Yoyogames has officially released Game Maker 8, which I believe is the first version they've produced. After a poll this week where they asked the game maker community if they would prefer to get gm8 now with softwrap or wait until march for yoyogames to develop it's own technology for purchasing gm pro, they went ahead and put softwrap on the new version. If you bought GM7 before 2009 (like myself), you'll have to repurchase a license in order to get GM8 pro, which costs $25.

What's new in GM 8

Collision checking option
Collision checking options for sprites have changed. You can now e.g. indicate whether sub-images should all have the same or different collision masks. Also you can increase and reduce the mask and use a disk as a mask.

Splash screens that show web sites and html documents
You can now show splash screens in the game that show a website or a local html file. In this way you can incorporate for example very nice help pages in your game. There are new actions to support this. Also splash screens got some additional options.

Time lines
Time lines have been enhanced. They can for example be paused and they can even play backwards.

Trigger events
These are a new type of event that you can define yourself and then use in your objects. For example, you can define events that happen when an object gets close to another object, or when you press a combination of keys, or when you reached a particular score, etc.

A new script/code editor
The built-in script/code editor has been completely rewritten, making it a lot easier to write code. For example there is pop-up function name completion, argument help, matching brackets, improved color coding, line numbers, on-the-fly error checking, and a sophisticated find and replace functionality.

Smaller changes
Some smaller changes include: Game Maker news shown in the program, much faster loading times (also when starting games), better encryption of executables, constant definition in a separate form, and some visual improvements. Also a number of bugs have been corrected.

The only thing I've checked out is the script editor, which has some pretty nifty upgrades but nothing major. There's now line numbers down the left side of the window and the auto-complete function that usually is just shown in a box on the bottom of the window now appears in a pop-up window by your cursor. The only other noticeable addition is you can set the syntax checker to check as you go. I'm a little disappointed that the editor still lacks auto-tabbing and other features that are present in most IDEs.

Has anyone else tried out GM8? What are your impressions?

ugh, fucking softwrap. i have had so many problems with these guys' wrapping software. i'll usually get a prompt e-mail right back when i need more licenses (like i did when i installed windows 7) but i wouldn't have to do this if softwrap just WORKED.

that aside, i tried the beta and i noticed a loading speed-up when running the gm7 file for my current project, so that's good. they changed a lot of stuff but they left a lot of stuff the same, too (the map editor, which could use a complete overhaul, wasn't touched).

i don't know if i'll buy this. i'm thinking about moving on to torque after i wrap up my current project instead.

Makes me glad I never bought Gm7 and simply cracked it for the pro features. I sincerely hope that re-purchasing crap doesn't come up around the time of the eventual Gm9 release, because if I buy Gm8 then it's going to be soon. I'd still end up getting Gm9 either way anyhow, unless they go all that time and still haven't touched the map editor by then.

Maybe if Gm can get it's distribution straight I'll buy GM8, but I'd much rather do like with all the older versions and download it and know I have an .exe and it runs on my computer long before giving them money for any sort of purchased functionality.

i'm gonna keep on using gm7 since i haven't got any problems with it.

TO BE HONEST

Man, when I bought GM all I got was a nonexistent URL in an e-mail from softwrap. I sent a bunch of e-mails to both softwrap and YoYo Games asking for help or my money back, but I never got a reply. After a while I posted a helpdesk thread stating how bad the system was and that I wanted a working exe or my money back, but they closed the thread and told me to go away. What a horrible company and what a horrible distribution system.

I hope you fucking pirated it after that! That's dreadful!

So there's no upgrades to the room editor or no improvements on the user interface?

Like they are the most lacking parts in any GM version and I guess the performance improvements are nice but GM7 already performs pretty good for all your 2D game needs so I'm not dishing out a dime for this, I'm quite happy with GM7.

I saw on another forum that you have to be connected to the internet when using gm8 pro or softwrap will treat as if it were a free version. How shitty is that? I think Game Maker has lost a lot of credibility because YoYo (haha) games is hilariously incompetent, e.g. the whole logo thing, softwrap, not really listening to anyone ever...

Does anyone know what Construct is like? I've been sort of meaning to pick up GM for a while but I keep hearing kind of bad stuff about it and it seems like it'd be easier to start going with a free open-source engine that has a shot at improving. I don't really know anything about either though!

i say definately go with construct. firstly you dont have to pay to get certain important stuff, and it's constantly being improved, unlike GM, only 5 years or whatever.

GM isn't all bad, but i would have preferred to be stuck with construct

I can't believe they STILL haven't changed anything in the map editor, I remember YEARS ago when the creator asked for input for what to change for the new version and I said some better options in the map editor and the whole comunity started saying that I wanted everything made easy and what not, I felt like in the twilight zone ._.

I've had gm since 6.0, but back then I was looking at tutorials to see how to make platformers and stuff, but it was all complicated so I just copied stuff and never learned anything. now I'm finally sitting down and trying to learn it, derek yu's tutorial on tigsource is really helping me understand the basics. maybe I'll get 8.0, but the list of improvements look pretty meh, and the whole logo fiasco made me question the integrity of the new owners.

when i saw the title i thought of posting something bout Construct, guess some guys here actually uses it.

So yea, with that, view my youtube vid:
all a bout construct

also, [req]GM 8

I can't believe they STILL haven't changed anything in the map editor, I remember YEARS ago when the creator asked for input for what to change for the new version and I said some better options in the map editor and the whole comunity started saying that I wanted everything made easy and what not, I felt like in the twilight zone ._.

Don't worry about it. GMC is pretty gross except for the few people bending and breaking this program with awesome code. I only really go there to use their search function (you need to have an account).

We're the Robots