Release game maker? dont hurt me! ;)

[gaberoc]

Well, i think this hasnt been asked before, so i guess its safe to start this topic
i am one of those persons who are extremely creative (gfx-wise) but for some reasons i suck balls at coding. really. i am able to do some scripting on a good level but as soon as it gets to recursive loops or deeper math, my brain goes up in flames.
some years ago i worked in the games industry and we had some pretty nifty tools made inhouse, reducing the coding to a minimum. of course these tools had to be coded before. but once they were done it was a blast working with them(that means, if our coder didnt fuck up and produced some weird bugs that made us nearly kill him).
there are also some good game makers around, namely "game maker" and the conitec "3d gamestudio" aswell the antigyrax thingie, which is ported for psp.
all those are unfortunatly closed source *sigh*
but it would be really great to have some kind of gamemaker which uses the power available on the pandora. i know that it is not an easy task, indeed its a fucking boring and difficult task but people could contribute their own games with little knowledge of coding, like myself.
there are some good, advanced 3d engines and 2d libraries, they "only" (haha - he said only) need to be bound to some kind of scripting language and a compiler.
so, what do you think? is it even worth the effort? is there someone attempting such a project? - if someone does - you sir, would be my personal hero.

Gabriel


oh and if this topic does not belong here, please move it

 

[mkinzler]

Perhabs asking Arkham Development, if they're willing to port or provide the source for doing it

 

[neverk]

That is a great idea!
Here is a great open source development software, but unfortunately it uses DirectX.

>>> Construct <<<

Maybe someone could make it work with Pandora?

 

[bakawhite]

Sounds good. I'd say give this a shot, we might get something cool out of it.

 

[emcp]

never used gamemaker, or any other ones

i dont really see a need for them, theres only so much that can be done,

ide prefer if the efforts where spent on a scriptive language, like lua python etc, id prefer lua though

 

[Etinin]

It's probably safe to say that we're going to have engines such as OGRE and Irrlicht ported to the Pandora.

 

[mkinzler]

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=28943

 

[Poisos]

Perhaps it is possible to pull somthing off using the Blender Game Engine which also provides some scripting functionality!?
Have a look at this.

 

[wimomacon]

yes we are developing a game making software for rapid and ease of game creation for WIndows, mobile phones, mac and game consoles and that includes Pandora. Check for more info here

 

[the_darkside_986]

For scripting, Lua is a simple language and very fast despite being interpreted. One could write a nice Lua interpreter with multimedia capabilities, and then a GUI that would help users generate scripts to make a game. But this would be a RAD tool and the real final project would be written in C/C++.

I am currently refreshing my Lua C API knowledge so I can write a Lua interpreter for Pandora that (for now) uses SDL and will eventually use Pandora specific hardware and OpenGL2 ES API bindings.

Hopefully no one will come up with a Lua interpreter as awful as the PSP's "LuaPlayer." That is one of the saddest homebrews on the PSP I've ever seen. The rendering code is all wrong and slow.

 

[Pleng]

My favorite, lua based, system is Novashell.

It uses a lau-script based syntax and already makes Linux compatible games. The developer did show interest in the Pandora when I introduced it to him a while ago. Haven't really kept tabs on it for a while though.

 

[dentrado]

Novashell looks really nice, perhaps a bit rpg centered though? I didn't read much on their homepage so correct me if I'm wrong.

Another luabased gameengine that I think looks really nice is löve. It's not point and click, but it looks quite simple and useful for 2D games. It uses SDL and open gl, so I guess it needs porting to open gl ES, but SDL is no problem right?

 

[Pleng]

It appears RPG centered as it was an engine originally built for RPGS. The demos included with the system include point-n-shoot games, tank games, and a very nice platform game.

At the moment it's pre-beta (if I remember correctly) so there's lots of bits missing but it is a very sweet and flexible little environment, and the creator is extremely helpful! I created a little demo of a game myself but have halted for the time being. If the system does get brought over to Pandora I shall ensure that I create a completed game!

 

[kattle87]

Actually, I have been playing around with ZGameEditor (http://www.zgameeditor.org). It's an OpenSource Delphi project that aims to create very little games 2D or 3D games (64kb when compressed with UPX). The runtime is multi-platform (I run some games from my Ubuntu Linux) and can be compiled with FreePascal so it *should* be possible to get games running on ARM without much effort. The whole editor is procedural-based so creating something funny is fast and easy (if you have the right idea).

BUT the main problems are:
-The project is under active development but there's only one main developer plus 2 "helpers" (one of which is me) so it is still growing
-The runtime is multi-platform but the Editor is for windows only (works under WINE with one bug I've not managed to fix yet)

 

[Mygames19]

Actually, they are working on porting Game Maker to the Mac and Linux platforms. But it might be a while... 2009 from what I heard.

Another program worth looking into is Stencyl: http://www.stencyl.com/about/
It's a game making program being made for all users to make a game with extreme ease, for all platforms. but, even though it is nearing it's release, it alas isint ready yet.

anyhow...

 

[javaJake]

Novashell looks really nice, perhaps a bit rpg centered though? I didn't read much on their homepage so correct me if I'm wrong.

It is very RPG-centered, however the entire game is programmed in event-based Lua. (Only creating the 2D levels is drag-n-drop style.) If you wanted to make a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, you could do it.

The nice thing about Novashell vs. starting from scratch is they give you some convenience functions, like ParticleEffectHere() and MoveThere(), except not with those exact names, of course.

 

[Pleng]

Novashell looks really nice, perhaps a bit rpg centered though? I didn't read much on their homepage so correct me if I'm wrong.

It is very RPG-centered, however the entire game is programmed in event-based Lua. (Only creating the 2D levels is drag-n-drop style.) If you wanted to make a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, you could do it.

The nice thing about Novashell vs. starting from scratch is they give you some convenience functions, like ParticleEffectHere() and MoveThere(), except not with those exact names, of course.

Ye I really should have gotten back on the forums and advised Seth (Novashell creator) about the pre-orders. He did seem rather interested in the project when I originally introduced it on the forum. I will make a point of revisiting in time for the next batch.