Hi folks,

I'm using Game Maker 7 for the Game Design course. This is the first time I've ever used GM, and to be honest, I've found so many things that just seem wrong that I can't keep it to myself. Before I storm to yoyogames and/or Mark Overmars I'd like to hear your opinion. Here is what I found, in no particular order:

• When trying out code I just edited, I first have to close the code editor. No code editor I've ever seen requires this. This specifically happens when editing the script in a "Execute script" event action, since that editor opens as a modal box, blocking the entire Game Maker application until it is closed. This also means that if I want to look up something, say the argument order of a script I wrote a week ago, I have to close the editor and re-open it when I want to continue editing. Closing the editor means it forgets all undo-information, so you have to be really careful with this!
  
  
• Room-to-room transitions are specified by number instead of using meaningful constants. Isn't using meaningful constants one of the first things we learned in programming kinder garden?
  
  
• Rooms are identified by their index number. However, in the editor we only see their names. It doesn't seem to be possible to get the index of a room if you know its name, except by iterating them all.
  
  
• The "Instance creation code" of an object instance doesn't run in that instance's scope - "self" is not bound to anything.
  
  
• The manual doesn't make any difference between "function" and "function call". From the manual: "A function has the form of a function name, followed by zero or more arguments between brackets, separated by commas." - clearly describing a function call, not a function.
  
  
• When editing a room, the room's window title doesn't reflect which room you're editing - you have to go to the "Settings" tab to see that.
  
  
• When trying to concatenate a string with an object using the plus operator ("you're in room: " + room) I get an error that claims the object is incompatible with "string +", without telling me the type of the object. If I expected a string but got something else, I would like to know what type of variable I got.
  
  
• There are no break points, so properly debugging a script that runs when an event occurs is very hard to do.
  
  
• Every time I choose "debug game" I have to re-open the "messages" box. Why can't the program simply remember that I opened it, and show it again at the next invocation?
  
  
• Right-clicking on an instance in a room deletes it. Why not take the safe route and show the context menu with a right click? That's what all the other software out there does. Same goes for left-click - it would be much more usable if that were select/move instead.
  
  
• It is possible to create your own functions (using "Scripts"), but the arguments are always numbered argument0, argument1, etc. It isn't possible to use proper meaningful argument names unless the first step you take is to assign them yourself.
  
  

I'm amazed by the amount of clumsiness in this program, especially for a seventh edition. Even more so of a version that is called "professional"...

Cheers,
Sybren

whoa, I do not remember noticing any of the above, maybe because I started using gamemaker in the last 4 days of the project. But your claims seem to be legitimately annoying problems. I was planning to start developing a game in gamemaker, now I will pay more attention to it.

Overall last year I had though that gamemaker was a so so piece of software. I enjoyed the end result but do not have a negative or positive recollection of its user interface and coding handicaps. I do remember that I enjoyed the features and found most of the stuff (coding and ui representations and overall shape of things) intuitive though.

Good luck with the project.

Btw we should organize a game design event. Guys from DgDarc do have some ideas about it.

Another issue that made me tear out my hair yesterday: I used the code

Code:

target_instance.health -= 10

to damage a character. All of a sudden, all characters were damaged. It turned out that "health" is a global variable. I would have expected an error "target_instance has no variable 'health'" or something along those lines. Instead, Game Maker silently used the global variable "health" instead.

Here are some more issues...

• Game maker supports playing MP3 files. However, any form of volume management doesn't work. For example sound_fade(snd_music, 0, 2000) doesn't fade out over two seconds, it just sets the volume to 0 instantly. The manual does explain that sound_background_tempo() only works on Midi files, so the authors are aware that you can actually tell the user something about what is supported on which kind of file.
  
  
• If you place an object in a room at a spot where there already is another object, that other object is removed. However, when the game is running two objects can occupy the same space. Why can't we do that in the editor?
  
  
• Game Maker only works with indices. This means that if I pass an object index instead of an instance index, things won't work properly. However, Game Maker doesn't warn me that I use the wrong type of index. Come on, even using pointers in C is easier than this!
  
  
• Letting a "persistent" instance follow a path doesn't properly work in combination with switching rooms. When the room is switched and a new path is assigned to the instance, the path starts at (0, 0) - even when marked as absolute.