Talk:GameMaker

Current version

The latest version is 2.2.0 from October 2018. Also, the Nintendo switch export is available since 2.2.0. Perhaps since should be changed? HollandMill (talk) 07:37, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Added 2.2.0 to versions. HollandMill (talk) 07:16, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

GameMaker Studio 2 - Official Release

GameMaker Studio 2 was officially released on March 8th, 2017. Please update the article - mention the new version at least. Now I know you'll ask for "third party sources" or "reliable sources" but I don't understand why I would lie. If you want to confirm, use Google. But it's FAR WORSE to have an outdated page about a product and could be damaging to the publishers. So please have a look and update the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.129.183.145 (talk) 20:01, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

"History of updates" section added

It looks like the talk page here has been back and forth over time about how much information to include on prior versions, especially with the GameMaker/GameMaker: Studio distinction. I introduced a history of updates section after finding it was difficult to learn which version of GM was released when online (since I made some 2002 games, but forgot which version it was in), and gave all the major sources I found as well as my own imgur album documenting the old exes' "About" windows.

It's a little rough in dates and names for the older versions that weren't the final ones, as well as versions after 7.0 (the Overmars history of GM "Some Facts" blog disappeared after YoYo took over, and that held the best updates summary). In general though, it's mostly strong information brought over directly from Mark's words or the files themselves. I'm just not sure how to best cite one page for fifteen items in a table.

Additional help or cleanup on this section would be appreciated! BlinksTale (talk) 02:11, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Should be "presently Studio" not "Studio until 2017"

In English, "until 2017" implies that the condition (here, having the name Studio) ended. That is not accurate; the software is presently called Studio and will likely continue to be so called in the future. Therefore, this should be changed to "presently Studio." Yes, this will mean changing it if and when it ceases to be called Studio, but the current version needs to be changed every year---and still will be misleading.

The "controversies" section should be deleted

This was asked a long time ago on this talk page but not answered. First, no other game development tool has such a section, even though a number of them could because there are and have been users unhappy with changes in those pieces of software. Second, none of these controversies are currently relevant; they are not of public interest or notability and do not merit inclusion, except to the extent that any minor bruhaha between a software company and its users merit a separate section on Wikipedia. This is certainly improper content, and it seems vindictive. Why hasn't a mod deleted this section or justified not deleting it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.187.219.102 (talk) 01:17, 23 August 2015‎

I was going to highlight how relevant the logo controversy was to the current design of GM today, but it seems Lordtobi (✉) removed that without comment (so thank you Unsigned for using Talk first). I will try to resolve that first and then get back to you, but in short: controversies that have impacted what GameMaker is today are relevant still to its history seem to me like they should be kept, and be covered in the software's development history. The problem it seems then is whether it should be in a Controversy section (removing it is fine as long as relevant information is kept) and what standards we are using to decide what should be on the page. If anyone more familiar with Wiki's rules/standards can cite what we should or shouldn't keep, that would help here. BlinksTale (talk) 23:18, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

All of the sources were primary. The only standard that matters is whether the content can meet both of our policies on verifiability and neutral point of view, which both require reliable sources. You cannot meet the burden of WP:WEIGHT through the use of primary sources. The content should remain removed until such time as reliable, secondary sources covering the material have been identified and added to the article. --Izno (talk) 12:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Changelog

Hi Izno, thanks for your efforts to clean the GM:S page. While it looks much nicer now, that list of version releases was the only one that existed online, and I had made sure to cite it heavily in creating it. If you had moved it to a "List of GameMaker versions" page, I would not object - but currently that is just valuable information being lost. Did you put that information anywhere else, or did you just not think it was valuable? Wikipedia seemed the best place for it with the significant other lists of information for consoles, games, etc but it seems you disagree. Thank you, BlinksTale (talk) 22:16, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@BlinksTale: All of the content is primary, which means it is incorrectly weighted. There is also the issue that changelogs are not what Wikipedia is for. Just to preempt WP:OTHERSTUFF, I have no idea how the many long change histories we have for other software survive, but it probably has something to do with having reliable sources to back the content up.

If you believe the content is worth saving, there are a number of other wikis and websites for such documentation available. The content is still accessible in the page history in the event that you would like to take that content elsewhere. --Izno (talk) 22:39, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this. I exported it to a Google Sheet page linked into the main Wiki page. Would it be better if I created a blogpost or something instead of just using Google Sheets? I'm happy to put it on a GM Wiki if that's what you suggest, but I still feel it should at least be a link accessible from the main Wiki page for GM - even if it is not included in the body of the page. BlinksTale (talk) 05:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Everything is slightly out of date (and other proposals)

As of late, the content of the page had been gradually drifting out of sync, which slightly bothers me considering that the page never had much content of general interest aside of supported platforms.

