ENIGMA Development Environment

It's been like that for previous versions too.
Tested under 1.2 same.  However, this happens with non assigned fonts.
Assigned fonts display ok.

However unassigned fonts under studio have more spacing between letters ! Do you notice also how the letters are also not properly vertically aligned.... in ENIGMA they are perfectly V aligned.  Again, these obviously visible issues are with unassigned fonts.

Try tweaking settings.ini
idecommand="java -jar -Xms256m -Xmx1000m"

256m is reserved on startup for LGM, and the max it can go is 1000m. I really don't see how you could have exceeded that.

lol - no way I came even close!

Here is the project it crashed on

1 sprite, 32x32 white square
1 object
few lines of code to bind x,y to mouse coordinates and play with image alpha
settings.
Must be something not clearing RAM or memory leak somewhere I don't know,
but it happens especially when running project from within LGM frequently.

it is already set at xms 256 xmx 1000,
so I set xms 1000.  will try.

Ok, interesting.  default text rendering in GMS is a complete pile of dung...blurry as fuck, too much spacing between letters, and wrong v positioning !  When setting fonts things are correctly displayed, I could not reproduce the anomaly I saw in ENIGMA with the | after the T as explained above.

Anyhow so far it seems OGL rendering of fonts produces best results.  Ran with your code above using different fonts and it looks great, it's all a matter of tweaking size and aliasing and it's perfect.  Spacing differences to me is a minor issue in a game, we are talking about 1 pixel offsets, probably most people won't even notice lol!

Oh, that's good to hear =)

Of course, keep closing and opening, and saving the thing all the time, is not that comfortable. But it's something everyone can deal and get used to. No problems on that =)

Luckily the program is small and it does not bloat, so it loads quickly.  There are also lots of ways to reproduce and cause a crash in LGM.  That might be a negative attribute that might discourage newcomers to ENIGMA and send them away (those who use LGM).

I think that with limited skill, experience and resources will be hard to call attention developing for a so competitive platform (Windows).

You just defined a large member base of a certain game making software I have in mind did not stop people from releasing their ...... alleged mediocrity.  Some people go for that and the proof's in the pudding.

GM also looks expensive, so I will probably have to move to something else, or getting into other people projects (what is hard, since I got nothing to show =/)

There is a free limited version, then move up to standard/pro, they often have specials, that's how I got upgraded many times.  GMS Master is expensive yes, but it targets a specific market, obviously people who publish and earn money.  GMS studio pro, again you have specials at times, right now 50% off, so it's a bargain.    Perhaps for someone who is starting and is intimidated by complicated interfaces and code would be better off with a program like GM.  Probably the easiest to learn compared to others who have a steep learning curve.  But there is a tradeoff for ease of use, and I won't go over that again

Mind you I have no regrets for buying GM, but there are certain things they have done to GM and directions they have taken it which I did not like and where their product no longer fits my requirements, although my software is paid for, so I would not have a problem going back to using GMS for a specific project that gives me trouble in ENIGMA or that cannot be done. 

Regarding complex 3D games maybe neither one program is suited for that.  Though I've seen some rather amazing things done with GM 3D, they probably are a pain to get done
and it's not going to beat a dedicated 3D engine for sure.

BTW, the problems are not limited only to porting.  As I mentioned, you may run into some bugs/issues even if you build from scratch, depending on what you are working on.  Once you do you can report the problems in the issues section or post them in tracker for one of the developers to look at.

One thing I strongly recommend, when working inside LateralGM make sure you often save your project, and save in different version numberings, this way you can go back if something goes wrong, but do save regularly.  LGM tends to sometimes decide to quit without warning or crash

as far as bugs/issues
I've reported many of them so far, many of which got fixed.  The major stuff might take more time pending devs time.

I think the project is very promising and love it, unfortunately don't have the skills required to contribute in its development and due to some circumstances won't be possible for me to do so.

As far as android, and other platforms, that would require more work,and currently there is no GLES support that is required for this export.  I think ENIGMA has potential where GMS lacks for windows development.  Many fanboys will disagree with me on this, but probably they have no problem being ripped off $300.

Anyhow.  I'm not at an expert GML level yet but getting there and learning as I go.  I went from D&D to using strictly GML now, and this started mostly when I started with ENIGMA. Same for the C++.
 

Thank you very much for the reply =)

There's just one question there's still not totally clear to me tough.

http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1952.0

Topics like that make me wonder how stable is the Enigma Engine right now.

I'm new, and topics like that confuses me. I don't know any Game Maker version.

Don't worry, we've all been there and wondered too.  I recall when joining reading similar ongoing conversations and the devs mentioning that enigma is not meant to compete with a finished software.  The thing is, ENIGMA starts many years ago and if you look at now in 2014 compared to years ago you can do lots more and run lots more.  However, ENIGMA was not created initially with GM Studio in mind and was never initially meant to be 100% studio compatible, at least that's from what I recall was said.

It's an open source, contributor driven project so it's always a work in progress, there are issues, bugs, etc, but many get fixed ....Is ENIGMA meant to replace GMS ?  In my opinion no, at least not yet, and I don't think the devs intend for it that way.  If you are satisfied with the GM version you are using and have all the features you need, your game is performing to your liking, performance wise, size wise, etc, then there is no reason to stop using GM.

