Comments on: Game Maker for PSP to be shown at Polish Game Developers Convention

By: greenTechPLUS+ YoYo’s First PSP Title » Game Maker Blog

greenTechPLUS+ YoYo’s First PSP Title » Game Maker Blog — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:56:26 +0000

[...] has been heard about YoYo Games’ plans for PSP in the last six months since it was shown off at a Polish Game Creation Convention. As a PSPMini the game should also be playable on the [...]

By: Jwz..

Jwz.. — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:54:46 +0000

Thanks for your reply

Ofcourse, a runner doesnt have to be slow at all. But when im comparing a compiled language with a GM application, looking at speed in ms you can see a relatively huge difference!

And when it comes to GM, it doesnt matter if the executables are compiled or not. Because the current GM executables only work on windows.* While theyre using a runner. So if the executables are platform dependent anyway, then why wouldnt we use a compiler? And you could write multiple compilers ( LOL )

*(Although it might be possible to use it on Unix based Operating Systems using wine i guess.)

By: James

James — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:15:01 +0000

If you compile anything, you lock to that platform. To gain support for more than the PC, you have to have a runner. It is the best way.

A runner can work just as well as compilation providing it is written properly. (well, it will not work as well, but it won’t be noticeable).

“it’s extreme slow.” – I really doubt you can tell. Looks fast to me.

For an upcoming project, we are being very tight with our runner, so it is extremely efficient. We will port it to consoles like PSP, Wii, etc. but it will also be open source (actually a legal requirement for us), so people will port it to the other consoles if they wish.

By: Jwz..

Jwz.. — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:15:06 +0000

Rewriting the game maker engine is useless. All youve got to do is rewrite the runner. And even if you rewrite the runner, no-one will know if its faster.

Just spend some many and stuff and write a real compiler.

Or easier: Convert GML to a compilable language, take an opensource compiler for it and integrate it in GM!

Voilla, on peut compiler GM games.

By: Rusky

Rusky — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:20:49 +0000

Because rewriting software is rarely the solution. New code is 100% untested so you get to waste time fixing bugs that have already been fixed and new bugs that would never have existed.

By: Philip Gamble

Philip Gamble — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:02:34 +0000

In an interview with GMIndie Mike and Russell discussed this very point. Below is a quote from our summary of points discussed in the podcast:

Runner: Improve performance of games running on PC using what has been learnt whilst working on PSP. GML can be compiled to virtual machine code which is then interpreted.

By: Philip Gamble

Philip Gamble — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:00:27 +0000

Wondered if there would be a comment on coldplay. I rather like them though they are a corner-stone of my ‘mellow’ (or should that be depressing…) playlist on Spotify.

By: Gmfreaky

Gmfreaky — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:04:49 +0000

I wonder why they didn’t rewrite the whole Game Maker engine including runner etc. yet… it’s extreme slow. Yes: it takes a while, but what do you get: a lot faster engine, more stable, and if you do it right: you compile it crossplatform and you have GameMaker for windows, mac, linux.

By: SunnyKatt

SunnyKatt — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:37:27 +0000

I want these optimizations, hardware acceleration, and native multi-threading in GM now. *prays*

By: James

James — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:58:21 +0000

I agree Fred and Phil. They may have made their runner completely optimized to run that specific game (the only one they’ve been testing properly; as completed game), and it may run like a hog on anything else.

The PSP is well capable of doing GM games, they just need to hardware accelerate and dump all of Mark’s layers in the runner. Fewer loops, and so on.

Also I have never liked Coldplay.