]

You might want to keep an eye on this project (http://code.google.com/p/game-creator) ;)
-Josh

thank's! ;)

[IsmAvatar]

I'm the lead programmer behind LateralGM (LGM) (http://www.lateralgm.org) which was mentioned earlier in this thread. Even though the project was started 3 years ago, it has been undergoing constant development with a 3-man team (at some times it was only me). Today, the latest version (1.6 beta) is very much usable, although it is only an IDE, and does not include a compiler. That's where ENIGMA comes in. Enigma is a compiler developed by a separate team, although I've helped write parts of it. We have gotten Enigma and LGM to link together so you can write up your game in LGM and compile it using a compile button, which passes your game to Enigma to compile/run/debug.

Enigma is still in development, and does not support all of the actions that LGM supports. But it's still very active in development.

Both teams need help, if any programmers would like to help out.

LateralGM (http://www.lateralgm.org) - IDE. Written in Java. Latest version (as of this post) 1.6 beta 2. Feature Freeze. Almost fully usable.

ENIGMA (http://www.enigma-dev.org) - Compiler. Written in C/C++. Latest version (as of this post) 1.0 r3 (largely unusable). Next version will be usable, but passed its deadline of September 9 in order to add more features/stability.

-IsmAvatar

[Joshw91]

Hey ism! Yeah IsmAvatar might help me some with my project which i posted the link to 3 posts up.

[afroman10496]

You might want to keep an eye on this project (http://code.google.com/p/game-creator) ;)
-Josh
Dude, that's really cool. I never even heard about that!

[Briana83]

When YoYo games bought GM, it quickly turned to a steaming pile of poo. I was using it, and updating to 7, found it would not accept my registration code, even though I had been using the program since version 5. I got it to go in once and the next time I stated GM, it said I was unregistered AGAIN. Writing to the company was NO help. The information they gave me was stuff I had already tried.

Mark selling out was the WORST thing that could have happened to GM.

I know he just needed more time in life, but leaving it at 6 and not developing it more would have been a better decision.

I was still using Windows at that point (Vista sucks...but 7's worse[tried it at a hotel]) and when you can't make software that works right, maybe you shouldn't be making software!

I see some promising work here though.

Keep it up!

[Joshw91]

That was great! Thanks Briana. We'll overcome GM yet! Muahahahahaaaa
Well, that's not my actual goal, just to solve all our problems at least.
Josh Wyant

[Shiroku]

RPGds update!
The current version of RPGds is 1.0-RC2

You can download it from here (Windows, Linux and MacOS):
http://www.indiedevs.com/download.php

Facebook Fan's Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/RPGds/181910135842

Italian Site:
http://www.nonsologuide.altervista.org/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=7

Try it and report bugs, please.

[Yfrwlf]

As for 3D game creation, Blender has a game engine and if you look on YouTube for Blender games you can find videos of several which have been made with it, some of which are very nice, and of course there are several you can download and play like Yo Frankie.

I don't mean to downplay 2D games or models or sprites or anything (3D models need 2D textures, too), and there's also the artistic niceties which 2D has as well, but the ability to make a 3D model and quickly animate it does make a strong selling point for 3D games as that may be easier, though of course 3D can add a lot of complexity, too.

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/

Realtime 3D/Game Creation

* Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
* Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
* Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
* Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
* Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
* Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
* Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
* Support all OpenGLTM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
* Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
* Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
* Audio, using the SDL toolkit
* Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces

Oh, and here's a tutorial page for making games: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Game_Engine/BSoD

[zerothis]

I'm reminded of the attitude of "BASIC sucks and makes bad games because it teaches bad programming habits and makes bad programmers." (yes, repeating that does make me feel old). Yet BASIC raised a generations of game programmers and was very prevalent in the founding of gaming. Before BASIC, there were no programmers, only scientists and mathematicians who programmed computers. The following programmers worked on commercial games in BASIC:
Scott Adams
Danielle Berry
Louis Saekow
Jon Freeman
Anne Westfall
Richard Garriott
I'm going to go out on a limb and claim they would all agree that BASIC limits the complexity of a game, but not its quality.

