I really dislike when I go into a programming chat channel like Ludum Dare, and they ask me what I use to program and when I say Stencyl everyone starts laughing and says that's fake coding. Stencyl is easier than other ways to code, yes. But I have been using it for three years and I still suck. I wish people would have more respect for it.
*Clears throat, get up on soap box*In all honesty, I feel the same way. I used to teach Stencyl for college level game design at a university. I taught for intro to game engines, which didn't involve programming. I taught the actor->behavior model. The idea was to then pass them up to Unity for 3D. I love Stencyl, and fell in love with it for how quickly I can program in it. I advocated time and time again that we should teach programming with Stencyl because it's so easy to use. But because Unity is Unity (some kind of praised indie god savior) and Stencyl is Stencyl (simply a 2D creation tool), we actually stopped using it. It's been bumped off for Unity. Simply because Unity is unity. And because Unity doesn't agree with me, I don't teach anything involving a game engine there anymore. The higher ups didn't even really give it a true chance or looked at the output.
We teach Unity therefore we should start with Unity.
Stencyl can't teach anybody anything because Unity is greater than Stencyl.
Unity is greater than Stencyl because it's in 3D and anything that can't 3D is loser.
Unity is greatest thing ever, that's why we teach Unity.
However, at the other school I teach at, I had to teach intro to programming. I used Stencyl, and found they had vast successes. Where in the programming course at the other school they'd barely have a game with about launching a ball at things to knock them down (health is beyond measure), my students are making almost full 2D games on their own, creating their own health systems, and doing other things I was frankly surprised they could do. They need help now and again, but towards the end, when I'd be teaching them how to do something, they'd already have it done mid lecture. And furthermore none of them look up and copy code either as is the case with Unity, praying it all works. They understand programming. Only 1/8 of them had previous programming experience. And only 1/8 said programming wasn't for him (not the same guy, mind you)
Talking with students at the other school, they are confused. I don't know their dropout rates, but I do know if you're not a programmer, prepare to leave confused.
There's some stigma that Stencyl is not worthwhile because it not only is it drag and drop code, but it's in 2D only. Meanwhile, Unity gets forgiven for everything. Stencyl's UI drawing system has always been a breeze for me. Getting something basic to print to the screen takes less than a minute. A year ago Unity's UI was a hunk of indecipherable garbage, and after a refit it still takes 20 steps to get position to display on the screen for debug purposes. And no one wants to call them out on it. Stencyl had Stencylforge before the asset store, but people I know still call SF "Stencyl's asset store."
And now that Unity has a 2D game creation utility, Stencyl is laughed out of the room even harder.
However, even if it's drag and drop programming, I can program any routine faster with Stencyl than they can type it out (with the exception of a Quicksort I tried to do in stencyl once. That took way more lines than I thought it would).
I can still drop assets into stencyl faster than they can set theirs up. And I can still make a game from scratch in Stencyl in 5-10 minutes, while they're still watching the tutorial video on how to make whatever their idea is to work.
I just don't get it. There are a ton of utilities out there, and even the big players have dumbed down their engines and upped their tutorials. But Unity's always the first thing everybody goes for.
-Unreal automatically does networking, but lets use Unity (which starts at the transport layer I believe, or did once not too far in the past)
-Cry looks gorgeous but lets go with Unity.
-Stencyl was made for 2D games, but lets use Unity.
-Rennpy is free and was made just for story games, is basically complete and all you have to do is write the story and put in the pictures!.........but lets use Unity and write it from scratch.
All I see is unity playing catchup and the biggest thing they have going for them is Hearthstone, Rust, and Kerbal.
My rant might be dated by a year, and it's 12:15 at night. But I'm tired of Stencyl being looked down upon. It's a solid engine.
*Gets off soapbox*
