Image credit – Copyright crystal shard- Game A tale of two kingdoms

What is the price of this editor ?

It is completely free of cost. You can even create game and distribute it for free or commercially. The editor is not so huge and is only 7MB installer that runs on Windows XP and higher operating systems.

What are the features of this game ?

You should take a look at this.
You should have .NET 2.0 installed on your computer but you don’t need it while distributing your game. Game engine will take care of the runtime environment during deployment.

Can I create Multiplatform games with this IDE ?

Though IDE is windows-only. You can create games that runs on windows, linux and DOS. these games can run from resolution of 320×200 to 1024×768.

Does it supports scripting ?

It has it’s own java/c# style scripting language. If you have experience with these languages then you will find it easy to work around this scripting language.

What about Developer License ?

AGS has no objection if you compile and distribute games freely or commercially. But there are some license terms that chris wants you to take a look at. You should read those terms before publishing any commercial game.

So if you are interested in point-and-click adventure game then download AGS studio. Have Fun.

Free or Paid ?

It is paid application. It costs €9.95 bucks for the product.

What are the features ?

- Editor with example scripts
- More than 55 affectors, emitters, observers, handlers and renderers
- PhysX support
- Particle System LOD
- Soft particles
- Atlas texture support and atlas tool
- Manual, tutorial and API description
- And more …

New version of particle universe is just released. That is version 1.1, so if you want to check it you can do so at FXpression site.

Official Quote :

* Get complete first chapter of the epic 5-episode adventure. Free one day only. If swallowed, induce vomiting.

Know more about game here.

Here is list of free graphics related tools. 

Vector-based drawing tools

Vector graphics is represented by points, lines, curves and surface instead of pixel as within bitmap graphics.

InkScape

Inkscape is having interface similar to CorelDraw. It is basically an SVG editor. 

Skencil

This is another vector drawing application. It’s interactive and flexible interface makes it good tool for illustration, diagrams and other graphics purpose. Unfortunately, it’s not for windows users.

Sodipodi

It’s also an SVG editor like Inkscape. But its interface is more like GIMP (image manipulation program). 

Synfig

Synfig is more of a 2D animation tool so it also fits in the category of vector illustrator tool. 

Raster-based drawing tools

These tools are more for bitmap drawing tools. 

GIMP 

GIMP stands for gnu image manipulation program. It is free/open source software that you can use for raster drawing as well as picture manipulation as well. 

Paint.NET

This software started as replacement for MS paint. But later more features incorporated in it. 

Krita

It is included in Koffice suite so if you’ve KDE installed on your linux box then chances are that this tool comes installed with Koffice suite. It has features similar to GIMP. 

KolourPaint

This is another KDE application for linux users. It has interface similar to MS Paint. 

Graphciscale

There is freeware version with some limited features available. You can use freeware version to carry out graphics work of game. 

Terrain & Map editing tools

For 2D & 3D there are few free alternatives for terrain & map editing tools. Some of them are listed below:

TileStudio

Tilestudio is geared more towards 2D games. It has following features: Level editor, Sprite editor, Map editor, output in multiple programming languages. 

DeleD-Lite

3D level designer with limited functions in lite version. 

Terragen

A tool for rendering landscapes, good for background graphics.  

3D modeling

There are plenty of open source/freeware tools available for 3D modeling.

Blender

This is very famous 3D modeler around. It is free, open source and has game engine as well. It is even used to develop commercial quality animated movies with this tool. 

OpenFX

This is another powerful 3D modeler used by many open source games.

Wings3D

It is also free and comes with steep learning curve. If you like working with blender then you’ll love this tool as well. 

Misfit-Model 3D

This is also 3D modeler which supports many file formats and allows skeletal animation. 

Truespace

This software supports Modeling, animation, rendering and it is free as well. 

This list is work in progress. If you know any free-resource in any category not listed then please feel free to post about it in comments.

What are sprites?

Sprites are graphical objects like trees/clouds/hero/villans/bullets and so much to list. Sprites can be created with help of image editing tools like photoshop, paint.net, Gimp etc. If you’re not into the sprite designing then you can even download the free & legal sprites for your game. There are many open source games that allows you to reuse the sprites in your game.

For demonstrational purpose you can get the sprites from http://spriters-resource.com

Sprite editor

Gamemaker has built in sprite editor that allows you to choose the actions of animated sprite. We have two ways to open sprite editor : First you can right click on “Sprite” folder in left hand sidebar and click “New Sprite”, this will open up the sprite properties dialog.

Second way to open sprite properties is click on “Resources” menu and then click on “Create Sprite”. 

