First Impressions Of ENIGMA

[polygone]

I think the problem has become that ENIGMA is more a branch off Game Maker from 10 years ago at GM6. Now GM has been moving on in an increasingly different direction and functionality to those days and it's user base along with it (no matter if this direction has made the product worse or not). Technology is also ever increasingly shifting to mobile platforms which ENIGMA is yet to dwelve into.

Thus ENIGMA will become less and less appealing to a younger user base over time so as ENIGMA's existing dev base becomes older and more of them move on into other things (which is a natural progression) there will not be a sustainable amount of new devs coming here to fill in the void of these losses.

[time-killer-games]

^If the project becomes desperate enough that without my help itd be more likely die id love join in if that meant i wouldnt be the only new dev and if i could actually have assurance for "tomorrow" my efforts wouldnt be a total waste and itd die quickly regardless, thus why i havent actually contributed yet im waiting to see if it can get the slightest hint of a brighter future on its own by the existing or future devs for it before im willing to take a risk like that by getting my hands dirty. If anyone is willing to make a such risk i can tell you right now its not me.

[TheExDeus]

If you only contribute if something has a "bright future" then you are bandwagoning, not helping. The whole point of helping open source projects is to create this bright future. It's on the users as much as it is on the devs to do this. But the things is - nothing has changed, the devs that always worked on (and still work on) ENIGMA view this as a learning experience and hobby. We do support anyone who wants to come here, be a full-time developer just so the project can be more successful. Then they can even come up with ways to commercialize this (like create commercial games while at the same time developing ENIGMA). I'm using ENIGMA daily and nothing will change in this regard - I develop stuff I need for it, fix bugs I encounter and so on. For example, it's possible that in a few months ENIGMA's software will work on a commercial robotics platform.

[time-killer-games]

I never said you werent appreciate in fact i appreciate you the most right now harri as you are the only still working on it. but you cant do it by yourself no one can i wish robert and josh come back especially idk what happened to sorlok but he a great help like you too. Thank you for stayingwith us. I know other than rober they are prob just on a break or busy but still

Also you misread me. A bright future and a hint or at least visible chance of a future at all isnt the same thing and the later is what id like to see which isnt a high standard. The problem isnt the project or its current feature/stability state, as ive stated its the lack of attention its getting from developers due care and time restraints, and the lack of attention from the game devs themselves looking for tools like this, simply bc they cant find enigma due the word isnt getting out in the right places. Ive seen robert sharing on commercial game engine sites which is a big no-no look how many of his topics got locked on sites like that...

[Darkstar2]

I dont normally post long ass shit like this but pleass bear with me guys this is very fucking important!!

LOL and they said my posts were long you probably beat my record mate  but don't worry luckily my speed reading skills will come in handy.

@Josh, ISM, ExDeus, Robert, DS2 and all the contributors here - love how you guys have been working on this game engine and ide for several to many years and your acting like now more than ever this project is dead and a pile of shit just about the exact same time were getting these new members telling you the oposite.

Dead might be a big word, it's stagnant, maybe it's time to face reality A piece of shit, now that is a big word, I would disagree.  Unfortunately some of the last contributions to the project were excellent but broke many things in the process.  The problem with this project is that those that have made big contributions in the past managed to break a lot of things in the process, then they left and didn't continue, leaving new contributors picking up the pieces, I think this might  discourage some people to contribute.  Is ENIGMA shit ? Not quite, EGM is now broken, (the format) among other things, but if you know enough C++ you can fix them OR you can find work arounds.  Just the other day I used ENIGMA to make an app, I almost fucking punched a bloody hole in the wall !!! I think the biggest problem is with IDE and the enigma.jar stability, but I found some work around and managed to get my work done.  Though this type of thing might not be attractive to most people who want a polished, finished project, but little do they know all the flaws of GMS, but to be honest, GM has gone a long way and improved.  But despite the pain in the arsehole that represents ENIGMA at times, I still use it, because unfortunatly GMS does not allow me to plug my own C++ functions, whereas ENIGMA allows me to fully modify the source.  I have some interesting plans to add encryption/decryption/resource handling etc to my own projects and modifying some of the functions for my use, can you do that shit with GMS ? No, so ENIGMA has its use still, unfortunately I am not yet at an advanced level in order to contribute to ENIGMA as much as Robert and other, though if I could I would have changed quite a lot of things in ENIGMA......First thing I would have loved to tackle is the IDE, but I don't know fuck all about JAVA !

