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I'm sure you know it but there's already a GameMaker Marketplace where you can sell your scripts and engines.

I don't think there's a need to crowdfund this. I'd get it to a stable beta and release it as a demo or a base engine and use the sales from that to continue to work on it.

edit: unless you're talking about making a point and click creation studio using gamemaker as the backend, in which case yeah that might be something you'd want to crowdfund. If you're just looking to sell your GML scripts and/or your .gmx file then the marketplace is the way to go.

There's been a lot of good engines that have done well at the $10 price point on there.

Just because we ALL loved the classic adventures of Larry, the (almost) entire collection is currently on sale from GOG.com for like $7

+1

I've played around with a pretty solid engine in GameMaker: Studio for point and click games and while it's got fairly good movement mechanics and pathfinding it's SOOOOO tedious to set up dialogue trees in GameMaker, or cutscenes, for that matter.

I know Adventure Creator for Unity is pretty sharp and the guy who was working on the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) which was made in Unity finally released a beta but that's still an entirely new piece of software to learn and I don't think he plans to really support it (in a community sense)

Hell I (personally) don't need iOS and android exports, just having a web export would be awesome though.

Thanks for the explanation!

First off, just a thanks to everyone that worked on this version. I've been mostly playing with Unity and GameMaker for the last year or so and I came back to find that there's a multi-platform build in the works, which is awesome!

Two quick questions - 1) Does this new build support OSX or just Win/Linux? And are there still Allegro issues with OSX builds or are they pretty stable?

                      2) Does this build have a "no .mp3 licensing" version or is it strictly not for retail game use?

Thanks!     

There are some really good wordpress themes that work well with online storefronts and you can use one of SEVERAL online merchants to handle the digital downloads without them taking a big cut of the profits. If you end up doing it yourself feel free to PM me or something and I can point you in a few directions.

This looks gorgeous! I can't wait for a demo.

Thank you for making this open source, and for bumping the thread, because I never played this so now I get the chance and so far it's pretty awesome!

Give game maker another shot. I moved over to it earlier this year and while it's initial gui is very "drag and drop pre made code" almost no one actually uses those functions. It has it's own scripting language like AGS/Unity/etc which is pretty complex.

Also it's free now, which is nice, and they just opened a resource store to compete with Unity and there's some good stuff out there.

Like I said, I just got into it about six months ago but I've already made engines for shmups, a VERY basic point and click adventure engine which is still buggy as hell but at least now I can make PnC games for HTML5 and mac, a platformer engine (of which there are another hundred out there for free, so it's nothing special), and a beat-em-up final fight style engine.

It really is versatile.

As someone who just uses the engine for hobby purposes but has considered selling a few small games in the next year or so...

I've played with Construct 2, Stencyl, Unity, AGS, and Game Maker 8 and I can say without a doubt that for point and click games AGS is by and large the easiest to use and most enjoyable to work with. Even with the limitations it supposedly has, I've seen people make metal gear style stealth games, straight up bullet hell games, fighting games, GTA clones, and one of the coolest platformers I've played in the last three years (Art of Dying) with what is claimed to be a dated engine, and most of those games mentioned with the exception of AoD were done two years ago or more.

I'd be sad if AGS went the way of Unity or other game design tools and didn't keep it's simple to use interface. (not that it's necessarily being discussed, I'm just giving my .02)

As for free vs pay, I have zero problems paying for something I use regularly. My only, ONLY gripe with AGS is that it doesn't easily or perfectly port your games to Linux/OSX without some serious help. If that one issue was resolved I'd pay for a licensed version in a heartbeat. I don't personally care about android/ios integration but that's just me.

Whatever happens, I wish all the devs the best of luck and if there's a cost associated I've got no problem throwing some cash at the finished product.

I found a kind of "follow up" interview about XBLA and Microsoft with some commentary from some of the Indie Game teams as well as other and the problem isn't necessarily the issues with being an indie game studio, but Microsoft itself.

From what I read they like to find a game coming out with a lot of appeal, and they press hard for exclusivity deals. I don't remember which game it was but one of the bigger indie Steam/PS3 games approached MS and were told "no" because they couldn't give them Xbox360 exclusivity since their game was already on two other platforms. There's also apparently a shit-ton of contract stuff wherein you can't release your games to other platforms for a set number of years.

I'm not trying to MS bash because I personally LOVE my 360 but they do pull the leash quite a bit tighter than their competitors which drives a lot of people away.

Also they require a lot of stupid crap. The meat boy team was saying that MS wouldn't finish checking out their game during one of the last rounds of dev until they delivered the avatar marketplace apparel for the little 360 avatars first which the meat boy team felt was a HUGE waste of time especially since they didn't get much in the way of profits from those sales.

