GMS2 or Paper2D

[Erostar]

I was just wanting to get the opinion from the Game Maker community on this. Wanting to make a 2d rpg, and was just wondering if Game Maker Studio 2 is a good choice, or if I should just jump into Paper2D with Unreal4. Unreal4 is obviously cheaper upfront, I just wanted opinions from the community. Thanks.

[sylvain_ch21]

2D RPG is quiet a vast thing.

depend what you are looking to achieve exactly
(also note that it's near a full year I didn't use UE4 paper2d so I don't know if any major update have been added to it)

My personnal choice: GMS2

pros:
- if you don't plan mobile/console. The desktop is quit cheap and no royalties. For mobile/console depend how serious you are about making money from your games.
- For pur 2D, GMS2 is the right choice. It's designed for this.
- room editor
- sprite editor (allowing even live edition while playing animation - for spritesheet animation)
- for sprite bone animation, spine integated by yoyogames (some very advanced user miss some features, but personnally for what I've used for now, everything worked - bones anim, event, deformed meshes, skins, slot attachment -)
support advanced effects
- particles (3rd particle editor are available)
- shader

cons:
- no real OO (but improvement on that are in the roadmap - no deadline)
- still some little bugs/missing feature in the IDE (loss of focus in code editor when switching from tabs, no code folding, snippets... also on the road map) // reason I use atom as 2nd gml editor.
- or some little things; for some default that can't be easly customized, I like having pivot of my sprite middle center, but default is top left
- 3D is... well require efforts, for limited result :p if you want to do good lightning effect, etc, need to be fluent with shader languages (HLSL, GLSL)




For UE4 paper2d
pro
- AAA engine for free (but 5% royalty fee if you make enough profit)
- particles editor
- powerful material editor (with support for shader in hlsl cross compiling to glsl in it)
- OO (C++)
- dynamic lightning
- can easily mix 3D and 2D (you can also use only 3D, and just fix the camera to have a top-down fake 2D view, or same for a side view platformer; if you add some cartoonish shader on that, can be not so easy to detect it's fake 2D)


cons
- it's main purpose is 3D, so paper2d isn't at front for update/features improvement
- need for a 3rd image image&sprite editor


NB:
for both also community develop tools, lib. So depending what your actual software workflow is based on. You should check what they help to add.

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

Depending on the type of 2D RPG you're looking to make you could consider looking into any of the various RPG Maker versions out there.

[TeKidder]

Clickteam Fusion 2.5 is also a great tool you should look into.

[NGMZeroX]

I wonder if you tried something like RPG maker, there is many RPG tutorials for game maker studio arround. I just think RPG games can get complex really fast. and if you are working alone. you will need alot of time spent on the project. no matter how small it is.

[darksouls]

Originally posted by HappyHappyist:

I was just wanting to get the opinion from the Game Maker community on this. Wanting to make a 2d rpg, and was just wondering if Game Maker Studio 2 is a good choice, or if I should just jump into Paper2D with Unreal4. Unreal4 is obviously cheaper upfront, I just wanted opinions from the community. Thanks.

They both suck, use both and decide based on your own ability VS timetable.

Remember, being a programmer is about solving problems. And no matter the engine/tool/lib you WILL face problems.