GM-like tools might be seen as a shortcut to some of its users. It is attractive to someone who wants to designed games but hasn't acquired the programming skill (or perhaps does not want to). There seems to be a sentiment expressed here that good programmers are required to make good games and that GameMaker-like tools can only produce bad games since non-programmers can use it. Hasn't anyone considered game designing skill independently of programming skill? These tools by their very nature force the creator to make a better designed rather than more complex game. To be honest, most fail. For some, this failure is is a learning experience that increases their design skills. Keep in mind that plenty of games are well designed and good yet uncomplex. Good tower defense games for instance, or Tetris, cand be done with GM-like tools.

Perhaps GM-like tools will produce a few good designers in an industry that's currently all about graphics with too little concern for design.

[Yfrwlf]

I'm reminded of the attitude of "BASIC sucks and makes bad games because it teaches bad programming habits and makes bad programmers." (yes, repeating that does make me feel old). Yet BASIC raised a generations of game programmers and was very prevalent in the founding of gaming. Before BASIC, there were no programmers, only scientists and mathematicians who programmed computers. The following programmers worked on commercial games in BASIC:
Scott Adams
Danielle Berry
Louis Saekow
Jon Freeman
Anne Westfall
Richard Garriott
I'm going to go out on a limb and claim they would all agree that BASIC limits the complexity of a game, but not its quality.

GM-like tools might be seen as a shortcut to some of its users. It is attractive to someone who wants to designed games but hasn't acquired the programming skill (or perhaps does not want to). There seems to be a sentiment expressed here that good programmers are required to make good games and that GameMaker-like tools can only produce bad games since non-programmers can use it. Hasn't anyone considered game designing skill independently of programming skill? These tools by their very nature force the creator to make a better designed rather than more complex game. To be honest, most fail. For some, this failure is is a learning experience that increases their design skills. Keep in mind that plenty of games are well designed and good yet uncomplex. Good tower defense games for instance, or Tetris, cand be done with GM-like tools.

Perhaps GM-like tools will produce a few good designers in an industry that's currently all about graphics with too little concern for design.

Agreed, you certainly should not knock integrated game development environments (IGDEs lol) as they allow access, much like BASIC did, or any higher level program will do. Sure, you can create a picture by typing it out in binary, and every pixel sure as hell might be much more thought-out and well-placed, but neither method guarantees the end result is going to be quality. Yes, being limited by the IGDE can lead to some detriments in speed and quality down the road potentially, but that's also what further optimizations of the IGDE are there to address partially with the help of competing IGDEs.

The point is, Blender and other IGDEs allow high-level game development, and while some might say it's giving someone crutches that they never learn to live without, you have to start somewhere and any place can be a legitimate place to begin even if starting on a higher level hasn't yet taught you about lower level things. Learning backwards like that can actually be a great place to start, to give you a great overview before digging down into things more deeply. And in one last analogy, it's not horrible to learn how to use a hammer just because you didn't forge the steel yourself. :popcorn:

[cmat]

Didn't know there was a demand for GameMaker-like software on linux. Silly me I guess. Anyways a few years back (2 I think) I was working on GUI content creator for the Soya3D game engine. Originally meant as a walkthrough program for demo-ing some architecture. The program made it dead-simple for people to export models of buildings and walk through them. I'm guessing if the demand is high enough I can consider making a program targeted to making 3D games with Soya3D or PyOGRE. Something the likes of FPS Creator.

When I get home I'm post some demos.

- cmat

[Yfrwlf]

Didn't know there was a demand for GameMaker-like software on linux. Silly me I guess. Anyways a few years back (2 I think) I was working on GUI content creator for the Soya3D game engine. Originally meant as a walkthrough program for demo-ing some architecture. The program made it dead-simple for people to export models of buildings and walk through them. I'm guessing if the demand is high enough I can consider making a program targeted to making 3D games with Soya3D or PyOGRE. Something the likes of FPS Creator.

