Gamemaker

What is gamemaker?

Gamemaker, originally named Animo, is a trademarked game creation system created by Mark Overmars and published by YoYo Games, a software and game publishing company based in Scotland. It is written in the Delphi programming language and functions as both a game engine and an IDE, otherwise known as an Interactive Development Environment. This engine was designed for those with little to no programming experience or skill to be able to effectively create games without be limited due to their lack in programming abilities. This is due to the fact that Game Maker centers itself on a drag-and-drop system that allows developers to literally drag and drop what they need in order to complete their games. The interesting about gamemaker is that it also includes a sandbox scripting language known as game maker language that can be utilized to make more advanced games that could not be created using just the drag and drop features.

Development history

While gamemarker is a popular engine when it was originally released in 1999 it was a program for creating 2D animations. It was later renamed gamemaker and originally did not have DirectX support, a separate runner to run games independently from the IDE, syntax highlighting, nor the ability to compile games into executable files

What can it do?

As it Gamemaker has greatly evolved from its original 2d animation purpose it slowly added more and more attractive features that have drawn in developers. First of all, like unity, Gamemaker includes a feature compiler that can compile a developed game into any number of executable files for numerous playforms including windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Android, IOs and HTML 5. It also as the capability to render in both 2D and 3d and uses either Direct3D for windows and OpenGL for Mac. Furthermore, it also features interface plugins or ‘extensions’ which can give Gamemaker more functionality. 

The Development experience

Gamemaker makes it easy to bring a game from a concept from a concept to a deliverable with its interactive IDE with all the resources conveniently located in one place. The engine also feature a shader support network, uses box2D physics, openAl for audio, and features networking support. Finally it features one of the most important tools for developers who are constantly going through iteration after iteration of their game, version control.

Controversy

Gamemaker has undergone a few controversies over the years that have affected its reputation in the industry:

Reverse Engineering

 

• ·         Multiple decompiles for various versions of the software have been written 
•  Used to obtain editable files to produce executables 
•  One allowed users to publish apps to IOS without the company’s consent 
•  Resulted in a law suit

Logo Controversy

 

• ·         YoYo Games hosted a competition for a new logo in 2009, the winner was Albert Zak 
•  The decision was highly criticized for the product’s userbase 
•  Became an internet meme

Digital Rights Management

• ·         In a version released in early 2013 some developers would import their games and found all of the legitimate image type resources to be destroyed 
•  There would be a symbol of a pirate on top of the image 
•  This was a result of a fault in their digital management software implementation which was used as their method for combating pirated copies of Gamemaker 
•  It took a few weeks to address and fix this issue

2013 April Fools’ Day Joke

• ·         On March 30^th in 2013, Mike Daily, someone, announced that YoYo Games was being purchased by Valve 
•  The joke drew so much criticism from the community and led to widespread arguments within the community 
•  It resulted in a huge loss in the user base of Gamemaker

Hacking Scandals

• ·         On March 18^th in 2013, the Gamemaker community forum was hacked unknowingly for an unknown period of time 
•  The hacker stole countless member’s accounts and password information 
•  The same hacker hacked GMC again in an attack involving their twitter feed and IRC chat link at a later date

Gamemaker Vs Unity

While gamemaker was released long before unity they pretty do the same thing; each have their own interactive IDE, their own scripting languages, and support for multiple platforms and graphics APIs. Unity however implemented many features before gamemaker and fully supports 3D which is much more attractive to developers. Currently both programs have all the same features and while game maker is cheaper to license at $800 as opposed to Unity Pro at $1500, it is only available on windows unlike unity that is available for both windows and mac.

Unreal Engine

So in my last thrilling blog I discussed a game engine called Unity ( for anyone who didn't read it or was just too lazy or didn't care you can find it right here) which is (at least in my opinion) one of the easiest and most user friendly engines to use. So I decided to discuss another engine for this blog, that engine is the Unreal Engine.

Source: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/13/132775/2231753-image_unreal_engine_4_19497_2539_0022.jpg

What is The Unreal Engine?

