Stencyl over Gamemaker and Gamesalad

I'm on the Stencyl side; I find game development much easier and fun with Stencyl.


However, I'm curious to hear from the Stencyl community why it chooses Stencyl over other game development tools like Gammaker and Gamsalad. Why do you?

Of course because stencyl can reach from beginner to advance. I like how stencyl can make game easier without leaving hows to building logic like real programming. That's good for newbie to learn hows real programming works. And also good for advance because you still can coding with real typing. That's make stencyl give more option for you to develop a game. Though this software still have shortcomings, I believe this software will be perfect for game development sooner or later.

Stencyl is available for pc. That's why I'm on board. Gamesalad has like a PC beta, but now that I am familiar with Stencyl, there's no way I'm gonna jump ship for an unstable beta from a community that really doesn't need or want pc users.

I was originally a GameMaker user, but found the software somewhat shoddy. On top of that, they only exported to windows applications until recently, and as you can imagine, it's kind of hard to get people interested in games when they have to download them first, rather than simply being able to use a link on the internet. They were also impossibly slow with updates (nothing for ages and then an update sceduled for January didn't arrive till around April?).

I wanted to use GameSalad when I started looking for an alternative to GM, but it was only for Macs. Then Stencyl popped up for public use and I jumped on board. I'm glad I did

GameMaker had a special online portal called YoYoGames where you were able to play some of the games online, without downloading.

Prefer Stencyl though.

But you had to have a plugin that didn't work on every browser, and more importantly you couldn't play the game anywhere else

If you post this on a Stencyl forum I am sure that most people will say that Stencyl is the best. Otherwise they wouldn't be here.

If you post this on a Stencyl forum I am sure that most people will say that Stencyl is the best. Otherwise they wouldn't be here.

I had no doubt that that would be the case, what I'm asking is why, not if they are on board or not.

As soon as i joined Stencyl i saw what are his weakness, but i have pointed out all and now it's a better place.

I use Java applets too and i must say that Stencyl still gives you poor support with multidimensional lists, multiplayer applications,fake 3d and 3d, common components like scroll browsing, buttons, choice buttons and drop-down menu.It has also no support for objects and dynamic behaviour attachment,and that it eventually cripples your range of feasible programs.

However it's much easier to learn to use than Netbeans, it provides you the best working libraries around, you have all the preset objects you may want to use, you get a solid drag and drop system with a wide enough palette to make simple games out without doing syntax errors, you have an high quality code editor and no need to make glue code just to get pieces together.

I'd employ one week to get a prototype in Netbeans, while in Stencyl i'd get it in a day or two, with the same complexity.

gamesalad doesn't care if librairies actually work or are practical to use, and the beta is really buggy if you adventure out the tutorials' range.

I use Java applets too and i must say that Stencyl still gives you poor support with multidimensional lists, multiplayer applications,fake 3d and 3d, common components like scroll browsing, buttons, choice buttons and drop-down menu.It has also no support for objects and dynamic behaviour attachment,and that it eventually cripples your range of feasible programs.

- multidimensional lists: This can be done in code pretty easily in code, but there's no good way to do it in blocks, correct. I think a user (Sunflower?) made a Behavior on StencylForge for helping with this.
- multiplayer: You can use HTTP calls or integrate an external library like Nicco did to implement multiplayer, but there's no built in method, correct.
- GUI widgets: Check out the GUI Widgets pack on StencylForge.
- objects/dynamic behavior attachment: Can you clarify "objects"? You can enable and disable Behaviors, which can take care of some of the use cases for this.

Objects are types of data, like Animation, Control or String.
In java you can create new objects like JoystickButton, and give him events like "when pressed".The advantage is that you can implement non-standard hardware in your game like dual mouse or even the ps2 joystick to play your game(however you can't force players to buy another mouse just to play your game).

