ENIGMA Development Environment

@Darkstar it appears you don't seem at all interested in my offer of android porting. Might I ask why? =P Either you want your games on android or you don't it's a little confusing.

There are 2 things I am looking to do, initially I want to focus on learning more skills and experiments.  It will be windows for now as I would really like to work on original/unique, big projects and those will be windows exclusive.  Later on when I am comfortable and more advanced, now that I have a good platform to work with   I would really like to eventually be able to release some apps and games to android.  All these are projects, I do not have anything ready yet to export to android.  Right now I am hoping to do some big stuff on the windows side, and the smaller games initially for android.

Yes I read your replies and was about to write a reply, and it's ok I don't have to check or ask YYG, I believe you, I do know you from the GMC forums remember seeing you there.  Thanks very much for your offer,and confirmation that you have a the green light for doing so (legalities and all), I appreciate that.   However, those are all projects.  For now I need lots of time, and am focusing on experimenting and getting more advanced with game making / GML etc, and will initially work on big projects for windows, (lots of resources, etc.) things that will be windows exclusive....Eventually in the future for the smaller games I would like to include some of those in the google play store or other (android markets).   I read your requirements and so you don't want blocky sprites and retro type games can't blame you for that, I think the same, however, people around me love those, I might make a few of those for friends and family    But as far as my projects I'd rather not do anything than make crappy games OR work on things with UNIQUE, original elements (original music scoring, weird twisted ideas, etc.)

I will keep your offer in mind,  I also have absolutely no problem giving you credit inside my projects regardless of which options I choose.)

I would trust that my source code and game resources not be shared or used as well

Structure programming are not my strong points, if you saw my source
you'd probably go nuts and certainly tell me there are faster, better ways
to compact code a little.  I want to learn all that stuff and get more advanced
before doing the more serious stuff.
I want to focus more on educational software in many areas rather than flashy graphics at first.....  See the thing is I am aiming for quality and not quantity.

Thanks.

On Windows, there is disk_free and disk_size. You can get the version of Windows from the registry under HKLM "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion".

However, OS / disk space seems like a silly thing to bother checking. The program would probably crash before it could run those checks if it was on an unsupported OS, and if the program is already downloaded than disk space is a moot point unless you plan to uncompress, create, or download more data.

Far from moot   Some commercial games PACK their game assets inside single files, either in full or compressed form.   In the future when I work on my big projects I intend to use this method and through functions I would create, extract these assets from the packs, I would use a cache area on the disk, as some big commercial games do to load assets, etc.

Point taken about OS, but checking RAM, free space left, sound, graphics, display and CPU would be important for some projects requiring it.

For very big games with lot of resources, I definitely will not load everything in memory, and I definitely will not the native files stored in plain view.  I would like them encrypted and packed into resource files.  Sure it would be even better if one could extract direct to memory but that's unsupported.

It means a number of things, it also means you could use HLSL and do special hardware accelerated effects, and also render the video to a 3D billboard or as the texture of an object.

Interesting. 

But I don't think threads are implemented to Windows yet, I think only Linux has script_thread right now.

Indeed, and I am a windows user

I've yet to see any game using the new features that warranted the massive price increase that weren't already in GM8.1. Take for instance vertex buffers, the only example I've seen is there official one, and there is one on the GMC 3D editable subforum showing how to draw basic shapes with it. In fact there hasn't been any significant example posted on that specific subforum for quite some time.

Interesting !  The massive price is more towards exports for those who need it.  Personally have no regrets for buying GM:S from GM8.1 (which I purchased too and barely used )  I did not like at all the way full screen was handled in GM8, and I remember when you changed game resolution it messed up people's desktops.  I don't see this problem in GM:S.......also they have a new audio engine, no regrets, in fact I remember there was a good deal / special for GM8.1 to GM:S, even got the HTML5 deal too.

The legitimately authenticated version, the pirated version is actually known to work better and have less bugs believe it or not

LOL.  That's inspiring   But I read long topics where Mike mentioned how they track cracked copies and they have some code that calls home (?) or exposes your compiled games made with a cracked version.  Regardless, maybe one day I might be tempted to use it just for fun just to play around and see what I am missing,   but I would never release stuff (free or otherwise) made with a cracked version, ever, whether it can be tracked or not.   I read on the GMC forum a topic (now locked) where someone exposes someone openly bragging and using it to release many games and even profiting from it.  That is really disgusting and I heard from other sources that it was alleged that some people made far more than the software worth ....  That's not me.   

Well I can provide examples, one was TKG's game, another was egofree's game, it wrote his shaders into his sprites folder and placed undefined objects all through his rooms everywhere he placed a tile, was pretty annoying to clean up. There is also the case of GMK 820, where they didn't version the format and instead of trying to fix it just completely dropped support causing me to follow suit.
http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1444

Well I intend as much as possible to build my future projects from scratch using ENIGMA through the LateralGM.  There are certain things I notice are present in the GM IDE that are not in LateralGM such as autocomplete / suggestion box that pops up when you type a GML command, and proper syntax checking.  I'm still not 100% fluent in GML, and far from the advanced stage so I have no problem running both program in parallel and using the official GM as reference /guide
until it all gets incrusted into my brain cells

Well that's up to you, I tend to be overly critical, and I am not here to tell you how to spend your money, I am only here to educate and inform. However, at least you have a place to go if you do end up with a corrupted project, which is here, where LateralGM and its contributors have a history of fixing broken games and aiding people in fixing them.