Developed by Epic Games in 1998 for the first-person game Unreal, The Unreal Engine is a game engine that is a powerhouse in the gaming industry. The engine while initially developed for first-person shooters has been successfully used in other genres, from stealth, MMORPGs and other RPGs. Since the Unreal Engine is written the C++ coding language it features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers in today's industry.

The engine provides an editor interface for building game worlds and placing characters, a content browser for organizing and importing assets and a system for visual scripting called "Blueprints". It is available as a complete program and as uncompiled source code. This allows developers to easily do modifications of core features as well as allows for custom programming.

Source: http://www.itsartmag.com/features/UnrealEngine4-featdemo/1.jpg

Supported Platforms

 

• Windows PC
• Mac
• IOS (iPhone/iPad)
• Android
• Xbox One
• PlayStation 4

Versions

 

Currently there are four iterations of the Unreal Engine, each with there own licenses. 

Version 1

 

The 1st iteration of the Unreal Engine, which made its debut in 1998's first-person shooter, Unreal, with its modular engine architecture and the inclusion of a scripting language became one of the most popular engine in the market.  The engine integrated rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networking, scripting, and file system management as well as provided an advanced software rasterizer and a hardware-accelerated rendering path using the Glide API.

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Unreal-GlideVoodoo1flyby.jpg

Version 2

With the release of America's Army in 2002 came the second version of the Unreal Engine, which saw the core code and rendering engine completely re-written. In addition, the engine's physics system was powered by the ragdoll physics which was found in Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Championship. Along with upgrades to other aspects of the engine, Unreal Engine 2 now added support for the Game Cube and the Xbox.

There was the 2.5 version update to the engine which improved rendering performance and includes a vehicle physics, a particle editor and a 64-bit support systems.

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Killing_Floor_Biohazard1.jpg

Version 3

In 2004  Epic Games release its 3rd iteration of their Unreal Game engine which broke away from Unreal Engine 2's fixed-function pipeline with the introduction of fully programmable shader hardware. The next version brought changes to it's rendering engine by providing support for a gamma-correct high-dynamic range renderer. Unlike its previous iteration, the Unreal Engine 3 expected that all content was in both high- and low-resolution and baked normal maps for run-time as well as using OpenGL for  multiple platform support. The new renderer supported advanced techniques such as HDRR, per-pixel lighting and dynamic shadows as well as updating many of the tools found in previous versions. The Unreal Engine 3 had some of the most significant updates to the engine to date, some updates including global illumination capabilities, soft body dynamics and large crowd simulation among others.

Due to the Unreal Engine 3's restriction on publishing and selling games to the engine's licenses, Epic Games released a free version of UE3's Software Development Kit to the general public. Game developers were able to sell their games by paying an initial fee of $99 and 25% royalty on revenue above $50,000.

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/The_Ball_-_Screenshot_08.jpg

Version 4

The 4th and current iteration of the Unreal engine began development in 2008, and planned to feature real-time global illumination using voxel cone tracing which would eliminate pre-computed lighting. However in the 2012 release, that feature was replaced with a similar but less computationally-expensive algorithm because of performance concerns on the next-gen consoles. UE4 also included new developer features that reduced iteration time and allows programmers to update C++ code while the engine is running.  In addition, UE4 introduced a successor to UE3's kismet, called Blueprint, which is a visual scripting system that allows for rapid development  of game logic without the use of coding.

Along with the 4th version of the Unreal Engine Epic Games launched the Unreal Engine Market place that allowed the engine's subscribers to buy and sell community-created content. In addition, they released a variety of asset packs including full-scale environments, props, characters, sounds, materials, animated meshes, prefab C++ code and a number other asset types as free demos and tutorials on the new marketplace. Furthermore, Epic Games  released the Unreal Engine 4 for free to schools and universities for students in accredited video game development, computer science, art, architecture, simulation and visualization programs.

Source: http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/unrealengine4-820x420.jpg

For More Information on the Unreal Engine:

• What is Unreal Engine 4
• Unreal Engine 4
• UDK
• List of Unreal Engine Games
• Unreal Engine 1
• Unreal Engine 2
• Unreal Engine 3
• Unreal Engine 4