• As of GameMaker Studio 2, software is available on Windows and Mac (source).
• As of GMS2, software is written in C++ and C# (source). That said, why is this not in the infobox?
• Drag and drop system was overhauled in GMS2, now looking somewhat like Scratch (examples) and covering majority of actions that can be performed with scripting language itself.
• Syntactic similarity of scripting language can be noted (A B) as well as general attributes (akin to Godot page, but with non-primary sources).
• Mention of YoYo Compiler was primary sourced but current mention of performance is from a book on much older version of software. That said, the only secondary source seems to be this adweek article. Perhaps a bit of a niche detail to write articles about.
• Links in Reverse Engineering section are questionable - they link to GameJolt, which at the time aggregated them from GameMakerBlog without any changes. As far as I can see, GameMakerBlog was the only source to report on this at all - significance is arguable, let alone worthwhile of an entire section as of today.
• DRM section is a copy of that from YoYo Games article and is somewhat out of sync with it. Could be a link in History section to avoid further trouble?
• ... speaking of which, there are more than enough secondary sources to write an actual small History section to cover when things happened with software without turning it into a changelog/in-depth chronology. Roughly,
  • Pre-YoYo Games - what there is now and mention that it was originally written in Pascal (source).
    Nothing else to source here unless someone published a book on software pre-2007.
    There's this wiki but it doesn't cite any.
  • Early YoYo Games (7.0..8.1) - extension system is introduced and a Mac version is released.
    Not clear whether there are surviving sources from this time.
  • GameMaker: HTML5 gets released (source).
  • GameMaker: Studio is released (can't find sources on actual release, only beta) with Windows, OSX, HTML5, Android, and iOS export targets, as well as a few new features like monetization and analytics (source). New platforms and features are gradually accumulated (secondary sources get easier to find from here). A free version is released at one point and gets written about a lot. DRM controversy mention.
  • GameMaker Studio 2 is released on Windows with a completely rewritten IDE (earlier source). Mac IDE is later released (source pending). Nintendo Switch export is unveiled.

If this seems good, I can assemble a proposed edit. YellowAfterlife (talk) 14:18, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

So I did that yesterday. I think overall a worthy result, the page is now fairly up to date and total number of citations doubled. Things I'm not satisfied with are:

• "Drag and Drop" section could use a bit more information on actual structure but articles and interviews I can find rarely go into much depth about it, and it doesn't look like anyone wrote any books about GameMaker Studio 2's DnD just yet.
• There are enough secondary sources to write a separate page on GameMaker Language (breaking down syntax and commonly cited advantages/disadvantages) but that's for some other time.
• Both "Instant Play" citations are archives of a primary source as I'm not able to find any secondary sources on it - despite the site having 120K uploaded games by the time of plugin's deprecation, there is not a single surviving mention of "sandbox" site nor it's plugin. I guess this is why you'd usually want to write about things while they are still around and not 7 years later.

YellowAfterlife (talk) 05:29, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

• Hey, thanks for your contributions! I must honestly say that I didn't see your two-month-old comments previously, else I had replied to it too. As you state, you still use some primary sources for various claims; while this is not 'wrong' or 'bad' in any way, it'd be nice if you were able to find replacement sources for these. The video games WikiProject specifically operates a Google Custom Search Engine for reliable sources (and one for situational sources too) that might help you with finding what you need.

Other fixes you might want to take into account is always putting references behind punctuation (commas, parentheses, etc.), and stating things that are in the past (such as the acquisition) as past events (using past-tense verbs). Let me know if you need anything else. Lordtobi (✉) 07:08, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Fixed references and tenses; Found a single non-primary source for "Instant Play" after all - in a 2008 (?) digital magazine. Not sure if there's anything else that can be replaced right now,

• As far as I can tell, Instant Play deprecation announcement didn't get any media (neither on CSEs or general google search), not even on blogs dedicated to this software specifically. Only the announcement date matters there though.
• Two official technical documentation links are probably fine for now, as current functionality differs from what is described in older media (so it wouldn't be right to cite that), and no one seems to have written a book/article about the current version of this functionality just yet (looking for variations of "gamemaker vertex buffer" yields nothing on CSE and forum topics from people being confused about how to use these on regular search).
• I left a reference to archive of original Playtech acquisition announcement to sit after a secondary source as complete wording can be of interest (although the book does cite that link later so maybe it'd be fine either way)
• The 2004 archive link probably doesn't have any secondary sources unless detailed chronology was mentioned in some interview (but I'm not seeing anything). Not much to make of it anyway, just the version number, release date, and the feature list.

YellowAfterlife (talk) 18:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

References

Semi-protected edit request on 18 November 2018

Please change the Initial release from 18 years ago to 19 years ago. 2 days ago was GameMaker's 19th birthday.