When I get home I'm post some demos.

- cmat

If there were some amazing game makers that made it really easy to snap together a wide variety of games, it's hard to imagine all the things that would come about after giving that kind of capability to artists/designers. Once the level of "programming" reaches the point where it's more "designing" and accessible by normal artists and tinkerers, that will of course enable a lot more games to easily come about.

What this all means is that game creation could eventually become another socially-propelled movement like 3D printers, YouTube, and other things, once the software gets intelligent/knowledgeable/high-level enough to greatly reach a large audience.

And as a bonus side-effect, what better way to help push Linux gaming? ^^

[Joshw91]

yep, so who's for supporting MY project? :)

[cmat]

If there were some amazing game makers that made it really easy to snap together a wide variety of games, it's hard to imagine all the things that would come about after giving that kind of capability to artists/designers. Once the level of "programming" reaches the point where it's more "designing" and accessible by normal artists and tinkerers, that will of course enable a lot more games to easily come about.


A project like this is totally within my capabilities I wouldn't mind perusing it over the summer. Not 100% sure if I'll have the time to do so unfortunately.

I was under the impression for the longest time that programming is now within the reach of a novice given you can write games in under 150 lines of code with Python. I guess coming from C++ to Python made me forget that learning a programming language is outside the reach of many people. There are many talented people out there that would like to use gaming as a form of expression that can't program computers. If I can't carry out such a project I should post some in-depth tutorials on a blog or something on how to.

- cmat

[Yfrwlf]

yep, so who's for supporting MY project? :)

Maybe! :D


A project like this is totally within my capabilities I wouldn't mind perusing it over the summer. Not 100% sure if I'll have the time to do so unfortunately.

I was under the impression for the longest time that programming is now within the reach of a novice given you can write games in under 150 lines of code with Python. I guess coming from C++ to Python made me forget that learning a programming language is outside the reach of many people. There are many talented people out there that would like to use gaming as a form of expression that can't program computers. If I can't carry out such a project I should post some in-depth tutorials on a blog or something on how to.

- cmat

Well I don't know a whole lot about it all but I would imagine that of course reusing code for things like the engine and physics if possible would be a very smart idea so you wouldn't have to redo all that math, even though I like math. ^^ Probably essentially take Crystalspace or Ogre3D, Bullet, and some of the various HUD/GUIs for in-game menus and whatnot, and put them into the editor or at least have them be used in the compilation of the game binary.

Or you could start even higher level than that and take Blender and improve it, since it not only has game making abilities but of course comes with a built-in graphics editor. Of course, it's the other way around currently, and it's a graphics editor with a game maker attached. It's game making abilities are basic though, so if you could really expand on that and make it even higher level as well so that it's literally a snap to get a game world created, then that could work out great, because then you'd have the power of a model editor in the same program! Once you have those higher-level tools in there that will really make Blender soar, but you'd probably want to add one or more new interfaces/modes for it of course, have a level editor mode which includes a 2D/3D map editor mode and a object placement mode to make it easy to place stuff in your level, etc. Blender even has a way to "compile" the game together to some degree to make a stand-alone game which I tried and it worked just fine. Quickly made a game where I had a 3D object move and jump around the board complete with sound effects, lol.

Blender Foundation made Go Frankie and there are tutorials on how they did it, so I'm sure there is already interest there among some of the programmers to do several of the things I've mentioned.

If you could have a single program that had a 3D editor mode as well as a game editor, all the better I would think, unless there's some huge incompatibility somewhere that you can't reconcile. It's not like it would make the program too large or anything either to include the model editor part, since Blender is only 10 MBs any way.