damnit!! You may think its a good idea to leave the GM compatibility, but face it most people who like this product is because of the GM project support. Even DS2 who tries to pretend otherwise, as he said he may or may not switch back to GMS, but if he did hed need to rewrite his projects from shit if it wasnt for the amazing level of compatibility it has now.

Ok, the reason I am working in ENIGMA is not because of GM compatibility, I could give a shit less about GM, the reason I came to ENIGMA initially was because of the major blow YYG gave us with their YYC and the near extortionate price tag   Also because YYG deprecated some windows functions, so I found at the time ENIGMA more attractive to windows because it was COMPILED and at the same time fully modifiable!  When I start a project inENIGMA you can be damn sure that none of them would be GM compatible because most of my enigma projects have EDL and C++, non of which is supported by GM.  I have no problem re-writing projects mate, if you saw the speed at which I type you'd understand lol. The reason I may go back to using GMS is all dependent on its future....if they brought back some of the deprecated commands, optimised their YYC shit compiler, reduced file sizes, allowed C++ into the projects and made significant modifications, yes I might use GMS, they have made lots of improvements to their IDE and stability is far greater.
In the end it all comes down to what can get the job done.   Of course I will keep using ENIGMA so long as I am able to do what I want with it...... I honestly don,t think YYG/PT is going to make that much changes - in fact they are moving more towards mobile/console dev and unification of their product, this will fuck windows users in the arse because we have paid a big price over this whole retarded unification rubbish !  So given I am open minded I will wait to see what Playtec has to offer.  Until now, my using ENIGMA has never been about money, it's been about being able to do stuff I could not do with GMS.... one thing, the IDE in GMS is far more rock solid and stable.  enigma.jar seems to crash very regularly, the longer you work in LGM and save projects, run, save, the more eventually you will get crashes.....I don't get that in GMS......so if one day I decide to fuck off and use GMS it will be 1) better stability 2) features I don't have in ENIGMA....... who knows, maybe GMS 2 will be the right version after all this motherfucking years wait, but maybe I should not get my hopes up yet until I see concrete.

Not ready to give up on ENIGMA yet.

But apparently some people already did ..... where is our friend Wolf, he claimed he was going to make a game engine by new year, he was fucking with us all along yeah ? I knew something was odd about his claims, as I have not heard from him, so I reckon that he realised that he needed 10 more years

mention the YYG wiki/helpdesk and help doc. Are you really saying if we became an independent product from GM wed magically get the motivation to do more work and be more a competitor to YYG any sooner? Im pretty sure for the reasons given, that would slow down our progress greatly for years to come and would ultimately kill the project. People like this shit for the GM compatibility no matter how much you as

You'd be surprised at how much people will forget about GM real quick if they have a product just as EASY to use, quick learning curve and same features.
People like ENIGMA because they are already familiar with GM.....but what if ENIGMA kept some of the "ease of use" but used its own functions, just as easy to use and remember, more powerful, more features, etc.......the same people who knob GM would quickly change their mind.  In the end nobody gives a shit - people just want a product that allows them to do things they want done, and fast.  Right now GM caters to the young segment of the population, what was their demo target 0 to 9 years old ? 
Now imagine ENIGMA was its own product, nothing to do with GM GML, but a product with a better IDE, where you could get things done faster, more efficient, have the same level of ease of use, flexibility x10 + allow advanced functionality, would you use it ? You'd be able to make better games, FASTER execution, smaller files......would you prefer BETTER or stick to GM compatibility and its flaws ?
Right now given YYG made the YYC included and improved their product quite a bit, and made a free version that is suitable for most of the kids using it anyway, little reason to want to port to ENIGMA, yet they will always have ENIGMA in case there is something that cannot be done in GM.

