ENIGMA for classroom?

[popcade]

Hi,

I'm a volunteer in my local library as a system op, sometimes I have to hold a weekend lecture to teach some simple computer knowledge, that including HTML, Office, Intranet etc.

I saw ENIGMA as I'm searching for game making tools and felt this is a very cool software, I want to know:

1. Is it OK to use it in the classroom?
2. Is it stable enough for basic usage, for 2D games?

This is a volunteer job and no actual rewards, requires no fee, so I want to find a suitable tool, is ENIGMA license allow such usage?

[time-killer-games]

1) Yes. Its free and open source, all software that are free and open source are allowed to be used in classrooms without needing any additional licensed.
2) Yes. It is 100% stable in the sense it has the capability to  create great games. Though it doesn't have all of GameMaker's features yet, it still is functional and bug less enough to pretty much anything a student in a classroom would want to do.

[forthevin]

2) In my opinion, ENIGMA is not quite there in regards to deployment, reliability and stability, especially for computer novices (which I get the impression your users are, given that you will introduce them to Office and the like). While we are slowly improving those issues*, I think it will be at least half a year or a year before ENIGMA gets to a level where its stability is acceptable for use by computer novices. That said, if the odd bug and the challenge of getting ENIGMA set up is not an issue, ENIGMA can definitely be used to create games with.

(*we are continually doing general improvements and bug fixes, and we are currently working on getting automated regression testing up and running, which should help quality and stability considerably over time).

[TheExDeus]

I personally think that ENIGMA is ready for game development (especially just intro level). I haven't seen that many development breaking bugs and the few features we are missing from Game Maker are easily replicated in some other way. ENIGMA also has many features GM doesn't, so I personally think that comparing the two is slowly getting impossible. I have used ENIGMA exclusively for my projects for about 2 years now and it works great. The only thing I still think needs to be added for deployment is the "Export" button and icon for exported games. Other than that it works great. The performance is great and there are no known limits on 2D game you could make (so you could make even more complex games like Diablo2 for example or Argonauts (even with the cool special FX)). And the best thing is that it is quite easy to learn and to get started. And when you are proficient enough, then even more complex games will be a lot easier to make, because ENIGMA (just like GM) is not about technical development, but feature development. When you know your game needs a feature X (like destructible terrain) you don't need to figure it out from pure language Y standpoint (like C++), but you can use about 5 methods which are very easy to make inside ENIGMA.

[Goombert]

1. Is it OK to use it in the classroom?

Yes our licensing even provides an exception for you to commercially sell your games made with the program. Although we have not quite yet finished with this exemption, so we have not finalized it yet. For more information...
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/License

2. Is it stable enough for basic usage, for 2D games?

I would say so for novices, we just have a few quarks like event inheritance not finished yet, but usually novices won't jump right into learning that. But we already have several games that work in ENIGMA...
http://enigma-dev.org/edc/games.php?action=list
A few tutorials on our Wiki as well...
http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Tutorials:Official
We have also made installation very easy in that you simply need to extract a zip folder and can launch the software, to uninstall you simply delete the folder that was extracted. It is portable enough to be taken around with you on a flash drive.

We can also assist you further if you have any trouble with installation or usage.

[popcade]

The setup is smooth, and most 2D example game works.

Just encounter some little issues that StepByStep3D example can't display correctly as I hear the sound SFX playing in a dark screen( my test system has a NVIDIA GT610).

[Goombert]

Which of one of those examples exactly was it that broke? There are several in there, and there might be a few that I did not get working exactly correctly. Also any graphical anomalies with Game Maker games in OpenGL is being resolved with our new DX graphics system.

[popcade]

I just tried Tutorials part and I can do some report (with my home PC):
Downloaded from http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1169.0

Windows 7 SP1 x64, CPUCeon  E3-1230-V2, 16GB RAM, Geforce GTX 650(recent installed and grabbed new driver), 1920*1080 Screen

Tested with default settings.

Tutorials\tut06_elevators_edi - can't compile
Tutorials\tut07_stairs_edi - can't compile
Tutorials\tut10_collisions_edi - compiles runs, after dead the window frame disappears
Tutorials\tut14_splitscreen_edi - compiles but very strange looking, nothing like splitscreen
Tutorials\tut20_sniperzoom_edi - compiles but the sniper overlay position are wrong
Tutorials\tut27_thirdperson_edi - compiles but crash when executing
Tutorials\tut28_shootingbullets_edi - can't compile

I'll try to report the ExamplesA/B part when I have time.

[popcade]

BTW, I think (StepByStep3D)it's for GM6, so maybe require  some modifications, but I'm new to ENIGMA, I don't know how to do.


I may make some Mario-like or 2D Shooting as material on class, in such aspect ENIGMA seems to be pretty OK.

I have a littel question left, is ENIGMA has UTF-8 support? I want some support for Chinese/Japanese(I can manually make text sprite like in GM7/8 but it's a heavy task), if you need UI translation, I can also help.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

And this is where forthevin's regression testing would come into play.

@forthevin
Would we be able to set up your regression testing suite to ensure a set of games (particularly, those tutorials) still compiles and runs each release?

[TheExDeus]

Sadly ENIGMA doesn't allow UTF-8. I think it did allow choosing charset so the 0-255 would be different, but no unicode or anything. I would love to have it though.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

The IDE supports unicode, and it can print unicode, but fonts, I believe, have to be ASCII. They might work with small unicode ranges, but the issue is, they're bitmap fonts, so every glyph you use must be included in the game.

[forthevin]

Josh: Yes, that is entirely possible, simply compiling, running and checking that they don't crash for a few seconds is currently supported (compilation error or crashing is detected and recorded as a test failure). However, it is somewhat bothersome to implement, given that each game file would have to be modified somewhat. Given that it would be nice to do this for many other game files as well, I think it would make sense to support compilation + running without any modification to the game files to be tested. Implementing that shouldn't be difficult, though I expect it to be a while before I come around to it.

[Goombert]

I have a littel question left, is ENIGMA has UTF-8 support?

Sorry for right now the only thing UTF-8 is the script and text editors in the LateralGM IDE.

[popcade]

UTF-8 font seems to be not in priority as I can just use bitmap as text.

I only have experience using BASIC lauguages, so I'm taking time learning ENIGMA's scripting language and interface, I think it's pretty enough for making a complete game.