[cmat]

The best route to go ATM is Soya3D since it's dead simple to use and incorporates stuff like Open Dynamics Engine. It also has tremendous support for Blender so you don't need any additional plugins for it. I can rig my current software used for demos and make it an editor. I guess it would be possible to make a 3D game designer with this software. Provided people use "prefabricated" models to create the levels.

I attached a demo of what you can do with a few spare hours in Soya3D. Did this over the weekend written in pure Python. Free game models and stuff I found over the net. The movement model is similar to any modern FPS game and it uses a vector based system for projectiles and collision detection. No animations or arms since I cant do anything other than architecture.

[Yfrwlf]

If it's fairly unique open source software and whatnot I'd put your editor (or could-become-an-editor) software up on a site someplace so that anyone can grab it and add to it.

There's Sauerbraten which has a level editor built into the game, but of course that's just for levels, not making entirely different kinds of games.

Any way, Soya3D is interesting and has a fork http://www.pysoy.org/

So I take it that these both do not offer GUI editors, or IGDEs if you want to call them that lol, and that's where your software would come in? Having everything separated out, like a 3D model editor like Blender, is fine, but I still think Blender is quite nice with how it incorporates the model editor, game editor, and the ability to immediately "play" the game all into one program. It can handle fairly graphically intensive games, too. Some examples of some already fairly impressive games:

2D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf8YbCdSh8M&feature=related
3D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDU6g2ocrc&feature=related
3D http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Krum+game&aq=f
Car sim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJaqJruZKY&feature=related
last game link, there's a link there to download the Blend file so you can see the models and play the game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgTVRVAAHrk

WARNING, you could spend days on YouTube looking at Blender games that have been made if you're not careful. :P There are a lot of really impressive ones and if I kept going then it'd just turn into spam lol.


So, finally getting to my point: What does Soya3D and Open Dynamics Engine give you that Blender + Bullet doesn't? Why not simply help Blender become a better game editor if possible? Seems like possibly a better goal since a) it already offers so much and b) it already has so many devs working on it.

Comments and thoughts? ^^

[cmat]

There aren't really any reasons not to use Blender. I would like to know why we don't see more linux games made with it.

I opted for Soya3D since it can run on older machines very well. It's development can take place with the tools I choose. I'll give Game Blender a shot and see how things turn out. If it ends up being too much of a hassle I'll stick to Soya3D. I'm aware of PySoy but I haven't seen that engine in action.

The editor I made just makes it easy to put together pre-fabricated bits onto a map. If you ever made a map for Mechwarrior 4 you'll already know what my editor is like.

[Yfrwlf]

There aren't really any reasons not to use Blender. I would like to know why we don't see more linux games made with it.

I opted for Soya3D since it can run on older machines very well. It's development can take place with the tools I choose. I'll give Game Blender a shot and see how things turn out. If it ends up being too much of a hassle I'll stick to Soya3D. I'm aware of PySoy but I haven't seen that engine in action.

The editor I made just makes it easy to put together pre-fabricated bits onto a map. If you ever made a map for Mechwarrior 4 you'll already know what my editor is like.

I haven't used that editor before, but I have an idea of what you mean and that's definitely needed for making "levels". Blender is supposed to have that capability, a mode that makes it easy to slap together maps, that is supposed to be one of the points of the Game Blender project, but I don't know how far along it is. I know you can take models like, say, a tree, and copy and modify it and place it around your level, and then "bake" it in quickly and easily. Not sure about "items" though and other things like your editor is more designed for I imagine.

One of my concerns is the quality of the Blender engine. It was written from scratch which seems odd since that's just a lot more code to support when they could instead be using some other engine that has much more support behind it like Ogre3D, Crystalspace, Soya, etc, though "Game Blender" was started back in 2000. Any way, I just am not sure how optimized the code is in comparison to the others. You mentioned Soya3D runs well on older computers, and my response is it should if it doesn't use newer OpenGL rendering pipelines like GLSL and whatnot, and my point is that Blender should run well on older computers when it doesn't use really advanced graphics, but I'm not sure if it's capable of that or not.

