I was wondering... Does anyone know anything about creating an app?

[AlienGalaxy]

I want to know more about this, as well as creating a game based android app. Expenses, as well as programs to use basically im a newb and curious :p

[Ellian]

Dunno about your expertise level, but Game maker is a pretty decent choice in my opinion for 2D game.

Base software is $99, Android module is $299;
They regularly do sales for up to -50%, too.

[Gil]

There's way cheaper options than that, a lot of free ones even. But going by your question, I don't think you even know what an "app" is.

As with everything, programs you use don't matter. It's what you do with them. There's at least 100 different programs to let you make android apps/games. There's several hundred programs that let you create the art, and another few hundred programs for writing the code. None of em are strictly better than others.

If you have 0 knowledge about this, Game Maker isn't too bad, but it's a LOT more expensive than just writing your own basic engine.

Android SDK lets you do this, make your art in any free graphics program, write your code in the Android SDK version of Eclipse. This option is completely free.

An even better free option: http://phonegap.com/
Free and when your game is finished, it works on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Ubuntu. With minimal work, it'll also work on Windows, Mac and all versions of Linux.

To make it as easy to develop as Game Maker, you'll need a separate engine to use, again there's a bunch of options.

So my opinion? PhoneGap + a game making tool beats the hell out of Game Maker for free.

[yaomon17]

I do know that apple dev fees are 100$ per year and you will need xcode run on a mac most likely. As for programs, Gil pretty much got it right. A quick search will bring up tons of programs. You can use your own discretion on that.
Also, I hear developing for Android is the big thing right now.

[Probo]

Id highly recommend Game Maker too, especially great for beginners like yourself. it has a drag-n-drop system so you dont have to learn coding if you dont want, but if you do learn some of the GM language as you go, youll unlock even more funcionality for your games. theres a great community for GM where people help each other a lot - http://gmc.yoyogames.com/

[PixelPiledriver]

Game Maker is def a good recommendation.
Not just for making phone apps.
But for starting your game development journey.

Try the free version.
Take your time.
Learn stuff.
Mess around.
See if it's for you.

Then if you like it, consider dropping money for extra features and modules.

[AlienGalaxy]

yes ty. it was just a backwards way of asking where to start. I have 0 experience for the record

[Gil]

Yeah, go with something like Game Maker then. The time required to learn how to program would be huge (months, years?) compared to how quickly you can get off the ground with GM (hours). There's similar tools too IIRC.

[PsylentKnight]

There's similar tools too IIRC.

Yea, there's Construct 2, Multimedia Fusion, Stencyl, Unity, and probably other ones I can't think of off the top of my head. However, GameMaker is the only I've used.