2D Game Development Engine 'GameMaker Studio 2' Debuts on macOS

[MacRumors]

YoYo Games launched GameMaker Studio 2 on macOS this week, bringing the popular multiplatform 2D game development engine to the Mac for the first time. To date, the GameMaker Studio family of products has been downloaded more than 10 million times since 2012 and currently has 200,000 monthly active users, according to the developers.

The Scotland-based outfit originally launched GameMaker Studio 2 on the PC in March and has since been working hard to bring the game creation suite to a wider subset of developers, ensuring every major upgrade and feature addition is preserved in the macOS version.

"We worked tirelessly to ensure GameMaker Studio 2's Mac debut would coincide with the needs of game developers that prefer to use platforms outside of Windows and home consoles," said James Cox, general manager, YoYo Games. "After months carefully considering the feedback we received from beta testing and direct community outreach, we're confident that developers who prefer Mac can now feasibly create games on the often-ignored platform. We're always looking for ways to expand game creation to as many developers as possible, and we know Mac users will make some stand-out games with these resources."

The new, fully customizable Mac Integrated Development Environment (IDE) includes an object editor for structuring workflow, a tabbed script editor, drag and drop features to enable game creation without going near code, an extensive library of events and actions, and code preview tools for those who want to take their games to the next level using the GameMaker programming language (based on C).

The suite also features a room editor where layers and tile brushes are on hand to control objects and sprites, and a new brush-based image editor with animation support for creating new assets for games.

Elsewhere, there's built-in support for the industry recognized Box2D physics engine or Google's LiquidFun particle physics engine, support for Esoteric Software's 2D animation software that bring games to life through integrated animation, and integrated cross-platform shader support.

Timed with the macOS launch, GameMaker Studio 2 is also receiving a comprehensive update with new features and quality-of-life improvements. The 2.1 version update introduces code-folding features that allow users to hide and expand sections of code for easier editing, a new integrated debugger, customizable workspace layouts, and multi-touch support for coding on the go on Mac laptops.

While GameMaker 2 has a very high skill ceiling, Cox claimed the product is for all levels of developer, being used in schools and purchased by children as young as eight who use the drag and drop features to turn their ideas into playable games.

GameMaker Studio is a 2D game design platform, but what makes it different is its breadth of application. The drag and drop design features provide beginners with a way into game design without having to become coders first, so the passion that got them into game design isn't extinguished under a mountain of programming learning; that can come later. The drag and drop approach, creates real code that gives granular control, in our C based GameMaker Language (GML), to more experienced developers. For more established Indies and Studios, our workflow is what sets up apart. It's really quick to get results with GameMaker, as we remove the repetition, and they can turn their games into amazing audio-visual experiences with our advanced graphic design and sound-mixing functionality.

GameMaker Studio 2 can be purchased for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu for $100 on the YoYo Games website. 

Article Link: 2D Game Development Engine 'GameMaker Studio 2' Debuts on macOS

 

[Morgenland]

That's a nicey but: Replace your Retro "GamerMaker Language" with Apple's Swift and I may look at it ;-)

 

[Telos101]

Remember Hotline Miami? Great game. Made on GameMaker, I believe.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

That's a nicey but: Replace your Retro "GameMaker Language" with Apple's Swift and I may look at it ;-)

While I haven't evaluated GML or Swift enough to comment usefully on those two languages, I have heard that Swift is intuitive to program in and would be a good fit for a tool like this. The one thing stopping Swift from being in GameMaker is the lack of Windows and Android ports.

 

[Janichsan]

The one thing stopping Swift from being in GameMaker is the lack of Windows and Android ports.

Does it?

Since Swift is Open Source, it's just a matter of dedication.

 

[garirry]

Glad this is finally getting a Mac release, we haven't seen one since GM7 god knows how long ago. I've tried GMS2 while it was in beta and it definitely was an improvement over the previous versions, but it's still a ridiculously inefficient engine. It's great for beginners, but if you're going to make something serious with it, it's going to be difficult.

 

[iModFrenzy]

I’d prefer to use Game Maker Studio 1(and do), this one looks confusing. Hopefully I can still buy a license for it.

 

[Telos101]

Does anyone know if Hotline Miami 2 was made with GMS2? If anything, the original shows what can be done with it.

 

[garirry]

Does anyone know if Hotline Miami 2 was made with GMS2? If anything, the original shows what can be done with it.

Hotline Miami was made in Game Maker 7 but then was remade in a completely different engine. HM2 was never made using Game Maker, and it was released years before Studio 2 even came out.