And, just to muddy the waters even more and give even more choice:
http://www.panda3d.org/
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
http://horde3d.org/

It's too bad there's not more cooperation in making a single powerful and fast engine. :rolleyes:

As far as GUI editors though, I've heard of a few mentioned here and there but other than Blender I really haven't used any and am not aware of there being that many high-level tools, hence my original post. ^^

If programs like Blender are too tied into a graphics engine which isn't very powerful or capable for certain reasons, it's too bad there isn't some standard file formats for entire maps/games/models/etc for use in any engine. Yes, Blender gives you some "standards" as far as model exportation goes but of course I don't think one exists for the former.


There aren't really any reasons not to use Blender. I would like to know why we don't see more linux games made with it.

I think the reason there aren't more Linux games done in Blender is because it seems Blender gaming is just starting to really come about perhaps. As that happens, no doubt there will be more support for it and hopefully turn it into an even better game editor/engine. But yes as far as I know, all those games, should you have access to the .blend file at least, should be playable in Linux. I tried out Yo Frankie earlier. Instead of being a single binary like what Blender makes, it's split apart into many files. I swear it runs a bit slower than it could, but then it's hard to tell if the blame for that lies in the game itself or in the engine.. =/

[cmat]

Thanks for the reply. I've played around with Blender a bit, not making games but playing existing ones. The graphics and performance are better than most of the other engines. Along the lines of most modern games. Soya3D support graphics seem very dated in comparison. It's pretty dead simple to script in Blender and edit the attributes of elements in the scene. Blender lacks a CAD like interface for modeling which makes it difficult to model interiors for large maps. I'll re-make my FPS game next week in Blender to see if their are any benefits over Soya3D.

I guess it's time we put our heads together and produce a quality Blender game.

[Yfrwlf]

Thanks for the reply. I've played around with Blender a bit, not making games but playing existing ones. The graphics and performance are better than most of the other engines. Along the lines of most modern games. Soya3D support graphics seem very dated in comparison. It's pretty dead simple to script in Blender and edit the attributes of elements in the scene. Blender lacks a CAD like interface for modeling which makes it difficult to model interiors for large maps. I'll re-make my FPS game next week in Blender to see if their are any benefits over Soya3D.

I guess it's time we put our heads together and produce a quality Blender game.

Watching the movies and reading through the tutorials they have can give you an idea of how difficult it is currently using their Blender interface to create a game. They documented the process a bit I think when they made Yo Frankie. Not knowing much about the engine other than it can do some decent effects, I'm still worried that it's more of a snap-in gimmick to allow a quick look at a "game" or to run your animations before you actually render your movie. I don't know if the engine was made durable and high performance enough to allow fluid rendering of high polygon counts and such like an actual game would have. What about mipmapping, having a horizon where polygons aren't generated until you get closer so that it is possible to have large worlds, and things like that?

Quite simply, there are a lot of things in which a complete game needs in order to run well on graphics hardware, so looking into that to make sure it is capable of all that is a concern of mine.

I tried out that Ember game for instance, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgTVRVAAHrk, and it loaded very slowly, and while at times it would run fluidly, it would also really really choke up badly at seemingly random times. Also, it's a pretty big download for such a simple and small game, but it is a .blend file, so maybe it doesn't do as good of a job in packing things up as exporting it into a binary does but I have yet to try that either (though you'd think the binaries would be bigger than the .blends due to the binaries needing to include the engine and libraries and such in them, but I guess graphics usually ARE the biggest source of bloat with games..). Whether the slow downs were a Blender game engine issue or an issue with the game itself I'm not sure, but it was a bit worrying. You say you didn't have any issues though with the games you tried?

Blender 2.5 is supposed to be coming out sometime soonish and is supposed to have "a major overhaul of UI, tools, event handling, animation system and much more", see http://www.blender.org/development/ so I wonder if that will fix up the game engine more or improve its game making abilities, UI, and performance. It mentions there as well that 2.5 is going to have a major overhaul of the Python API. Going to give the alpha version a whirl just to check when I have the time, but I'd certainly like to play around with more games first to get an idea of what Blender is capable of right now at least in terms of performance.