If your game is CPU intensive and you do not own the GMS Master Collection and don't want to pay $299 for the YYC Compiler addon to GMS Pro, then ENIGMA is a great FREE alternative and you will see a big difference in performance depending of course on how complex is your game, CPU wise.   Based on some of my own tests with someone's YYC compiled game and source, I observed that ENIGMA compiles smaller files (better optimized since you can manually remove unused extensions / components), so file sizes can be significantly smaller in some cases, and performance faster in some cases too.  Certain bugs and issues can be worked around, otherwise you can report them here and the devs will fix them on their own free time.

Otherwise, if you have GameMaker Studio, no YYC, and your game runs fast enough to your needs / requirements, then again, no reason to stop using GMS.

For windows devs, there are some advantages to ENIGMA for particular projects requiring deprecated functions in GMS, such as if you are making games that use them including but not limited to video playback functions, external file access, registry, load/saving outside sandbox'ed game area, etc.  So this would allow for some more complex apps creation.  Some of these functions were removed by YYG due to them wanting to keep cross platform compatibility and did not see the need to adapt these features, and others for app store compliance.

There are pros and cons to both....... both complement each other well.  I guess it's up to you to experiment.

Here is why I personally use ENIGMA despite certain issues it may have.  Just because it has issues/bugs does not mean your specific project won't work.  It all depends.  You CAN make full games in ENIGMA, no doubt.  If you are looking for 100% core and IDE compatibility, then this is not the product.

Here are my main reasons for using ENIGMA:

* An ENGINE entirely based on C++ (ENIGMA)
(LateralGM (is a java app) which is the IDE, included in ENIGMA,
which also has the enigma plugin) is not 100% compatible with GMS, and I've noticed it is quite unstable particularly when working for a while on a project and frequently running / testing. 
* Ability to incorporate C++ in your projects
* A great way to start learning C++
* No runners !  Games are compiled. Smaller file sizes and faster games!
* Devs that listen and respect others even when facing harsh criticism.
* Functions unique to ENIGMA (EDL)
* Functions not present in GM (Deprecated)

is that Enigma in an alpha version, in a way that makes difficult to create a game? Or it is just lack some functions present in Game Maker?

It has most of the functions of GM and many more too, including those obsoleted ones in GMS. Most functions to make games are there, however, there have been fixes/changes over a period of time that might have broken some features, or some pending issues.  You will probably experience those more if you port your games.  My main use of ENIGMA is building from scratch and working around issues myself.  Many things that did not work were fixed since I joined here (lights, particles, physics, etc.etc.etc.)  I would not go as far as saying it's alpha......perhaps not even a beta...... Remember that GameMaker has always been work in progress and ridden in bugs and issues that kept piling up over the years, till this day even with Studio.  They really gotta fix their IDE.

In short, supposing that I would be creating a game for Windows, with no network, right now, would I be able to create a game without a problem? Or there are still bugs that prevent regular developers (a.k.a. someone who could learn and create games in Game Studio) to create games?

I have lots of plans with ENIGMA and for the past weeks been experimenting heavily with ENIGMA, and so far I am quite happy.  I have reported many bugs / issues, most of which have gotten fixed.  Some of the more complex ones require more time and the devs are currently lacking time, but they are always willing to improve this, and work on it when they get a chance.    You can only know if you experiment.  Perhaps you won't run into any problems, perhaps you will run into many, it depends what you want to do.  Most of the issues I encounter is with LGM's stability, certain functions not working, bugs, etc.
There are certain things diffrent.  in most cases there are workarounds.  Again, to me 100% GMS compatibility is not important.  If I were to run some of my latest experiments from ENIGMA to GMS they would not work at all.   When porting from a GMS project to ENIGMA in some cases you might have to manually tweak some stuff to get it to work, most of the time that is all needed, and you have a forum to ask if you need help.

I'm just starting with C++, and I have never used JAVA.

If at this point, Enigma is ready just for people who could improve the plataform while they develop their games, I'm really not ready to go for it. This can't be a first step.

Same here. 

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EDIT 2


The problems are for porting games or for creating games?

Both.  In some cases, some changes need to be made in order to have the game working.  Some games require no modification and will work out of the box.
It's hard to enumerate all the possibilities, but here are some examples:

* If you have used GMS' rotation and scaling feature in room editor. This feature is not implemented yet in LGM (IDE).
* If your GMS project uses physics (GMS' IDE allows WYSIWYG style collision shape editor and physics settings) - when porting you will see those settings in LGM IDE however they are not implemented yet and will have no effect in your ported game.  However ENIGMA does support B2D physics and so you will have to write your own code (not too hard if you read the docs and get familiar with it, practice makes perfect).
* If your GMS project uses motion path avoiding object functions D&D.  Those are not correctly implemented in ENIGMA.  The workaround is to use code.
* Some issues with views, if your monitor resolution is smaller than the view area of your game, you will notice things are not displayed/scaled right.  Again, this can be worked around with code and the use of display set size.

There are probably some others I did not list that I am not aware of, but so far in all cases there are workarounds, some might require coding knowledge (C++, GML, etc.).

Best thing to do is experiment. Trial / error.  That's what I've been doing with ENIGMA/LGM from day 1.