1176 replies to this topic

[Big J]

Hopefully they fix it and make people use "==" for comparisons only. It's horrible programming practice to use a single "="

Hardly horrible programming practice. Lazy at worst.

Perhaps one could call it "Visual Basic Style".

[Drandula]

Time which you have spent making the game.

I would like to have some counter in Game Maker, which counts how many hours you have been making specific game. Also some this kind of information would be nice to be able to check

Tero Hannula

[connor4312]

1. Array functions. Been using PHP for a bit, and am sorely missing its lovely array functions in GM, especially foreach() http://php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php
2. Named arguments in functions. Instead of:

show_message(argument0+argument2+argument1);

have

show_message(question+divider+answer);

3. Ternary operators. Instead of:

str="Hello ";
if (world)
  str+="World";
else
  str+="City";
str+="!";

Just have:

str="Hello "+(world ? "World" : "City")+"!";

It makes writing and maintaining code a lot easier. Obviously, these are only simplistic examples and not a real-world scenario.

[Big J]

2. Named arguments in functions. Instead of:

show_message(argument0+argument2+argument1);

have

show_message(question+divider+answer);

Like this?

var question, divider, answer;
question = argument0;
divider = argument2;
answer = argument1;
show_message(question + divider + answer);

Edited by Big J, 28 February 2012 - 09:09 PM.

[Dark Matter]

Like this?

var question, divider, answer;
question = argument0;
divider = argument2;
answer = argument1;
show_message(question + divider + answer);

It's not hard to do, we all realise that. We're looking for things to make programming easier/simpler though, and that's just an annoyance.

[IceMetalPunk]

1. Array functions. Been using PHP for a bit, and am sorely missing its lovely array functions in GM, especially foreach() http://php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php

While native support for that would be nice, it's easy to do something similar with ds_lists (and can be modified to work with arrays, though I prefer ds_lists or ds_linklists anyway ):

foreach(list, script_id):

var p;
for (p = 0; p < ds_list_size(argument0); p += 1) {
  script_execute(argument1, p, ds_list_find_value(argument0, p));
}

Then your script would just take the index and the value as its arguments. Similar methods can be used for maps if you want the associativity.

I do agree that native syntactic support would be nice, though.

-IMP

[Big J]

I'd like to be able to turn this:

var question, divider, answer;
question = argument0;
divider = argument1;
answer = argument2;

Into this:

var question = argument0, divider = argument1, answer = argument2;

I'm sorry if this was already mentioned, assignment within declaration.
Same for globalvar of course:

globalvar Health = 0;

Edited by Big J, 29 February 2012 - 05:07 AM.

[Dark Matter]

I'm sorry if this was already mentioned, assignment within declaration.[/code]

Yep, loads of times. It's quite an obvious one, so lots of people bring it up.

[Shadowrend]

Time which you have spent making the game.

I would like to have some counter in Game Maker, which counts how many hours you have been making specific game. Also some this kind of information would be nice to be able to check

Tero Hannula

Code lines also :D

[Anzkji]

Oh, yeah!

[Mr. RPG]

Time which you have spent making the game.

I would like to have some counter in Game Maker, which counts how many hours you have been making specific game. Also some this kind of information would be nice to be able to check

Tero Hannula

I second this.

[Robert3DG+]

I like the idea of the project time calculator too. Maybe add a line of code counter as well for people who like that stuff.

[Dark Matter]

I like the idea of the project time calculator too. Maybe add a line of code counter as well for people who like that stuff.

This is what the +1 button is for. So you don't have to repeat what lots of other people have already said. Otherwise, it's as good as spam really.

[Plastic]

I would also like to add some suggestions:
- support for .fli files (which can be used as animated backgrounds)
- animated loading screens
- update the build-in multiplayer functions. Game Maker should add support for client-server networking (rather than the peer-to-peer features mplay uses), so one can make games that
correctly can be played over the internet, lobbying servers, and Directplay Voice. As the current build-in mplay functions use the peer-to-peer technology, one can make multiplayer games for
20 players max. Whith the client-server approuch, this can be extended to infite or more.

[connor4312]

I would also like to add some suggestions:
- support for .fli files (which can be used as animated backgrounds)
- animated loading screens
- update the build-in multiplayer functions. Game Maker should add support for client-server networking (rather than the peer-to-peer features mplay uses), so one can make games that
correctly can be played over the internet, lobbying servers, and Directplay Voice. As the current build-in mplay functions use the peer-to-peer technology, one can make multiplayer games for
20 players max. Whith the client-server approuch, this can be extended to infite or more.

