Re:Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era
by krapp on Monday October 14, 2019 @07:27AM
(#21247107)
Game Maker was my first approach at "serious" programming after messing around with javascript in the browser (not that I ever finished anything, mind you.)
But I would suggest Godot as an alternative for beginners now. Even though I don't like the proprietary scripting languages either uses by default, between GML and GDScript, the latter seems more powerful, and thus more educational. You can do "drag and drop and make a game for some defnition of a 'game'" in any of the modern game frameworks. But really, that only teaches you how to use the GUI, not how programming works.
Also Godot has a version that uses C#, and there are bindings for other languages out there (I don't know how complete or useful they are, though) whereas unless I'm wrong, with Game Maker you're stuck with GML.
But I would suggest Godot as an alternative for beginners now. Even though I don't like the proprietary scripting languages either uses by default, between GML and GDScript, the latter seems more powerful, and thus more educational. You can do "drag and drop and make a game for some defnition of a 'game'" in any of the modern game frameworks. But really, that only teaches you how to use the GUI, not how programming works.
Also Godot has a version that uses C#, and there are bindings for other languages out there (I don't know how complete or useful they are, though) whereas unless I'm wrong, with Game Maker you're stuck with GML.