Right now there are so many features that are integrated in the IDE in GMS that are not working on LGm, like the physics, etc.  so those porting their  catch the  clown games, sure, but some advanced games that used some IDE specific functions in GMS will be disappointed as they will need to code this from scatch in EDL !

As far as documentation I agree.  We should have better documentation and more complete one, either integrated to the product or through a PDF or site like docs.yoyogames.com.

almost completely, AND somehow "do a better job than YYG" in addition? REALLY, now?? Youll magically find the strength to do it then with life getting in theway just as much i can garentee it, you wont be able to

I think the devs mentioned their intention with ENIGMA from start was never to compete or make a new product.  I think now is too late to talk about re-writing ENIGMA, even though that would be ideal ,at this pace would probably take a solid 2 to 3 years with full time contributors, that is not going to happen

and those like agent wolf who claim they can write an entire engine in 6 months - good luck with that, they are truly delusional at best 

so this leaves ENIGMA with tons of broken pieces that new contributors are inheriting - don't you see a dead end here ?  Lack contributors, lack of time is the big factor.  so by the time ENIGMA is re-written GMS will probably be in version 5 or 6.......either way ENIGMA will always be behind.....so do you still think it is a good idea to be GM compatible and be always behind ?
This is damned if you do damned if you don't scenario.
Because right now ENIGMA lacks contributors and those still around lack time, so this stalls EGM development, how the bloody hell would one expect a new re-write of ENIGMA if the current devs don't have TIME for continuing on ENIGMA.....so yeah it's a dead end ATM, but aside from a shit unstable plugin, ENIGMA is still functional enough to do stuff in it.

Also the reason why you saw a comment of mine that I would return to GMS I was not pretending, the reason I said this is due to your mate Jason C. video engine, I could use his video engine, it would be ideal for making interactive games etc, he wanted it to work in EGM and was willing to do so freely, but...he needed pointer overloading (?) or some shit like that that we currently don't support or something about device or whatever..... If I can find shit in the market place that allows me to extend GMS to be able to do what I want, you bet I will do so, but right now there are still certain things I can do in EGM that I can't in GM, integrate my own C++ functions and compile it with my app or game.

as though using the original data.win. also dont act like GMS cant do videos, it can and much better than enigma,

I never said otherwise, but you missed something.  GMS can't do video for shit, natively.....You need an extension !  Before the market place which is basically the guinea pigs doing all the dirty work YYG was too lazy to do themselves, there was not any video support.  The only when that existed was deprecated ages ago ,and even that one was rubbish at best.
As to lonewolf's video engine, you seem to have something against it, it's very clever, as the video blends into the game as an asset, and not just some overlay video player window - so you can make amazing stuff with it, blending sprites in the video etc, you could make MYST type games with his video engine, few people understand its value
and yes you,re right, it,s far better than ENIGMA's nobody argued that ! When I first started using ENIGMA, there was no market place and there was no video extension other than the shitty one from gm8

not with lonewolffs shitty windows only hogwash, thats asworthless in my book as what enigma has,

Really ? how ? ENIGMA is a BASIC directshow player.
have you seen all the features you can do with Lone's engine ?? scaling ? rotating ? Depth, using the video as an object ? blending game objects on top of the playing video. etc....now unless I was in a coma for 20 years and missed something, ENIGMA's video is basic video playback.  Lone's video is advanced video which blends video rendering with the game renderer
allowing seamless integration of video and game elements together.......Lone's extension is more than just a video"player"

Get this, GMS supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android for Video playback thanks to two well updated extensions on the marketplace. everything that GM made obsolete one way or another can be just as easily added back with extensions just as ENIGMA did by being open source. Thats exactly what nearly all my extensions are doing.