- Use a standard .avi format. That is a Quicktime (.mov-family) format, and Apple tends to not want to share. I'd say about half of PCs don't have Quicktime on them. In website development, I like to call it the 95% rule. If you know >95% of your users are able to view it, use it. Otherwise, find something else. If you want a good codec for animation compression, you can look into the H.263/4, Cinepack, or DV compressions. Cinepack is the most "global" but it doesn't give you all too good a quality. DV compression only works on 720x480 frames, and although it's a great format some computers may not always have the H.263/4 codecs.
- There already are...
- 39dll

[Plastic]

I would also like to add some suggestions:
- support for .fli files (which can be used as animated backgrounds)
- animated loading screens
- update the build-in multiplayer functions. Game Maker should add support for client-server networking (rather than the peer-to-peer features mplay uses), so one can make games that
correctly can be played over the internet, lobbying servers, and Directplay Voice. As the current build-in mplay functions use the peer-to-peer technology, one can make multiplayer games for
20 players max. Whith the client-server approuch, this can be extended to infite or more.

- Use a standard .avi format. That is a Quicktime (.mov-family) format, and Apple tends to not want to share. I'd say about half of PCs don't have Quicktime on them. In website development, I like to call it the 95% rule. If you know >95% of your users are able to view it, use it. Otherwise, find something else. If you want a good codec for animation compression, you can look into the H.263/4, Cinepack, or DV compressions. Cinepack is the most "global" but it doesn't give you all too good a quality. DV compression only works on 720x480 frames, and although it's a great format some computers may not always have the H.263/4 codecs.
- There already are...
- 39dll

-At the moment, you can't use a .avi file as a background. That's why I suggested .fli files, as they have the same effect, but in a different format.
-You can't use animated loading screens as the Game Maker game loads.
-I recently heard that Game Maker uses DirectX 7 for the build-in mplay functions, while the minimum system requirement is DirectX 8. So this have to be updated anyway. But
right now, one cannot make multiplayer games with the build-in functions that can be played over the internet. That's why I suggested to update the build-in functions,
because I prefer not to use a DLL.

[Robert3DG+]

mplay functions

Either way mplay is a dead technology.

[Overloaded]

My Game Maker Suggestions:



- 3D/Multiplayer DnD actions.

- More tutorials that you can view in Game Maker.

- Animated backgrounds ( I mean like sprites that have subimages)

- 3D Model loading (I mean that there would be a subfolder like "Sprites" and "Objects") and a model editor.

- More ready sprites/backgrounds/sounds and examples. I would suggest you to put Mario and Pacman sprites/backgrounds/sounds and examples, because most people create clones of them. (And other famous games of course). Also, you could put ready 3D Models (okay I don't mean that you should create very good models, just basic)

- 2D/3D Room/Object selection. When you create a room, you could choose if you want it to be 2D or 3D. 2D rooms could put 2D objects (the ones with sprites) and 3D room could put 3D objects (the ones with 3D sprites/models). Also 3D rooms could have an 3D editor.

That's it. If I have more suggestions I'll tell you.

NOTE: I don't demand you to do these, I'm just giving you suggestions. Also, I don't know if anyone else here have posted the same things, because there are a lot of posts and I can't read them all.

Have a happy day,
D4RknEZz (known also as Manolis Greece)

[NakedPaulToast]

-I recently heard that Game Maker uses DirectX 7 for the build-in mplay functions, while the minimum system requirement is DirectX 8. So this have to be updated anyway. But
right now, one cannot make multiplayer games with the build-in functions that can be played over the internet. That's why I suggested to update the build-in functions,
because I prefer not to use a DLL.

No, it doesn't mean that at all.

GameMaker's DirectPlay 7 mplay can still be used to create applications that can be played over the Internet. However all participants need to port-forward their NAT devices. DirectPlay 8 does have much improved NAT traversal mechanisms, but that means a complete rewrite of GM's mplay API. That would be absolutely silly given mplay is Microsoft only, deprecated and slow.

YYGs has tweeted/blogged about replacing mplay with their own cross-platform API. It's likely to be socket based. Given 39DLL is also socket based, there should be enough similarity so that working with 39DLL should be portable to the YYGs Network API.

Edited by NakedPaulToast, 13 March 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[Big J]

- More ready sprites/backgrounds/sounds and examples. I would suggest you to put Mario and Pacman sprites/backgrounds/sounds and examples, because most people create clones of them. (And other famous games of course). Also, you could put ready 3D Models (okay I don't mean that you should create very good models, just basic)

So you're encouraging copyright infringement? Fangames are technically illegal and YYG would potentially be in some kind of trouble for distributing copyrighted images of copyrighted characters like Mario or Pac-man. That is probably why Game Maker no longer has a "Pac-man" example. It's now disguised as a treasure hunt game. It plays like Pac-man though.