I've sampled my fair share of engines, builders, utilities, codes, scripts and what have

you in the constant attempts to create games.

I'll admit I've come up with more game ideas then I can actually complete. Full time job,

kids, and all the rest. However it is something I have always enjoyed, and likewise a good

percentage of active users have a general passion towards gaming and creating.

There are projects I have that I have planned that I have never mentioned as well. None I

plan to add to my rolling que of ideas. I tend to cycle through various projects over

time, when I have time to. Counting notes and sketches in notebooks and grid paper. Grid

paper is awesome. On a tangent, someone made a game using backgrounds drawn on grid paper

(didn't look like crap).

So with my background of numerous software, some mastered and some…sampled, GLbasic seems

to be the best game making software I've used yet. Aside from a higher price than GM, it

can pretty much do everything and more that GM can. As a bonus its compiles into several

OS's.

Win32 (all windows 32bit OSs)

MacOSX (kind of works)

Linux

WinCE (smartphones, pdas)

GP2x & Wiz

XBox Linux

Wii

iPhone

The coding language is similar to basic and supports C statements in the code. It has

builtin functions to handle graphics, animation, screen buffers, audio, and you can basicly

create your own object system with types. A big benefit of handling all this oneself is

that it negates a lot of excess that you find in GM. Although it takes some basic

knowledge of programing to get started.

Overall it can be pretty easy to work with and theres enough information and tutorials to

get started.

This however is not to try and discourage using GM, it still an amazing piece of work in

its own. But with more freedom provided by GLBasic(no softwrap), it makes GM more of a

prototyper in game creation. If you understand the principles of coding a game, conversion

is not too difficult.

Of course it does rest the handling of image memory, rendering and the likes. But if you

don't just drag drop games and make your own stuff, then you may already know some of the

basics.

In the end, if you check out the demo version and think you can make a transition to

coding, it can provide you with a lot more capabilities then GM.

And yoyogames sucks.

And Sandy goes to operas on company funds ;)