Dynamic behaviour attachment means attaching behaviours on runtime.That is essential if the behaviour didn't exist before the application start.This is useful in complex applications where you have an artificial intelligence which could program itself.Or just attach a bunch of behaviours when needed and delete them to save memory space.

Both of these aren't needed to make a good game and are used mainly for research purposes.

I know about almost everything useful in the forge and i'm very happy with that.I regret only that often they are not enough visible or require some dedicated search to find.
I'd love some visual help for editing GUIs, instead of coding positions.
Multidimensional lists are well covered with blocks by Sunflower, but you can't enter 2d arrays in the attributes configuration as you do with lists, but only enter one list at time.

Regarding your definition of Objects, that's basically what Actors are supposed to be -- objects that encapsulate data (Attributes) and methods (Behaviors). You can create custom classes with Freeform Behaviors that you can do even more with. It's just difficult to provide a UI for all of this.

I agree that having a better way to deal with GUIs is definitely needed, and we've discussed this at length internally.

Stencyl is available for pc. That's why I'm on board. Gamesalad has like a PC beta, but now that I am familiar with Stencyl, there's no way I'm gonna jump ship for an unstable beta from a community that really doesn't need or want pc users.

The GameSalad community seems pretty competitive to me. It's not chill like here. This community seems intelligent and relaxed... not like rabid fanboys... less cliquish... and that's why there's the aversion to PC in GameSalad land. (I'm thinking it's the vocal minority though.) GameSalad started as an all Mac community... and lots of Mac users tend to be anti-windows. Although, from what I've seen of the windows version so far, the Windows version is actually better.

I'm starting to wonder why I need a Mac. 

Although, I do enjoy cheap apps like iWork Pages and Pixelmator.

I use Java applets too and i must say that Stencyl still gives you poor support with multidimensional lists, multiplayer applications,fake 3d and 3d, common components like scroll browsing, buttons, choice buttons and drop-down menu.It has also no support for objects and dynamic behaviour attachment,and that it eventually cripples your range of feasible programs.

- multidimensional lists: This can be done in code pretty easily in code, but there's no good way to do it in blocks, correct. I think a user (Sunflower?) made a Behavior on StencylForge for helping with this.
- multiplayer: You can use HTTP calls or integrate an external library like Nicco did to implement multiplayer, but there's no built in method, correct.
- GUI widgets: Check out the GUI Widgets pack on StencylForge.
- objects/dynamic behavior attachment: Can you clarify "objects"? You can enable and disable Behaviors, which can take care of some of the use cases for this.

The multi-dimensional list is an issue. Surprisingly, this is an area that GameSalad is actually better at... and there are a lot of cool things that can be done with "Tables".

Multiplayer... I just posted on the GameSalad forum about my disappointment with the lack of multiplayer support. Apple does a lot of the heavy lifting with Game Center. At least with Stencyl, there's a chance of multiplayer. But unfortunately, wasn't the ElectroServer project abandoned? If Stencyl supported that as a standard feature, like Unity3d, then that could give Stencyl a significant edge over GameSalad.

Game Center Multiplayer — "it's not a huge priority" to them. 

Also with ElectroServer, the $5000 expense for unlimited users is a significant deterrent. 

Maybe this... http://code.google.com/p/red5/ ...could work?

I'm starting to wonder why I need a Mac. 

Although, I do enjoy cheap apps like iWork Pages and Pixelmator.

I enjoy my Mac, but would also like to have the option to dual-boot Windows 7 on my Mac. Just not willing to fork out $80+ for another operating system.

I'm starting to wonder why I need a Mac. 

Although, I do enjoy cheap apps like iWork Pages and Pixelmator.

I enjoy my Mac, but would also like to have the option to dual-boot Windows 7 on my Mac. Just not willing to fork out $80+ for another operating system.

For now, this is close enough for me...
https://www.virtualbox.org
...I got an Windows XP install disk. I like to play the old pinball game.

I have a Windows 7 laptop, but I like making my Mac run windows.