Always moving forward...

[Stwelin]

Alright, so 2d game development is just sort of a hobby of mine.  I haven't released much though, because i am a perfectionist (of sorts) and i feel a lot of my creations are amatuer...

Anyway, i'm a fairly adept GameMaker programmer, (at least, i have gotten away from using the drag&drop feature. ) and i want suggestions as to what to move onto.  GameMaker is great, but it lacks a lot of... well, power.  I want a language or tool that i can create games with in with more a professional atmosphere, but won't be hard to pick up (within a reasonable amount of time, that is, but i am a quick learner).

Alright guys/gals... suggestions?
-Stwelin.

[Soup]

The Game Factory products are pretty good. But you must pay for them.

[halu]

TGF is near crap.
If you really wanted to get into making them, I suggest trying C++, it may take a long time, but it'll be worth it once you've started to make games with it.

[Feron]

java - J2me version to be specific.  mobile phone game dev is where its at right now.

[erikl]

You should look at blitzmax (or any blitz* product). http://www.blitzmax.com.
With blitz* you have to write your game using standard functions and maybe other peoples libraries, so no d&d.

edit: Also, blitzmax have a demo version that works for 30 days and lack som functions. But still worth to try it!

[Ryumaru]

i second ferons comment.

[pixelblink]

on a whim, I googled mobile game dev and found this interesting article (though a couple of years old, still relevant)
http://www.gignews.com/careerfeatures/skills04part1.htm

[Stwelin]

to be honest, i don't think i could ever get into mobile phone game dev.  I have always disliked the fact that companies are turning mobile phones into mp3 players, gameboys, tazers, etc...

I'd rather leave my phone for... well, talking to people.  This is the reason i have a really old Nokia.  doesn't even have a backlit screen.

My personal preference would be to develop games for something that games area meant for (originally). Such as the GBA, DS, or even just the computer.  In fact, i'm not even sure i'd want to develop anything for a handheld system at all.  I like non-arcade, memory-utilizing, full-fledged, high-colourdepth, submersive games, and i don't feel that's even remotely possible on such a limited device. (also, i dislike java.)

I am leaning towards C++ at this point, as i have been meaning to learn it anyway.  I was mostly wondering if there was something i might have overlooked that would be more suited to my tastes/purpose.

[Frychiko]

If you want to make games LATER (meaning 2+ years down the track) then go ahead and learn c/c++
If you want to make games NOW then learn blitzmax, or pygame+python, multimedia fusion etc.

[Akzidenz]

You know, MMF never seems to die out. People were using it 6 years ago to make cool shit, people are still using it now. Might check that out.. I remember learning the basics awhile back, and it seemed simple enough.

[9_6]

What's wrong with gamemaker?
It's the most easy most powerful tool for 2d game development.
You can make ANY kind of 2d game with it. And it's the most easy to learn tool I've come across yet.

And if you have performance issues with it, the reason is in 75% of all cases your code, not the program.
It's faster than you may think if you use it efficiently.

[Xion]

I don't know anything about programming, but I've seen some pretty sweet games made with DarkBasic.

[MoD]

I suggest going with C++ if you're willing to go the extra length to learn the windows API and DirectX, but it's a big pain to try to get other graphics modes such as MCGA or even some of the popular libraries to work correctly with a specific compiler. I say stick with GM for game dev if you're not really limited by the speed issues of it, though, as C++ is just terrible for getting graphics working.

[Evil-Ville]

I am currently trying to learn freebasic, it seems pretty easy and there's many game programming libraries available for it. (Allegro for one)

http://www.freebasic.net/

[Soup]

TGF is near crap.

I don't know never used them, but there is also MMF2 and stuff.

[hidden killer]

if u really wanna get serious on game making, go for visual c++ and if u wanna go for mobile games, learn java

[zeid]

hidden killer = right

Game maker is good for working on amateur work, prototypes and such but it takes up a lot of the computers processing time, I like game maker as this isn't something that concerns the average user, but in a professional sense you wont get that far it is a good learning tool though. Java is good in some ways as it is relatively easy to learn but again it has problems. The advantage of Java is that it is used on mobile games and is easier then C and  C++, if you understand game maker code then you will pick up the basics fairly quickly. C++ however (specifically visual C++ as this one i know supports direct X SDK's etc.) is probably the best for game development it is used in all the higher quality games, it's not too hard to pick up once you understand Java. The main problems you will have with Java, C and C++ as far as working on games is that you have to make a big jump from game maker as you need to learn how to handle graphics and an engine more in depth.

[Evil-Ville]

hidden killer: Visual C++ is just an ide/compiler made by microsoft. As far as I know there's better free solutions too.