Hello guys, I’m just starting out with Unity and learning the 2D features but have stumbled across Gamemaker as well. I was wondering if I should use Gamemaker instead of Unity 2D. I’ve only got about 2 hours in Unity and it seems awesome and overwhelming at the same time. My ultimate goal is to make a roguelike game but I’m not sure which would be better to learn. I’ve read good things about Gamemaker when it comes to 2D design but that it doesn’t have as many features as Unity does. Thoughts?
A friend of mine has done some really cool stuff with GameMaker – it actually changed my mind about whether GM could do “real” games or not. If they had a Mac version I might have considered it for myself.
I can understand the “overwhelming” remark about Unity – I’m new to it and sometimes my head swims – but 400K people a month use it, so if they can get used to it, so can we. 
And whether Unity has “more features” than GM doesn’t matter as much as whether the one you pick has enough features to create the game you want.
Jay
Do you already have programming experience, or are you starting fresh? GameMaker is definitely the “easier” way to go, unless you already happen to know C# or Javascript (ish).
Unity will give you more options in the long run - i.e. if you want to make a greater variety of games - but, if you’re immediate goal of making a 2D rogue-like is all that you’re really worried about, I’d actually suggest GameMaker might be worth a shot.
Oh! You might also want to consider what your target platforms are
While I do have experience with Java (not the same as Javascript) I do believe I can get used to the format pretty quick. I’m also fine with working my way up as I learn things (just trying to make a Pong clone at the minute and if anyone has a 2D walkthrough it would help a lot) but I would also like to know whether GameMaker or Unity has the best Procedural Generation features as that is the mainstay of Rougelikes. If it is any help I want to make a Rougelike similar to Weird Worlds but way bigger and not just a 30 minute time sink. And I really only have intentions of posting it on the internet for people to play. (And if I am pleased with the outcome I may make more games in the future)
Unity has few limitations; it does what you program it to do. GameMaker has a number of fairly severe limitations and basically you must work with whatever functions it provides for you. It can still be perfectly good for making games as long as you’re fine with those limitations. But nevertheless you are stuck “inside the box” as it were, whereas Unity doesn’t really have a box to be stuck in. The downside is that “overwhelming” feeling you get at the beginning.
The two procedural generation features that Unity has are called “your brain” and “a code editor”. Sky’s the limit.
–Eric
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+1 - In fact I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Do you know you are in unity forum XD
Maybe I’m the heretic here: some award winning indie games use Openfl and haxe. Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Firefox OS, Tizen, Flash and even HTML5. Free and opensource.
If you know java, c# should be a very easy switch. So that’s a point in Unity’s favor.
You can code in gamemaker too(its called GML), and i haven’t seen anyone limited by gamemaker to switch to unity3d… look all the awesome games made with it.