You got a good point there hence why I mentioned I might consider using GMS again, however where I disagree with you is Lone's video engine being rubbish, he might be supporting windows only, but it has amazing functionality that the other video plugins don't ,as the other extensions are basic video players/streamers..... Lone's is video extension on steroids lol, I'm not sure he would be able to support other platforms with those advanced features.

Besides I'm a windows user and intend to use Windows for a very long future ahead, so I have no plans to develop for Mac or other platforms.  Wait for GMS2, you will be happy, it will allegedly run natively on Linux and other platforms, at that time I might also port my stuff to Windows / Linux as well.
As far as Android, there is no fucking way I am paying $199.99 for an export that got bumped $100. So compiling to android is off the table for now,.  Right now my focus will be on windows and maybe soon Linux.

@DS2 and lonewol-double-"f"-for-double-the-fuck -

LMFAO ! wow ok so I see there is still some tension between you two.......I thought you kissed and made up already ?!

(double the fuck) lol! thanks for the laugh mate, there is no better time than now for me to need it.....

Windows, Mac, and Linux (FFMPEG based, cant beat that!) (one crossplatform extension, an extension done right)
https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/1524/cttvideoplayer

Nice extension, but did you notice something TKG ?
FFMPEG is actually used by YYG themselves !!!!  Why the bloody hell didn't YYG offer us the video playback functionality when they COULD have considering it is a basic function in other products.......they clearly wanted other people to do their dirty work so they could profit from it.  Again, this is a basic video player, it does have some advantage, true, supports multiple video formats, is not codec dependent however it is bigger and carries some restrictions.  You can do the same in lone's extension, only it supports AVI (AVI is a container, you can use the same codec only it would be dependent on whether you have it in your system, and that is a non issue today with newer OSs........ BASIC video players vs. ADVANCED video functionality.  For people needing multi platform basic player functionality, sure they would go with the FFMPEG one.  It's a free market in the end, people are free to use what best suits them, develop exclusively or not, it's not always by choice, that people don't develop for all the platforms that exists.

Android (Android API based, still MUCH better than windows only shit!)
https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/1406/videoplay-android

You still need the $199 android add-on to compile to android......

You are expecting a one product for all platforms, but there has to be some compromise and taking into consideration the limits of these other platforms.
if lone did his video engine multi platform, I'm sure the windows part would suffer in functionality. Why the fuck do you think YYG deprecated functions in the first place ? because of their unified architecture.....so punishing windows users instead of finding alternatives.

Maybe mobile shite is the wave of the future but for some of us we will be using desktops for a long time.
I don't mind porting to Mac, Linux, Android, etc, but there again you need the money to buy all these add-ons, and unless you are expecting to earn significant profit out of this, it's bloody not worth it, it's always been a hobby for me and always will,
I did not want to be ripped the fuck off $299 for a YYC I certainly won't spend a bloody dime on the android export

So I will keep on making windows exclusive stuff for a while.......Until GMS2 comes out, then I will be able to run GMS2 natively in Linux, unless of course YYG will still charge for added exports, which I think they will, so it will be windows only for a long time.
I rather spend my money in better places than being ripped off!

This is where ENIGMA can(could have) really shined.

[time-killer-games]

lonewol-double-"f"-for-double-the-fuck

Im glad you like it dude, it warms my precious little heart bro. I was inspired by how Tigger explains the spelling of his name in Winnie the Pooh. 

[Darkstar2]

It's a shame Lone's gone (for the 2nd time) he would have been a good asset to ENIGMA, but he was called on duty again.....

Anyhow, do you happen to know if there is any extension to replace sound_add, becuse YYG deprecated sound_add to replace it with their shitty dynamic sound handling, but I want sound_add, is there an extension in the MP that allows adding sounds from external files ?

[time-killer-games]

They added that function back a long time ago same with sprite/background_add but youll have to double check about the format they dont support as many as they did for gm8.1 and its still sandboxed.