I'd love to see a follow up to Indie Game focusing on the Steam/PS3 marketplaces.     

Took the survey. I saw the doco a couple of months ago (it's on netflix now too btw) and it's a really well done movie.

While I primarily exhibit art and comics at cons, I did have my little trouble ticket demo up to play just because I was giving away free copies of it during the last few shows I was at.

It really just depends on the convention and the table space. If you've got a standard six foot table you can set up a laptop or two (make sure to get mounting brackets for them, the kind that DO NOT bolt into the table as most conventions (in the US at least) give you a table to use so you obviously can't drill into theirs. Have headphones so people can hear the dialogue and music and like Armageddon said, have a small demo of your game that's just a cutscene and a few small puzzles for the person to play.

Don't have anything that will take a person longer than two minutes. Especially with an adventure game, with everything going on around them, they'll lose interest fast.

Another option is to pick up a couple of cheap android tablets and make a demo using the android port. Not only will this make it easier to set up your booth but people will be more interested if it's on a tablet (seriously, they will, but also don't you know, lie and tell them it's coming out on android : ) )

Even if you're selling the game in sleeves, go through the process of making up a couple of big display boxes to stand out at your table. Also give away demos if you can afford it, or at least have a mailing list sign up so you can send  the demos to the people.

If you've got any con specific questions I'm happy to answer, I've been selling at comic cons for the past two years.     

I just can't do pixel art in photoshop for some reason, despite how awesome layers are. I always just start really small and work my way up by resizing through magnify and print screen. I'm by no means a master at pixel art though so it's definitely a beginner tool if you're just starting out. (paint, not photoshop)     

Sorry, what and why do you do this? 
Why do you resize and why do you resize by using printscreen?

No I fully understand that it's a batshit crazy ass backwards way of doing things, but it works, and it's quick (at least the way I do it) and it's kind of like working on a painting. I can add or take away a little bit at a time pixel by pixel, I just have to remember to keep multiple progress saves while I'm working.

It's just my weird process.

The best thing about this is that it's based entirely on the Mega Man engine, so in addition to them most likely also releasing HD remakes of Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers AND Darkwing Duck we can also possibly expect HD remakes of the original 5 (maybe even the unreleased 6th) Mega Man game!

WOO!

For animating, I use the photoshop Timeline feature.

For pixel art itself, no bullshit, I use MS paint (the nice version bundled with win7 and up)

I start with low res, and if you click the magnifying glass it does a perfect 4:1 ratio enlarge, so you can just print screen and you've got a higher resolution and/or more pixels to play with if you want to go further with shading and detail, repeat as needed for higher resolutions.

I just can't do pixel art in photoshop for some reason, despite how awesome layers are. I always just start really small and work my way up by resizing through magnify and print screen. I'm by no means a master at pixel art though so it's definitely a beginner tool if you're just starting out. (paint, not photoshop)     

Link the pic using the "zoomable image" button, it's the one to the right of the mona lisa.

Also you're evil for doing this : )

I wholeheartedly agree that graphics are important, but there's SEVERAL different groups of players that each have a different opinion of graphics. I mean Mega Man 9 on the XBLA system sold VERY well because it was a pure adaptation of the first 4 original NES games and didn't have the clutter of the later entries in the series, just as, in an opposite but related fashion, [new shooter x] will be a AAA title because while it doesn't update the core mechanics from [new shooter w] it does look much, much prettier.

Angry Birds may not look like much on the surface, but it does stand lightyears apart from most of the flash games you'd find on Newgrounds with physics engines in them. An adventure game kind of fits that mold too. The story is important, but you'd need the perfect balance of retro looking but HD quality graphics, the right amount of playtime (can't be too long or too short, which is why an episodic format would probably work best), and a unique puzzle system to even have a shot at tapping a wide market rather than a niche market.

Also you always have to look at your surroundings in pop culture. The Walking Dead adventure game that TellTale made last year sold like hotcakces but that was probably 20% because it was a unique and entertaining adventure game and 80% because The Walking Dead is a multi record breaking television show with a 10 year established fanbase.

I don't think an adventure game will ever be the next angry birds and I honestly don't think, even with the resurgence of the classic adventure game creators on Kickstarter and the resurgence of the nostalgia for those games, that they will ever have more than a small but deeply devoted fanbase. Having said that, with the advent of things like kickstarter and the moves people here are making toward making tools like AGS more portable, it's getting easier to reach that fanbase and I wouldn't be surprised if some dev teams/companies on this very board didn't get the opportunity in the next couple of years to really establish themselves in those markets as a full time game dev studio.

Still though, an adventure game engine that easily ports to 3 major platforms is definitely nothing to sneeze at, and could probably be a useful building block for future AGS developments.