To name your sprite click the “Name” field and enter the name of your sprite. To load the graphics(sprite) you have to click “Load sprite” button. That will open up the Sprite editor window where you can set the width & height of the sprite.

Now make your sprite “transparent” so that it can easily blend with the rest of the graphics in the game. You can easily see the difference when you uncheck this option, your character shows colored edges which sets itself differently from the rest of the game graphics.

Once you’ve done with it then click OK to close the dialog box.

Animated Sprites

If you’re using animated sprites then you’ve to cautiously use the width & height in Edit sprite dialog box. so that each frame of the sprite is properly selected without cutting any edge of character/object. 

While creating animated sprites you can select smooth edges option in ‘sprite properties” dialog box.

Hope this information helps.If you’ve any questions then feel free to post them here.

First of all, I would like to apologize if this guide is somewhat sketchy. I tried to make it as simple as possible,Onward and upward!

Step 1: Open up Game Maker!

The first thing you will notice is that you may not have all the options I do. I also have Game Maker Pro, available for $20 (and WELL worth the money!). To get the additional options, go to File ? Advanced mode. Take note that this is NOT required, and I myself rarely use the Advanced options. Additional options can be daunting, so keep what your comfortable with.

Step 2: Make your first sprite

A sprite is a representation of an object. Like if you draw a stop sign, you are showing a visual representation of that object (the stop sign). Same idea.

Go ahead and make your first Sprite. Do this by clicking the little “red pac-man” at the top of Game Maker. You should get a screen similar to the one below:

What you want to do here is go ahead and give your Sprite a Name. Just name it something meaningful that you can look at and instantly know, “oh that is my <whatever>”. Trust me, proper naming now can save you extra time and frustration later.

After doing that, click on the Load Sprite button. You should be dropped in the Game Maker bundled images folder by default. Select any image you like to represent your new Sprite; NOTE that this will be the Object’s image (the Stop sign again: if you want it to look like a stop sign, you need to draw a stop sign (or in this case, select the stop sign image)).

After that, your screen should look like this:

I named my Sprite “MyBall” and chose the Maze Craze 3.0 default ball image to represent it. Go ahead and click the confirmation checkmark & “OK” button in that mini-window.

Step 3: Make it real

So you have a nice little sprite… but it doesn’t represent anything yet! You need to link it to an Object! Fear not, it is as simple as the last step, but can eventually become a very fun step (and several) once you play around with the various Events. Enough big words, more objects!

Now, click on the New Object button – the blue ball at the top. You should get a new mini-window again, and your screen should now look like this:

Notice how it looks similar to the New Sprite window. But there are all these funky buttons and tabs on the right! Gasp!

For the time being, ignore them. We are focusing on making the object, not making the object’s Events. Go and Name your Object (using the same name as the sprite can be very effective at keeping things clean). Then where it says Sprite, click that little menu icon and select your Sprite. Yay! Your done now! 

If it is, click OK and proceed to the next step!

Step 4: Roomy is good

Alright, you have your Sprite (visual representation) and your Object (computer representation). Good. Now we need a place to put them (they are now linked, so you will only see the visual representation- the sprite). Go up to the top of the Game Maker window, like so…

And click the button that looks like a window (as in computer program window, not a building window). That is a lot of stuff for such a small space, huh? Lets make it bigger, shall we?

Ah, thats more like it. Now notice the grid there in the main portion of the window, and your sprite is appearing there on the left sidebar. If you create multiple objects, clicking the sprite will show a list of all of them. You can also click the small menu icon below to see the same list. There is a list of key shortcuts and commands as well.

Lets go ahead and place the Object into the Room (the grid there- by the way, the grid can be toggled AND resized to your needs). Do this by simply clicking where you want it to go!

Game Maker should look similar to this::

Step 4: 01101101010101

Alright, you are ready to test. Go ahead and click the OK checkmark there in the top left, and save your work. You should be back at the main Game Maker screen:

Now, click the Green “play” arrow at the top. (The Red arrow is used for debugging, when coding in the Game Maker Language (GML). Most users will not need it, and if they do, only later on with a lot of experience. It can be noted that Maze Craze, the popular game I made with Game Maker Pro, uses NO GML code.)

Your game should compile, and a loading screen appear. Wait for it to load, and you should get your Room, with your Sprite representing your (not visible to you) Object.

Congratulations! Thats it! Tinker with the Events (the buttons on the right of the Object window) and the Room options to get your Object moving. Double clicking items in the left side of the Game Maker window will bring up their Properties windows, allowing you to edit them easily anytime. Almost everything can be customized, including that Loading screen. Enjoy!