Game Creation Software for quick prototypes and portability

[PixelPiledriver]

Unity is really cool.
I use C# for coding and basically HLSL for shaders in it.
No time to further comment.
Maybe later.

[ErekT]

Construct 2 is very good for quick prototyping. There's really a lot in place to take care of the tedium behind game programming for you. Save system? Just use save state and slap a no-save behaviour on objects that don't need saving to keep filesize down. Asset importing? Super-simple too.

I looked around in Construct 2 and I can't see using it for anything other than quick mobile games. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for good scml implementation in other engines.

I'd say speed-wise it's a lot more feasible for desktop games than mobile stuff. The one big short-coming I've come across which seems to be a problem with html5 in general is you can't control screen resolution with it. The resolution is always whatever your desktop or device resolution is set to. Everything gets scaled to fit with that resolution which isn't always ideal. Another is the event system. You can do most things with it that you could do with regular script, but it's very pointy clicky. Also, not as modular as I like it.

[Atnas]

ErekT: I actually decided to go with Construct 2. After learning the hotkeys and memorizing the placement of things it's actually kind of faster than typing things all the way out for mundane stuff. Less syntax errors, anyhow. I'd prefer the ability to execute custom blocks of javascript in the event editor itself, but I'll settle for the plugin system.

The javascript plugin extensibility is really good. For the screen resolution problem: Couldn't you put it in a wrapper .exe for desktop use that has a different resolution set? That's not a huge concern of mine because most of my work is scalable anyway.

[yaomon17]

Another note, looks like they are working on official multiplayer support in C2
http://puu.sh/71ywI.png

[Lanarky]

At the moment, Game Maker Standard is free. Luckily I snatched a copy this time. I've bought it twice before and I lost them both to softwrap. But now that softwrap was killed, I can use my code on any number of computers I want, instead of losing (now $100) when my old computer died.

As of now, I'm trying to make some html5 with Phaser. It's simple to figure out, but it takes a little time to move from Game Maker 8, and newb level Python.