[Darkstar2]

You are wrong - they removed sound_add when they changed their audio system to dynamic one. yeah they don't support much crap indeed.....well looks like I'll be continuing to use ENIGMA for a while then

they are really fucking lazy at best I mean they already use FFMPEG in their bloody software, why the wank can't they support those formats !?!?!?!?WHY.....!!!

and now with Playtec's acquisition they assured everybody that "nothing" will change.

That's reassuring  (Note the sarcasm!)

But obviously everyone seems content with GMS (GameMangledStudio) or the type of games they make are too basic for them to notice.

I might consider use GMS if MP extension bring back some of the stuff YYYG RAPED us from.

[time-killer-games]

Okay correction, they still did add back sprite/background_add i just double checked. As for sound since your a windows guy do you have ANY idea how many dlls and extensions there are for this that work in GMS? Please google it im not going to find it for you theres tons of them.

You like adding to enigma's source, okay but you still havent told me how creating a dll is isnt as good. I find it easier. You dont have to recompile the whole engine code every time you do a new test run which takes a million years, just recompile the tiny ass c++ dll which take a milisecond then replace the old version with it in your include files. So much easier. And you can still use c++ because any dll for GMS is no less c++ than enigma's engine code. :p really dont get your point.

[Darkstar2]

What you don't seem to know is that at runtime, all those DLLs are copied to the temp folder.  This means that everyone selling their shit on the MP is getting ripped off.... because in theory this means you can run someone's game that was made with a paid DLL and steal it from the temp folder and use it yourself courtesy of yours truly, YYG.....  I was made aware of this by a person selling on MP.

YYG makes it EASY for people to steal stuff from hard working individuals, steal game resources, etc.

I mean I know there is always a way to steal resources, but why the fuck make it easy as easy
as copying them to the temp folder for the grabbing.

The bastardised methods they use packing all the shite in one EXE and decompressing it all in the temp folder irks me, it is a TERRIBLE, shitty way to publish a game.  Nobody in their right fucked up mind publishes games that way, go look at any commercial game out there.  When you want to push updates to your game you have to have your users download the entire fucking EXE along with its entire embedded resources.

The way I would use EGM to develop eventually is keep only the compiled code in the EXE and all resources into separate files, each encrypted, including room data, and breaking different aspects of the game or app into pieces like commercial games. If there is an update to a module, the user would only need minimal download.

Take windows, would you have liked it if Windows was just 1 EXE ?

So for big game developers this makes it a much faster process.  There is no way I would release a 1GB EXE file.  That's why I want the external resource _add functions, because I don't want everything to be packed inside the EXE.

[TheExDeus]

We already had this discussion millions of times - It's easy to rip resources (art, models, sound, music etc.) from every game engine in existence.
And the fact it extracts a 3rd party dll you didn't make into a temp folder gives absolutely nothing to a wannabe ripper. Dll's by themselves are actually quite useless as well, that is why nobody ever hides them. The fact that GM extracts them in temp at runtime is actually more protection that you get from any game engine. If you want you can keep the dll external in the exe folder like every game engine ever.

So the fact is, the way GM handles resources and file includes is actually a much safer way than any other engine. If you used the now free Unreal4 or Unity engine, you would see how easy it is to get resources from those as well.

[time-killer-games]

Thank you ExDeus so glad you could come to my rescue!

What you don't seem to know is that at runtime, all those DLLs are copied to the temp folder.  This means that everyone selling their shit on the MP is getting ripped off.... because in theory this means you can run someone's game that was made with a paid DLL and steal it from the temp folder and use it yourself courtesy of yours truly, YYG.....  I was made aware of this by a person selling on MP.

YYG makes it EASY for people to steal stuff from hard working individuals, steal game resources, etc.

I mean I know there is always a way to steal resources, but why the fuck make it easy as easy
as copying them to the temp folder for the grabbing.