 

[R10k]

Glad this is finally getting a Mac release, we haven't seen one since GM7 god knows how long ago. I've tried GMS2 while it was in beta and it definitely was an improvement over the previous versions, but it's still a ridiculously inefficient engine. It's great for beginners, but if you're going to make something serious with it, it's going to be difficult.

Maybe you should tell that to the guys who made Crashlands. The Gamemaker website is filled with quality games made with it.

 

[garirry]

Maybe you should tell that to the guys who made Crashlands. The Gamemaker website is filled with quality games made with it.

What the heck are you talking about? I never said you couldn't make quality games on it. I said that it's a very inefficient engine and there's a lot of trouble you have to deal with if you want to make something beyond basic. I've worked with Game Maker for many years now, I know what it's about.

 

[R10k]

Fair enough if that's what you were saying!

So what have you made?

 

[D.T.]

That's a nicey but: Replace your Retro "GamerMaker Language" with Apple's Swift and I may look at it ;-)

Yeah, it's kind of a bummer they use a DSL. One thing that's made Unity so popular, is one of the language options being C#, so they were able to tap into a huge existing developer community (with lots of folks doing C# in the enterprise, and C# for personal Unity projects). Unity even dropped their own DSL (Boo), the same with Unreal, they scrapped UScript, and went all in with C++ (again, that makes huge sense, using a common GPL language).

@garirry I've worked in Unity on some major AR/VR projects (including some low level SDK work), but did knock around on my own in the 2D tools and whatnot, it looked pretty powerful, of course, I could leverage my existing C# knowledge, there were tons of free assets available. I'm kind of assuming Gamemaker being specific to 2D, and Unity focusing on 3D, the former is better for 2D type dev, but just wondering if you have any insight or expeience with both?

I have heard that Swift is intuitive to program in and would be a good fit for a tool like this.

Swift is terrific, especially coming from Obj-C, and I was easily able to make the change (though I've been doing this for a _long_ time, so picking up a new language is pretty trivial, usually it's the nuances of the domain specific APIs that are the time consuming part of the learning).

 

[Moonjumper]

Yeah, it's kind of a bummer they use a DSL. One thing that's made Unity so popular, is one of the language options being C#, so they were able to tap into a huge existing developer community (with lots of folks doing C# in the enterprise, and C# for personal Unity projects). Unity even dropped their own DSL (Boo), the same with Unreal, they scrapped UScript, and went all in with C++ (again, that makes huge sense, using a common GPL language).

@garirry I've worked in Unity on some major AR/VR projects (including some low level SDK work), but did knock around on my own in the 2D tools and whatnot, it looked pretty powerful, of course, I could leverage my existing C# knowledge, there were tons of free assets available. I'm kind of assuming Gamemaker being specific to 2D, and Unity focusing on 3D, the former is better for 2D type dev, but just wondering if you have any insight or expeience with both?




Swift is terrific, especially coming from Obj-C, and I was easily able to make the change (though I've been doing this for a _long_ time, so picking up a new language is pretty trivial, usually it's the nuances of the domain specific APIs that are the time consuming part of the learning).

Unity are also dropping Javascript (which isn't really Javascript), so C# will be the only Unity option soon.

I got the previous version of GameMaker in a Humble Bundle, but have never got around to using it. Part of the that is because I would have to learn both the editor and their language.

 

[D.T.]

Unity are also dropping Javascript (which isn't really Javascript), so C# will be the only Unity option soon.

I got the previous version of GameMaker in a Humble Bundle, but have never got around to using it. Part of the that is because I would have to learn both the editor and their language.

Yeah, I can't imagine many people using "Javascript" in Unity, there's some legacy stuff around, but most development moving forward is C#. On one of our projects, my partner did the initial code in JS, it was clunky to manage, cross language communication was a PITA, I wound up just taking a week and re-writing any JS modules in C# (with proper coding conventions vs. the mess of their Javascript-like language).

I dislike Javascript in general I mean, it's a necessary evil on [many] front ends - but semi-recently I converted an existing Nodejs application over to Python, just to get rid of the backend JS baggage (in addition to other perks, I dropped ike 25 dependencies )

I might grab the trial version of GameMaker, just to knock around with, kind of curious to check it out.

 

[PalidinoDH]

I remember messing with Game Maker back when I was 14 or so (10 years ago), it's nice to see they're still around. It's a shame it sounds like it's still specifically a DSL only.