[Yfrwlf]

That's interesting, I found a project called BlenderCAD:

"a Blender script created with the aim of expand the functionality of Blender, so that it could be used for CAD. More info on the release of BlenderCAD and the Blender discussion forum. Visit the BlenderCAD project page (http://projects.blender.org/projects/blendercad/) for download, etc."

Currently on their Blender project's site the search is disabled, but I know the Game Engine part of Blender is or was its own project but may have been merged into the main project, I'm not sure, but they might have a project page for it on there someplace. If you didn't like the way the project was headed, or if you wanted a script or whatnot to add or turn Blender into a program more game-oriented or, say, map-level-making-oriented or something, that could be a good place for the project's home. :)

[Hygaphunkik]

I have been interested in finding a good simple game developing package that children can use running on linux for a couple of years. I have made great use of Game Editor to develop small applications for linux with it. Unfortunately they needed to be made in windows at the moment. Apperently it will run on ubuntu but I allways get this error.

/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by ./gameEditor)

Last time I tried to sort this out I completely trashed my computer, Is there anybody who can get http://game-editor.com/Main_Page this package working on ubuntu. I tried recompiling it from the source code but I am not really on the ball with this and I have never successfully compiled anything more than a wordsearch creator.


Any help gratefully taken.

Hygaphunkik.

[Pithikos]

There is a great opensource game developing program called Construct but it's only for Windows. Would be cool if someone could port it to Linux as it has the same capabilities as Game Maker if not more :)

[Yfrwlf]

I have been interested in finding a good simple game developing package that children can use running on linux for a couple of years. I have made great use of Game Editor to develop small applications for linux with it. Unfortunately they needed to be made in windows at the moment. Apperently it will run on ubuntu but I allways get this error.

/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11' not found (required by ./gameEditor)

Last time I tried to sort this out I completely trashed my computer, Is there anybody who can get http://game-editor.com/Main_Page this package working on ubuntu. I tried recompiling it from the source code but I am not really on the ball with this and I have never successfully compiled anything more than a wordsearch creator.


Any help gratefully taken.

Hygaphunkik.

Gotta love Linux dependency hell. Maybe they should, oh I dunno, start packaging that library with the program? I really wish Linux devs would wake up to their user's pain and use cross-distro Linux installers that actually work.


There is a great opensource game developing program called Construct but it's only for Windows. Would be cool if someone could port it to Linux as it has the same capabilities as Game Maker if not more :)

They developed open source built on Windows? That's sad...but yeah at least since it is open source there is hope. Still would take quite a bit of effort to port it though I'm sure.

[Sslaxx]

They developed open source built on Windows? That's sad...but yeah at least since it is open source there is hope. Still would take quite a bit of effort to port it though I'm sure.
On the plus, it supports Python scripting. Negatives, though, are that it is DirectX-dependent and uses a proprietary (and, as far as I know, Windows only) UI library.

[Th3Blaze]

So.... How do I get it ?

[Sslaxx]

So.... How do I get it ?

You can find it here. (http://game-editor.com/Main_Page)

[GrueMaster]

Another project:
Open RPG Maker (http://openrpgmaker.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php)

Reviving this thread to post that openRPG Maker has been released to beta.

The features available are quite extensive, and it is developed on Ubuntu (Kubuntu to be specific, largely for cross-platform portability with QT).

Sorry, but no .deb packages yet. Only source tarball.

You can find it here (http://openrpgmaker.sourceforge.net).

[swamp-rock]

Yet another necro thread revival...

There is a package called Game Editor available for linux, that is similar to Game Maker. I haven't explored it too much yet, so I don't know if it's as powerful as GM is. I think it's definitely worth taking a look at, though...

http://game-editor.com/