OK, I asked a question about a game developing product called Game Maker 7.0.
Um Yeah… that thread sunk like a stone.
Here’s a more open ended question…
Are there any dopers out there that develop video games? What tools do you use? What about them do you like or dislike? The only one I can really find seems to be a Microsoft product called XNA. Has anyone ever used XNA? What do you think of it?
The only one I’m really familiar with is Multimedia Fusion. It’s pretty easy to use and you can do a lot with it once you get the hang of the interface. There are a few things it has trouble with that might stand in the way of a professional look (and it’s limited to 2D sprite-based games), but it’s still quite versatile.
What sort of game are you trying to make and what do you intend to do with it when you’re done?
Various game-making packages can be fine if you’re just doing it for fun, but most professional games are written from scratch.
I have a couple computer game projects that I occasionally pursue in my free time. Nothing special or graphically intensive; I’m mainly going for the style seen in the classic RPGs for the Super Nintendo. They’re nowhere close to being done; it’s more of an interminable hobby thing for me. 
I’m coding them in C++, using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 as my IDE (formerly VS 2005, formerly VS6; I’ve been working on them for a while, heh). I’m using a neat little cross-platform game programming library called Allegro, and I’m using Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine to provide a scripting language for my games. Allegro is great, and really not too hard to pick up for beginners. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to take a shot at writing their own game.
I’m not familiar with any game making tools, and while I’ve read a bit about XNA, I haven’t actually tried it yet.
Game Maker seems like a really good little package. I don’t really have anything constructive to say except the observation that attitudes toward software like Game Maker seem to have turned from disdain into tolerance - perhaps because of the rise in popularity of off-the-shelf game engines for more serious commercial games now - fewer games are being written from absolute scratch.
This is actually for a ‘homework’ assignment. Background: I had (have?) two electives left to finish my Masters degree in Information Systems. There was a study abroad program in Rio de Janeiro that gave credit for two classes. I’m thinkin’ HELL YEAH!!!
So I went to Rio for three weeks and studied at several of the universities in Brazil. There’s a lot of video game / computer graphics research going on over there.
Anyway, I’ve already developed a game using Game Maker. The only thing I have left is to turn in a paper comparing game maker to some other game dev software. The prof. mentioned a game dev library for Microsoft. I wanted to look around and see if there was anything else worth writing about; under the assumption that everyone in the class will be writing about the MS gaming library.
So, to answer your question: I don’t really care what kind of game, but the easiest things to find and actually write about seem to be flash based games, simple things like that. Like you said, the advanced games are all written from scratch, with proprietary game engines and graphics rendering code .
This might be a good subject for my paper. Thanks. I’ll finish reading through the website, and get back to you if I have any questions.
This website is a little more terse. I’ll check it out, thanks.
Depending on what sort of game you want to make, people seem to churn out very nice games using Flash. There are tutorials online like this one
I’ve made a few games using SFML
really all it does is simplify the process of dealing with OpenGL. It’s a pretty neat library though.
There are actually one game development API - Direct3D. On top of it, you have XNA, which works with .NET and is in a managed memory environment, making it hell lots easier (http://creators.xna.com). The other is Dark GDK, which is third party (http://www.thegamecreators.com) but is released for free with Visual Studio Express 2008 (which is free).
I beg to differ - most commerical games are now written with licensed engines, especially 3D games, as writing a good 3D engine from ground up takes a lot of effort and development dollars. The famous, expensive game engines are Unreal, Doom 3, LithTech, GameByro (Oblivion and Civilization 4) and score of other “in-the-middle-range” for developers to choose from.
In the past, development studios did write their game engine from ground up - but over the years and they add production tools to it. EA supposedly have their own engine which they share with all their development teams. Some studios still do (Flagship, for example) but it takes over a couple of years.
Yes. My “from scratch” comment was poorly worded. What I meant was that professional games are written as pieces of software, not built with off-the-shelf drag-and-drop packages like Game Maker. However, CrazyChop is absolutely right that many games are built on top of middleware game engines.
I thought most of the game engines out there were very proprietary. So do (for example) people like the owners of of quake license their engine to 3rd party game makers?
Yes, constantly. The “Quake II engine” is actually officially known as idTech 3 and was very popular. The current king is the Unreal Engine 3 from Epic. A lot of 3rd party games are done using UE3.
They do, and it’s a very lucrative business model in the games industry for the following reasons:
Take for example, the C4 Engine Licensing Terms. It goes up to USD 20,000 if you are a major registered studio, but just USD 100+ if you are an independent studio.