Gamemaker: Studio Pro (humble bundle)

[Stormweaver]

Has anyone here had any experience with Gamemaker? Because for some insane reason Humble bundle have it, alongside a bunch of example games, for less than fifteen quid. (or a dollar for just the basic thing)

I'm probably going to pick it up before the sale ends one way or another, I'm just kinda curious what you guys think about it.

[Ethinolicbob]

I had a look at the games made with Gamemaker, I only recognise a few of them, most notably Hotline Miami.
Honestly though I might get it too just for screwing around on.
US$15 for the game maker, its various modules and a bunch of finished games + source code seems worth it just for the amount of time I am going be distracted screwing around with it, let alone if I ended up making something in the least bit entertaining for myself :D

[kazerima]

I used to mess with older versions of GameMaker back in high school, before YoYo bought the rights to it.
The systems they have make a pretty decent intro into level building and a basic level of programming concept, though learning GML is a must in order to do anything more complicated with it. If you're an avid programmer already, it's not really worth using aside from quick prototyping. If you can't program very well though it's good for understanding the basics and makes a decent first step.

[Daisjun]

There's a really good tut on Game Maker that starts you off completely from scratch, that is, with no programming or dev experience whatsoever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLUt ... N6dZWXUEzA

It's from the guy who made Gunpoint, really fun little game. He takes you through moving a sprite on the screen all the way up to releasing a game.

One thing he notes is that he's terrible with code but still managed to make a game that's been given some pretty high praise so coding experience isn't massively essential.

[BinoAl]

Huh, they had gamemaker professional in a bundle a while back, too, 12$ for professional + android module and some other games. I picked it up then and never really did anything with it, I couldn't even register my version of it for a few weeks due to the popularity of the bundle

[Rawny]

Okay, maybe I'm a little daft but how legit is this and how does it work?

Looks like I have to pay first and THEN maybe I choose what I want? Or do I get them all? And pay what? Pay 15$ and get GameMaker Studio Pro and iOS Module (and more) while just those two are totaled at 505.95$ on Steam... can that be?

[Uristqwerty]

Based on past bundles, you get everything in the price tiers you qualify for, although they don't give out steam keys for <$1.


As I understand it, it's much like steam sales, temporarily targeting a much broader audience for products that aren't selling much anyway, and increasing publicity which will have a lingering effect once the bundle is over.

Looking at the statistics on the page, there are 200k sales totalling nearly $2.5 million. I would be surprised if even 2000 of those people would have bought Gamemaker studio pro, especially at the non-sale price, and assuming most people just used the default price split, YoYo games will probably get at least $1.5 million from it, so they will probably at least break even (using the price they list for the "studio master collection" on their site).


Finally, for legitimacy, there's a link to the bundle on https://www.yoyogames.com/get as well as their twitter account.

[Daisjun]

I bought the bundle. You receive keys to all the software named in the bundle for the amount you spend when you buy it. I believe they offered the same bundle around the same time last year.

Other than issues with activating the software (their email servers are pretty overwhelmed atm. Took me a couple of days to register my account) it is a fully licensed copy of the program.

[Ulfengaard]

I can echo Daisjun, here. I bought it. It seems fully functional, and though there is some hoop-age to jump in order to get all of the licenses registered, this does appear to be a full pro copy.

[Stormweaver]

Yup, just bought and installed it. Copy/pasting all the codes was the most if only arduous part of the experience.

I didn't have any problems getting activated/registered though - everything was practically instant.

Edit: Huh, these tutorials are pretty good.

[Ulfengaard]

Yeah, I've been following them myself. I'm pretty grateful to the guy for providing them, and I feel that (without really knowing for sure) he's throwing all the really big tools into the basket quite quickly. There's a lot of flexibility in the stuff that he's doing such that a person could achieve a lot on the basis of his tutorial series.

[Stormweaver]

Yeah. I'll be spending tonight powering through as much as I can so I can give a slightly more informed opinion for people on the fence before the sale ends, but so far; as someone who has tried, and failed, to learn programming in the past, the fact that the tutorials always have you *doing* something is great for me. Instant gratification and all that.

Edit: Calling it a night. Most of the way through the multi-part breakout clone tutorial and I'm pretty sure I could do it from memory, which is kinda good. It also transitions to mainly using code rather than the drag and drop system, which is comforting. I'd defo reccomend dropping a dollar on it to have a pair of training wheels for learning if you need them, or just to mess around with.

[Gilberreke]

I'm kinda giggling at the people that haven't heard about either Gamemaker OR Humble Bundle. That's really strange to me, since Gamemaker has been THE engine for hobbyists for over a decade and Humble Bundle is just super famous and has been discussed on this forum several times in the past IIRC.

Bit late since the sale is over, but that bundle was really good value. Have fun with it guys!

[Stormweaver]

I'm kinda giggling at the people that haven't heard about either Gamemaker OR Humble Bundle. That's really strange to me, since Gamemaker has been THE engine for hobbyists for over a decade and Humble Bundle is just super famous and has been discussed on this forum several times in the past IIRC.

Bit late since the sale is over, but that bundle was really good value. Have fun with it guys!

Previous to actually looking into it I think I associated gamemaker with rpgmaker (and the swarm of badly made rpgs that stems from it) because of the similar names, and never really took it seriously as a result.

My loss really. Having a blast trying to replicate some half-remembered boid simulation I read about years ago withs maths I only half remember >.<

[Ulfengaard]

I have the exact same story. I tried out RPGMaker, and I was excited to actually build a game. But, it eventually put me off for the same reasons. Thus, I avoided GameMaker. Wish I wouldn't have.