GameMaker: Studio is one of the best established game design packages for Windows, and there’s also a Studio 2 in development. With this program you can deploy games for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux (Ubuntu), HTML 5 and PlayStation Vita.
There’s a freeware version of the software, as well as a Studios Professional and Masters Collection. Studios Masters Collection enables users to export their games to all platforms, while the freeware is limited to just Windows.
GameMaker: Studio is developer software that incorporates an intuitive drag-drop-drop UI for game design. It also has its own GML scripting language that’s comparable to C, but provides greater flexibility when combined with the software‘s drag-and-drop UI. In addition, the software supports the Box2D and LiquidFun particle physics engines to add realistic motion with; and it also boasts integrated cross-platform shader support.
GameMaker incorporates a Debug Mode that launches a Debug Module when you run your game. With that you can inspect the finer details in games down to individual instances and variables.
The Debug Module includes watch windows that display source code, global variables, step properties, instance variables, buffer data, call stack events and more besides to give you a comprehensive overview on the game. Furthermore, users can add debug breakpoints (a stop point in the game code) within the Debug Module or from the Studio IDE with a hotkey. GameMaker’s comprehensive error reporting for scripts can also further assist developers discover bugs in their games.
So those are five developer toolkits with which you can design games for Windows, Mac, Linux and consoles. As all the design suites include debugger tools, you can track down and fix bugs in the games more quickly without any standalone debugger required.
If you’ve been heard of another software that you think it’s worth mentioning, tell us in the comments and we’ll check it out.
This post was written by Matthew Adams and was first posted to WindowsReport
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