Thanks Wolfepedia (talk) 03:25, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

 Already done It's calculated automatically any time the page cache is purged (which happens when someone changes the page, or explicitly requests it). See WP:PURGE for more info. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 04:06, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

GameMaker Language may require some sample code

On various Wikipedias, the programming/scripting language GameMaker Language has received its own page. Should some examples of GML be included on this page as well? Or maybe on a separate page? As shown here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight#Supported_languages, there is no syntax highlighting for GML available yet, so someone with expertise might want to add this as well. HollandMill (talk) 09:03, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• GameMaker Studio 2 splash screen.png

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:51, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Earliest Game

There's a section in the side bar that says "Earliest Game" with "Clean Asia (2007)" listed. This is inaccurate. Clean Asia is neither the earliest game made in GameMaker or GameMaker Studio. In fact, many of the developers of the "Major Games" had games made in GameMaker from earlier than 2007 (eg: David Galindo who created the Cook, Serve, Delicious series has been developing games in GM since 1999). If no definitive listing can be found we should remove this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.103.233.109 (talk) 20:06, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 15 April 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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GameMaker Studio → GameMaker – "GameMaker Studio 2" and "GameMaker: Studio" are the two latest incarnations of this series of engines, but the article covers the entire series (that is just called "GameMaker"), wherefore the article should be moved to the more generic title. IceWelder [✉] 12:55, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:02, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

• @IceWelder: Pages GameMaker Studio and GameMaker both exist and both had substantial text. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:04, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

  Anthony Appleyard, thanks for the heads up. I did this request rather hastily and forgot to check whether "GamerMaker" already existed. Granted, I didn't expect there to be a different product of the exact same name either. Taking a quick glancen the software currently listed under "GameMaker" is discontinued and WP:SIGCOV is not satisfied (one primary source, one unreliable source, and one auto-generated overview page). I will be looking at an AfD nomination later, but for now, we should make this article the primary topic (as is it better known, actually notable, still active, and longer running), giving the other "GameMaker" for Macs a different disambiguator. Does this sound suitable? If this move is completed, I will also be available to fix all incoming links. IceWelder [✉] 20:38, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Digital rights management" section

While fixing up missing/butchered words and a date in the reintroduced DRM section and checking sources, I noticed something peculiar - although it might seem like there are 5 sources listed, the entire section is effectively sourced to a two-page forum thread:

• TechDirt quoted Game Maker Blog.
• Game Maker Blog quoted the forum thread while adding dramatic writing ("reports of the issue have become more widespread"), which contributes to why it had been all but eliminated as a cited source for this article over years.
• Escapist Magazine also quoted Game Maker Blog.
• GamePolitics quoted TechDirt.
• BitGamer didn't quote anything.
• Develop Online quoted the same forum thread and a small post (note: have to disable JS), which quotes nothing.

So, considering that all of this happened 8 years ago and was based on a dozen user reports total, I think it's safe to say that it no longer holds enough significance to have an entire section dedicated to it. I'll merge this into History section while keeping the Develop Online citation, but it might be worth investigating whether this should be here at all. --YellowAfterlife (talk) 12:05, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

References

Add "not to be confused with RPG maker"?

because I got confused Likeanechointheforest (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

No, per WP:NAMB. Assuming a reader would look for "RPG Maker" on Wikipedia, there is no way they would end up here. IceWelder [✉] 22:15, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 July 2022

I want to change some of the dates 2409:4066:8C:3DE9:0:0:159C:30A0 (talk) 09:58, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. 💜  melecie  talk - 10:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Logo GameMaker 2022.png

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 11:37, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Made some big changes - looking for feedback!

Hello! Not edited articles before so wanted to go about it pretty carefully - I've made a few big changes to the article as it was missing a lot of important history entries and context, and I feel it focused a lot too much on how the engine was, rather than how it is now - particularly the article's big focus on Drag-n-Drop and limited mention of use as a game engine for larger titles beyond as a teaching tool for new programmers; of which the current article state seems to emphasise.

I've reworded some sections, cleaned up the platform list (as it included mention of some now-deprecated ones as supported), moved some "planned" mentions to current (as they are now included in the engine stable), and removed the "Reception" heading as it referred to reviews for GameMaker: Studio, which is an obsolete engine version, and didn't seem overly relevant anymore.

You can find my working copy here if anyone's happy to give it a read and give feedback on it, as I'd like to copy it over to the current article after gathering some more publicly-accessible sources (as a few of the things that I've added is information from the developers on the engine's "semi-official" Discord server).

If I get the time I might also add some information about the different engine branches and development cycle - being a bimonthly Stable release and weekly Betas, and a biyearly LTS, along with potentially some language syntax examples for GML, as it doesn't have its own page, and to clarify the transition to the 2.3 engine version as it marked some large syntax changes; along with possibly adding some more information about the new GMRT (GameMaker Runtime, creatively).

I might also go ahead and include info about the Ubuntu/Linux IDE beta that's been around for a while now - the page doesn't mention that either.

Oh, and lastly the History section is getting a bit out of hand - it makes sense to divide it up into engine release versions as eras I think.

Orcaaaaa (talk) 04:35, 1 April 2024 (UTC)