Game Creation Program
Filed under: XNA
I think its time to write some sort of introduction to our main project. It’s a game creation program inspired by Game Maker’s simple user interface, and aimed to fill in the gap between Game Maker and ‘real programming’. Our aim is to make something almost as simple to use initially as Game Maker, but at the same time allow more advanced users the freedom to do what they want. Until we think of an actual name for it, its called Aziel. Here’s some info about it:
It’s based on Microsoft’s XNA Game Framework and C#. This means that you shouldn’t expect to be able to use it or anything created with it on linux or mac any time soon.
It is aimed at reasonably new computers. DirectX 9 and a graphics card that supports at least shader model 2 is required.
The above requirements mean that games created with it will have all the graphical eye candy you could imagine; distortion, post processing, color filters, normal mapping, you name it.
It is currently scripted in C# only. Python will be added in the near future as the primary scripting language, and later, perhaps other DLR languages such as ruby, lua, lisp, scheme.. etc.
It will be possible to extend most of its functionality to add features that we haven’t provided in the core libraries or change some existing behaviour. Extensions will be able to add new types of resources to the resource tree. These may be particle editors/systems, or webcam streams, or objects with special functionality, we’ll try to give as much freedom as possible to extensions.
It is designed with 2d games in mind, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using all the power of XNA and drawing 3d objects if you want.
It is laid out somewhat similar to Game Maker, but with a few key differences. The main one is that it uses XNA to render the game assets and maps in the editor, this means that you’ll be able to get a preview of how the game will look like without having to launch it.
If you’re interested in taking a look at the current early progress and participating in testing or providing ideas and feedback, head over to the forum and download it. Understand that the progress is indeed early. Do not report bugs at this time. We know there are plenty of them!
September 7th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Game Maker + C#? It’s a beautiful thing.
September 7th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
I’ve deleted one comment. While all opinions are welcome, flaming and flamebait are not.
September 7th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I’m really looking forward to seeing where this goes. Good luck with your project!
September 9th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I tried using it, but I kept getting a big window with a bunch of crap saying it wouldn’t use a binding. I installed the lastest framework and XNA, but still nothing.
I’d love to see this get big though. If it does what gm does, but better, I’ll gladly switch. Plus, Aziel is so much more appealing than GameMaker! I love it.
Good luck!
September 9th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Joe: please post your error dump on the aziel board and we’ll help you get it going and hopefuly cover the problem for others
September 10th, 2009 at 6:50 am
[...] изглежда добро. http://www.messy-mind.net/2009/aziel/ в Любими преди 1 минута edno23.com Начало контакти [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Nice idea.
A whole lotta work & a long road ahead tho I think…
possibly GM might have almost caught up to where you’re trying to get by the time you finish.
Still, I’m interested.
One deal breaker for me is Shader 2 req. – sure, it’s real nice to be able to do all that post processing – *but it shouldn’t be a requirement, make it optional & fall back if Shader 2 card isn’t present* – you’re cutting out a huge % of your potential userbase with that single req. – other than that, I’ll be keeping my eye on where you go with it!
(Possibly if you take 2 years+ to release, the Shader2 problem might not even be one).
Best of luck!
September 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
dadio: There are some things I want to make available which just don’t make sense to recreate with fallbacks, but thanks for pointing that issue out. I only recently became aware that computers that don’t support sm2 even exist (I thought my old computer was as bad as anything one might call a gaming machine can be). I’ll look at some stats and think about this again.
September 15th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Steam stats say sm1.x is at around 11% and falling very slowly. I guess that’s a big enough chunk of the userbase to pay attention to.
I’ll be writing 1.4 (dx8 class hardware) fallbacks for the built-in functions.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Wow… great job copying my idea.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I started making a program like this a couple months back. good job btw
September 18th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
“”" Wow… great job copying my idea. “”"
Yeah, I think we’ve all had this idea before. It’s rather obvious really, Game Maker and Python were made for each other. Just no one with enough knowledge has attempted it before.
Good luck with this guys, I’d really love to see this work
September 18th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Ian: Do you have a running prototype/finished software? I thought not.
September 26th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Looking beautiful. I plan on following the progress on this project as closely as I possibly can.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Looking great. Its nice to see that you are making use of farseer. I have used it a lot, and it is very clean and fast. Really looking foward to a new simple game dev environment. Keep the c# coding – C# rocks my world.
October 30th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
This is great! Except for one part. XNA
I can’t use it and none of my friends can, you have to have a good comptuer to use it, not mention run at a reasonable fps. Its really cool though. Maybe sharing sources for older versions? I want to develop my own system for creating games that can be compiled etc without coding, but I can’t seem to get it to work the way I want it. But still, Great job!
November 14th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Quite frankly, I don’t really care about people who can’t run XNA. We’re in the dx11 and windows 7 era, if there are people still using pre-dx9 machines… I’m not going to hold back the countless new possibilities because of them.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
“I don’t really care about people who can’t run XNA. We’re in the dx11 and windows 7 era…”
Finally! Someone who feels the same way I do!
I think it’s very interesting and looks really awesome. I look forward to the future of this!
November 17th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I love the idea of this. Jumping from gml to C# is generally too intimidating for most. This may help those along, including myself.
November 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
this is amazing! it’s such a good idea, and it so far looks great!
-R
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Very nice project, I’m currently experimenting with C# + XNA too, integrated farseer physics and karvonite for saving loading ability. What I wonder is how you integrate the C# scripting into the game, do you use a costum compiler and load the assembly then? And where did you get that fancy syntax-editor? =)
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
If you read the forum you’ll see that we started with on the fly compilation with Reflection and have since moved on to offline compilation in the editor. The syntax editor is part of SharpDevelop. Its a pain in the ass to work with, to be honest.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Oh didn’t see there’s a forum…
I recently downloaded the sources of avalonEdit, didn’t have a close look at it yet, are you using the wpf editor or the TextEditor currently in #Develop? Looked very promising to me at first glance.
December 14th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
C#? Why not C++? >_>
December 15th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I remember when a screen of this was posted on 64digits ages and ages ago. Been wondering if it would ever show up, I had assumed it was dead.
This could be great, I might just join the forum and give it a spin. Glad you’re going c#
(Given that it uses xna, is xbox compatibility an option?)
-Elmernite
March 14th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Very cool, I hope development goes smooth with it. =)
March 21st, 2010 at 8:10 pm
@ReCreate –
XNA was built on C#. C# has the capabilites to create a program that will do such a thing such as a game maker. Check out http://quore.north-see.com , its in c# and its working beautifully. Not to mention that the .NET stuff is starting to spread as users port it over to different platforms because its just that darn useful.
April 12th, 2010 at 4:38 am
Looks great.
This is exactly what I’m looking for. I’m know GML, but that’s it.
If this has its own language, and could be as simply programmable as Game Maker, then there would be no reason for me sticking with GM.