Don't worry about that, I am well aware of all the criticism regarding game maker and yoyogames.   You would not be the first or last.  Personally I have lots to say on those topics but less vocal than some.  I'm not as active as many in the GMC community, but I do read some topics, and am aware of the sometimes not so friendly people responding there, I try to stay far FAR away from these type of topics

Unfortunately I was banned from the GMC for insulting a moderator repeatedly over something completely unrelated to android porting.

Yes so they don't take criticism well, sometimes the forums there are full of such topics and they don't always get the proper responses from the staff. 
Personally I have never had any issues with anybody there, member or staff, nor did I have issues with the license.

This is another thing I'd like to point out as well, although you were not aware Darkstar2, you are not allowed to discuss competing projects on the GMC.

That is standard on most company forums.  I personally never discussed competing products on the GMC forum, I am very discrete when it comes to that. 
If you discuss any competing products you would probably be perceived as paid shills.  I did mention though about some standard function on competing products that are not found in GM.  I think they are tolerant to some extent,
don't think they will automatically ban you if you mention other software, providing you don't over do it or praise the competition too much 

They have a huge fan base anyway I don't think ENIGMA is a threat to them.
They still make good money! 

If ENIGMA became a 100% compatible equivalent to Master Collection,  with the same exports and more then I guess maybe they will make it a felony if you even mention competition or think about it

YYG's tries very hard to stiffle competition, including the removal of myself for criticizing them in an announcement once and many others from their forums. It is a violation of the global forum rules,

I think any  good, honest, serious company (serious about their product and the very people that put bread and butter on their table and reason for existing) should openly accept criticism, providing it is genuine and constructive.
If a company will ban a member who raises facts and makes constructive criticism based on problem(s) / fact(s), then that says a lot about a company.....not in a good way.

however we here at ENIGMA, do allow your freedom of speech and you are allowed to discuss competing projects however you like (I do it all the time) we just ask that you be polite and stay on topic and not for instance hijack people's topics as our other new user Johnny D did a few days ago and spam all over the place.

I am well aware of these problems on forums, many of those on the GMC, like I said, I stay away from those and try not to get involved although some of the more vocal people have points that I may share too

BTW, if I were to compare GM Studio and ENIGMA in terms of GML, how compatible would you say is your program in terms of % ?

BTW I really like how you can trim down your compiled EXE by checking only the required extension and API for the compile......Makes for far smaller EXEs.
I experimented a little with this and could bring some EXE as small as 350k +/-.

It would be good to have the LateralGM automatically determine which APIs
to check, based on the project, to avoid having to check anything, allow
manual or automatic would be nice.  Example if a project uses audio, the proper default setting would be selected and greyed out, so you cannot disable it as your project would NOT compile otherwise.   If a program uses video, then directshow would be checked and greyed out.....if you used physics, same......etc.

We're glad you're enjoying ENIGMA. While I do not know about ENIGMA's video playback support, I can answer your questions about Android.

There is no current supported ENIGMA Android port. There was a WIP one, but it's no longer being developed (the lead developer of it has abandoned the project). Although we'd like to have Android support, ENIGMA does not yet support OGL ES yet (but the devs are working hard on this!). Someone on this forum was offering to compile to Android from GM Studio for free. You can contact him if interested.

Hmmm ok thanks, but I am wondering of any legal implications by doing that.  Doesn't the program grant a one user license ? Also this means the person would have to have my source code and they would also have all my in game assets.  Since some of the projects I am working on are unique and have not been done with this type of tool I think I will pass on that. Guess I will have to wait for
android support !  /update:  I clicked on the link I recognized that user from the GMC community, nice offer he's making there   and his requirements are reasonable, but that post dates from august 2013, I don't know if his offer still stands, I will think about it, but for now I will just focus on my windows projects.

Some on the GMC community (in private) are telling me I should use a cracked version with all the exports, they use as arguments that if I will use it to publish free apps/games that nothing bad will happen.   In fact I became aware that some publishers in the play store allegedly use a cracked master collection.  (!)  I have
heard and read (coming directly from YoYoGames) that they can track if a compiled app was made with a legit version, then some other people said there are embedded signatures in the final compile, which can be decoded back to the license holder's serial........then some rumors about callbacks, etc.  So if a free app becomes too popular this can be trouble too.  I want to remain 100% legal in my projects since they are big and eventually looking for them to be used on a wider scale.

I would have gladly offered all my efforts and free time to contribute to this open source project myself but lack the
programming knowledge.  I think your project is exactly what many people are looking for.  Right now I am aiming to get better, experiment and make free apps.  Nothing would justify me paying $199 for the android export.

More so, even if I could pay the $199, there are functions I would require in my projects that are not available in studio.

Meanwhile I really hope the video playback functions will be supported, as many people are after this function from what I read on the forums.   Some have mentioned this in the GMC forums as well.