An excellent indie game called Damn Castilla. It is a Freeware game created by locomalito a Spanish developer of retro videogames. Of course, as a good retrogamer, I decided to take advantage of the aforementioned game. My strategy was clear, download the game and put the WINE services into action. However, the paths of life were created with extreme cruelty and although WINE did its thing, the game runs too slow (unplayable).
This wonderful game, like many other great freeware, was developed through Game maker. Unfortunately, Game Maker does not support GNU / Linux and what is worse, it does not even provide the ability to export games created to be played on Linux.
Therefore, I started to explore some options Open Source for the creation of Video Games, Game Maker style.
GameEditor
GameEditor is, according to its creators, the Open Source Video Game Design tool that gives you the power to create the game of your dreams and that unlike other tools (read Game Maker) gives you the possibility to change its Source Code and the possibility of exporting, both for computers and for mobile devices.
That's right, Game Editor allows you to create games for Linux, Mac, Windows (95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7), Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, Pocket PC, Handheld PC, GP2X , etc.
There is a paid version, if your intention is to distribute your game for profit. But being honest I do not understand how it is handled. The Software is licensed under GPL V.3.
I have already tried this tool and although it supports GNU / Linux, the reality is that it does so very poorly. This to the point of having serious problems with sound and recommend using WINE to run games. (-.-)
Its authors define it as a tool for Video Game Development free (although it is also free since it is released under the Zlib / PNG license), which allows you to create any type of video game in 2d. No programming knowledge is necessary since all development is done through its IDE in graphical form.
Its game creation system is very similar to Game Maker, it has a IDE through which all the procedures for the creation of video games are carried out. Have a System of Events and Sub-events very impressive that allows you to play games without even (according to its authors) creating a single line of code, however it also has something similar to a scripts system.
It also has a system of Dynamic Lights, Physics, Particle Engine, among many other features. However, the characteristic that best defines it is its ability to compile the game with machine code. It is the only one of its kind (at least I know of) that generates the game to be interpreted directly, without the need for intermediate interpreters, this condition (supposedly) gives it a superior performance than its rivals.
Su disadvantage is that it is not very complicated to use it on small screens (like mine 🙁). And that until recently it was only in its original language, French, so its appearance (in English) has little time and the documentation is rather limited. In addition, it only officially supports Ubuntu, although it is possible to use it in other distros.
A critic For both Game Editor and GameDevelop, it is the terrible (terrible, horrifying, disastrous) ability of its creators to give their projects a name. It is an evil that afflicts Open Source developers a lot. Searching for project information becomes a nightmare to have such generic names. But this we will talk other day.
Conclusion
It seems that we are in the golden age of games commercials in GNU/Linux, but personally, I have always enjoyed independent games for their quality and inventiveness. I am not a video game designer but with this short article, I hope to present some tools that I think are wonderful for their development, that are free and that also allow their authors to create games to export them to our favorite operating system. Do all this without losing a cent and do it from the best of platforms, desde Linux.
Sources:
http://compilgames.net
http://game-editor.com
The worst of the case is that there are some who say that they manage to emulate Maldita Castilla without any problem on Linux. If you do a search in Google you will realize what I say.
I really don't know whether to believe them. It runs too slow for me.
Particularly, it runs very well for me, but yes, I recently bought a new gpu (geforce430), so that's why it must be 😛
Thank you for discovering these tools, I love retro and even more if it can be desde Linux. I just need the time and patience to create something.
Good post, I did not know about these programs looking at the pages of each one I see them quite competent maybe I will make my own game to test!
Hopefully more developers will start using tools compatible with linux, since I have seen many very good independent games, but since they are made with Game Maker, they are unplayable on linux even with wine and their developers have not the slightest intention of porting them. Very good article.
Thanks, I personally really enjoy games and if I had the artistic flair I would definitely make my games for Linux, but that's not the thinking of most developers.
Oh yes, they are two interesting tools to work on creating video games. I'm going to try it, how are you? Thanks for the post.
I liked the post, the GameDevelop catches my attention
Another way to have both Maldita Castilla and other games made with Game Maker (especially those whose developers don't feel like porting it to other operating systems) running under Linux would be to decompile ( http://yoshifangames.foroactivo.com/t2897-programa-para-decompilar-game-maker-exe ) to see how it is done and thus redo it with the alternatives already mentioned.