Better compatibility with GMS is my vote.
Agreed. Complete rewrite would be time consuming. What needs complete rewrite is Game Mker itself
In all fairness to YYG, when they acquired the project, they worked with what they had which was less than optimal........Rewriting the program was out of the question at the time, but later instead of focusing on what people actually wanted, they lost time and resources and paint themselves n a corner.
Again in all fairness, GM:S still has gone a long way and so much thing are better now, but so many things are not still, so any serious windows developer who has talent everywhere else but coding and wants to do good games, don't have the time or patience to learn C++ or other language, are getting obstacles........ Good moves over the years from YYG but they lately they keep taking 2 steps forward, 4 steps backwards.
If ENIGMA could focus on becoming as compatible as can be with GM:S, blending in obsoleted windows function and adding UNIQUE features as to not completely copy the other side, would be even better.
I think YYG does not give a two shits about windows anymore.
Right now they are set on mobile...... So I reckon that if ENIGMA starts to offer multiple exports option, this is when it will awake the beast in YYG and they might have grounds to sue.......
Who knows,
their biggest revenue earner is mobile developers, they are banking on clueless (in my opinion) devs who dish out $800 for software to make their wee games and sell their have finished crap on the app stores.
SO.....I see a great opportunity for ENIGMA to focus mostly on windows for now, where it would certainly compete strongly against YYG, then later on add export options. I think the other export
options should be last priority.
But what am I to know right, paid shill of YYG ?
So those of you who thought so, are now proven wrong and we can move on.
Enigma and LGM shouldn't be rewritten as of now that is a waste of time, LGM may be written in java but that doesn't matter GMStudio's IDE is written in Delphi which is just as slow but no one really cares
Actually people should. It's not the language that's the problem but how poorly it is coded. The IDE does matter. Have you tried working on very large / complex projects, importing large resources ? See what happens.......Their weakest point is the bloody IDE which is an unstable pile of dung if you are working with large projects / large assets. Since majority of their members there make retro games, rip off mario ports and catch the clown games or tiny games, they won't notice the big flaws of the IDE. Now that's not all, they are working on a rewrite of their IDE (uh, really ? Sort of) and it's headed to being another big mistake, won't be any faster for sure and still will have problems, new ones.
NOW this is where ENIGMA would shine again......Allow adding new functions to allow all unused assets (sounds, graphics, etc.) to be stored in a large resource files or files, and using a script dynamically load them as needed.....Oh wait, doesn't GM:S already do that ? LOL yeah, poorly !
because what really matters for the most part is fast games, because games need to be fast and not lag to sell well,
Content is equally important. It's no use trying to make a fast and lag free catch the clown game either
There are many PC games that would fit the description of laggy, buggy, highly mediocre, and they still sell for some reason.
There is more to a game than eye candy, and it seems a lot of devs are focusing on that lately and not actual gameplay ! That is sad.
But you have a good point. Fast games that don't lag. But you also need a good, solid and stable IDE that does not crash and fuck up your large projects and can handle large assets/large projects. or if they can't handle the shite then simply set hard limits and warn the user that they can't import GIF files more than X megs.
whereas IDE's typically don't use up that many resources so unless you have a project the size of China there's no room for any cause of lagging. The compiler shouldn't be rewritten either. Bugs should be fixed with what we currently have.
When I fucking pay money for a software, unless it is specifically written in the manual that I cannot use the software to make large games, I expect it to do what it was intended for. If I wanted to make large games I would expect it to handle the resources. If the IDE cannot handle it, fine......allow functions to use external resources ***PROPERLY***. There should be no excuses for an IDE not to handle large projects. It would be CRAZY for a game developer to load everything in memory, particularly with a program like GM:S...resources are uncompressed in memory right ? So it's logical that for a bigger game, one would want to load all those MP3/sprites/graphics, cut scenes, rooms, etc, as needed, like any commercial games.
Somehow this was possible with GM8.1, but they totally fucked that up in GM:S.
Priority List Summary:
1 - Bug fixes and complete GMX reader/writer
2 - new platforms
3 - New features that ENIGMA doesn't have yet (whether they are from GMS or not)
4 - New IDE
In my opinion I would put new platforms at #3 or even #4.
Build a strong foundation first, then add the extras.
But don't replace the compiler with LLVM this would be a turn off and people might not be as likely to try ENIGMA because this project will only get noticed if it has anything that GMS doesn't have, because no matter what GMS will always have things Enigma won't, we need at least something to show our engine is worth using for more so than studio for whatever reason that may be. This could be one of those reasons.
Agreed 100% Make ENIGMA compatible as much as possible,
but also make ENIGMA unique in many ways, new features,
etc.
When you say no matter what GM:S will always have things ENIGMA won't........
like what ? a hefty price tag ? Myriad of never-ending bugs and issues (oh wait......
never mind!) I think the number complaint over the years is performance ! and obsoleted windows stuff.