Top 5 Game-Maker Wishlist

TENTATIVE AREA

The question: If Game-Maker were to have received one last update, what are the top five features or fixes you would ask for?

Responses

EJR Tairne/A-J Games:

1. Fixed idle sequences (maybe a choice of five idle sequences, A-E, with A being overall default; on completion, any animation sequence can be set to default to any of the five idle sequences).
2. Grant monsters the same abilities as characters (optionally affected by, and affect, BBL properties; HP and special counters; different sizes; different animations; ability to birth other monsters).
3. Fixed scrolling (several options: keep centered, auto-scroll, screen-by-screen).
4. Improved music support (MIDI, .MOD).
5. On-screen stats (with some options about what to display, where, and how).

Matthew Groves:

I probably would have answered differently 15 years ago, but I think a scripting language (a custom language like with ZZT or even something like Lua) would have been very handy, and would have resulted in a larger variety of game types.

If you had asked me when I was 15, I would have probably said that I wanted to make a CD-ROM sized game, so the ability to include and use large assets like voice tracks, background music, video, etc.

Josh Turcotte:

I don't really even know anymore, it's been so long since I had any interaction with it; certainly larger creature sprites would have been nice, but I remember nothing more.

James W. Morris

1. The ability to construct multi-tile non-player sprites
2. The ability to print text to the screen, and define when and where it would appear
3. The ability to assign hit point values to non-player sprites
4. The ability to define a player HUD with tweakable parameters such as health bar, currency/points earned, inventory item selected, etc.
5. Lite scripting functionality that allows tiles to listen for particular events, and respond with an action.

Sylvain Martin/PPP Team

1. Editable music,
2. separate background (at least 1 parallax layer) and
3. clipping of monsters when they approach borders are the definite things I think that will lack forever. Then, I would put
4. gravity-sensible monsters and possibly
5. hitpoints for monsters.

Stats

******* Improved monsters (size, properties, abilities, behaviors)

** Improved music (format support and/or editor)

** Customizable HUD

** Some kind of optional scripting functionality

* Improved idle sequences

* Improved scrolling

* In-game text field support

* Improved multimedia support (large video or audio clips)

* Multiple background layers (scrolling or transparency)