If you didn't know, in the past, I was using Game Maker to design video games. With it's easy to use software and friendly interface it was a great tool to start with. I can honestly say that I wouldn't know as much about Game Designing as I do if it wasn't for Game Maker!
But, there came a point when it just wasn't enough. I felt frustrated by a lot of the odd quirks of Game Maker, but, I was too scared / frustrated to bother learning one of the higher languages. I had tried to learn C+ in the past and I just couldn't get the hang of it.
After searching for a SIMPLE program with more features than GM, I made my way to using Flash. And, it's been a GODSEND - I really wish that I had started using Flash several years ago (I just started using it this February).
So, to all my readers that are stuck using Game Maker, I offer the following advice on why you should switch to Flash:
1. Flash is cross platform.
I know that with the recent release of Game Maker for Mac this might not seem like such a big deal, but it is! You need two seperate versions of GM in order to make .DMG and .EXE files. With Flash, it's much simpler - make a .swf file and upload it on the net. With something like an estimated 90% of computers having Flash installed, you really don't have to worry about someone not being able to play your game.
2. Flash is readily playable online.
I know that the GM purist out there may say that you CAN, in fact, play GM games online. But, I'm not talking bout downloading some additional software and THEN having people play your game.
With the huge penetration of the Flash player on every computer, there isn't really any additional software to install - most people already have Flash in their computer, plain and simple. This is actually a criticism that I throw at a lot of other game making tools ie Unity. You can have the most powerful tool in the world, but anything that throws ONE MORE STEP into the process of playing your game (such as downloading additional software) is going to cause some people to not play your game.
3. Flash games have better opportunities to make money.
If you made a game with Game Maker there are probably two ways of making a bit of cash with it. The first is to sell it (whether online or off). The second is to use it to drive traffic to your site that contains advertisements. After that, you're shit out of luck...
With Flash, you can do both of those, AS WELL AS: having a Flash Sponsor; putting in game advertisements into your game; selling micro transactions (I actually covered some of these techniquesHERE).
So, there are tons of ways to make money with Flash games!
4. More sites are interested in Flash games that other types of games.
There are lots of review sites out there in the world - sites for commercial games, sites for noncommercial games, etc. The fact is that you can use Flash to make a game that covers all different types of categories. Outside of sites that are dedicated to specific products (like, a site dedicated ONLY to Game Maker games), you aren't going to find a lot of software that allows you such a broad range.
More importantly, in terms of getting your game out into the world, Kongregate and Newground are two of the biggest sites in the world. And, there are plenty of other sites that are focused only on online games (specifically Java and Flash games).
5. Flash (AS3) coding is more consistent with standard programming techniques.
If you program your games in Flash using Actionscript 3, then a lot of what you're doing is pretty similar to how you would code using other types of languages. You work with import statements, deal with naming your functions right (static, dynamic, public, etc.), etc. Basically, stuff that would be useful in case you wanted to move to a higher language.
Game Maker Language is a weird bastardization of how coding works. I picked up a lot of really small, but really dumb habits using Game Maker (for example, using "=" instead of "==" to test for "equals"). It's something that made the transition to Flash a bit confusion.
*********************
So, that's what I can come up with when I think of why I prefer Flash vs. Game Maker. While Flash isn't perfect the five reasons I listed are the things that keep me using it.
If you have any thoughts or comments, please let me know!
Good points.
I think, as you pretty much said, Game Maker is only really supposed to be for beginners starting out in the game developing industry. (Unless you are REALLY good at it, which some people are.)
Game Maker is possibly better for offline distribution, though. This is because you don't need to download anything for the exe file to run.
And also, Flash had a weird problem of consistently forgetting my actionscript, but thats probably just me.
What do you mean, forgetting your actionscript? That shouldn't happen and I can't say that I've ever experienced anything like it...
As for GM being better for offline distribution, I BELIEVE that the flash EXE can be run away (assuming that the player has the correct version of the Flash player).
I plan to follow up on the article with reasons why GM is better than Flash. The reality is that I think they're both great software that, if used correctly, can really add a lot!
Thanks for the comment!
PS I'd like to point out that if you these are usually just reposts of my articles from my blog (http://jrjellybeans.net/blog). I wish that you would have written a comment on it instead - I might have gotten back to you faster :)