The bastardised methods they use packing all the shite in one EXE and decompressing it all in the temp folder irks me, it is a TERRIBLE, shitty way to publish a game.  Nobody in their right fucked up mind publishes games that way, go look at any commercial game out there.  When you want to push updates to your game you have to have your users download the entire fucking EXE along with its entire embedded resources.

The way I would use EGM to develop eventually is keep only the compiled code in the EXE and all resources into separate files, each encrypted, including room data, and breaking different aspects of the game or app into pieces like commercial games. If there is an update to a module, the user would only need minimal download.

Take windows, would you have liked it if Windows was just 1 EXE ?

So for big game developers this makes it a much faster process.  There is no way I would release a 1GB EXE file.  That's why I want the external resource _add functions, because I don't want everything to be packed inside the EXE.

darkstar2 i hate to break it to you i know that more than anyone im the one who basically gave mike the idea bc they didnt want to spend time on anything much more complicated. Im especially pissed mike didnt mention me and left the anouncement partialy to true valhalla on the game maker blog, thats another reason why i was never mentioned or thanked with such publicity.

Not that mike.dailly mentioned me in the single runtime exe announcemrnt like i was hoping, but if it wasnt for me they wouldve never added back that feature everyone loved about gm 8.1 was the single exe that can extract includes to the temp_directory. He thanked me when i told him, in a random forum topic where i said it, not like anyone is going to notice that. But mike added it bc i told him about iexpress.exe, and its dependencies makecab and wextract, which has been builtin and hidden in every windows desktop system32 folder since around Windows 98. Thats what they are using to make it one exe. Everyone loves that feature, im sorry you dont appreciate what i practically added to gmstudio in a sense. But if it wasnt for my "shitty" suggestion all your resources wouldnt be extracted at runtime, youd be relying on the zipped export, which takes a real nuckle head not knowing to how take resources out a zip so you should be happy they are doing more than that. The exe can be opened just like the zip export with 7zip but not like anyone would think to do that when they could just double click and run the exe which you cant do with a zip you need to extract or see the contents first with whatever archive manager you use.

[TheExDeus]

Keeping resources in the .exe or externally is not really the discussion we were having. It's the imaginary sense of "security", that for some bizarre reason is so important.
Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. Like if you .exe is more than 50mb, then you should think of something else as the loading times are usually proportional (even if you don't load the resources at start, Windows might do some caching magic and load the whole thing at startup anyway). On the other hand for small games (less than those 50mb) I find external files unnecessary. I hate when I download a 10mb program and it has only 5 images, all of them external and some other useless files as well. I fell that they could of been inside it. That is what I love about GM and ENIGMA - for most games and programs I make I only need to distribute one file.

[time-killer-games]

I know what you mean Harri. It doesnt really matter i was just saying to his terms an exe would be better than a loose zip when it comes to stripping assets. But doesnt matter as you said anyone who wants to strip assets will find ot easy regardless of the methed, its like pick one - an easy method or a microscopically easier one, the thing is its easy either way so its not like that matters. Even if were ever that "difficult" anyone whos determined can pull it off anyway.

DS2 i understand being paranoid but piracy and asset stripping is impossible to prevent and easy or not its still easy for just about any convinced hacker. It doesnt require hacking either, look at software media extractors they scan an exe for images sound video some docs flash and other media appended, and with no programming knowledge using user friendly (usually freeware) software to do this in minutes without a tutorial and extract shit from your favorite AAA game, so how an indie like yourself could do any better is out of the question why try if it wont prevent much even if you were nintendo or EA games? The new Sims by EA Games has already had its models and textures ripped and you can import your own models too in the game last i checked with a variety of trainers made by amateur programmers and hackers.

The only thing "hard" to extract (or in this case decompiled or disasembled) from a game is the original c++ or whatever language used's code files or workspace. It is doable with that too but that is reasonably (but still far from entirely) safe when actually compiled and not interpreted, but media is a complete lost cause in trying to do that.