Today I registered the Stencyl.org domain name.
For those of you who don’t know Stencyl (official site) is an up-and-coming open-source game development and distribution platform – think of it as an open source, and probably better run version of GameMaker. Quite why the creators of open source software neglected to register the .ORG of their project I don’t know, but I had been eying it up for a few days and couldn’t resist any longer.
When Stencyl is released I will probably set up some Stencyl resources on the domain, perhaps similar to GameMakerBlog and GameMakerTV, but obviously focusing on the Stencyl platform. When a version of the game creation software is finally released to the public I expect it will grow at a much quicker rate than GameMaker experienced, and hopefully, if it is any good – it will take some of GameMaker’s users as well.
From what I’ve seen so far, Stencyl appears to be aimed more at the Novice whereas GameMaker has a number of more advanced features to cater for a wider range of experiences, but only time will tell we will have to wait for the first version to be released.
I agree, i was using Game Maker few years back but even then it sucked but now, it goes down more and more
the developers are very clumsy and very slow to implement anything new
they have no ideas on how to go on with the program and they still consider of some old features that are antique now
hope they innovate something new and improve GM
on the other side http://www.scirra.com/ is what i am talking about ( light years ahead )
hope GM fans will realize that GM is not going anywhere and stop flaming and defending it when u say the truth about it
bye bye
@Quazi: Agreed, I just downloaded Construct and it’s demos yesterday and I’m proud of it, especially the fact it’s free and open-source make it better then both GM and MMF2/Clickteam crap.
http://www.scirra.com/
this is the greatest game creator on the market out there, its better that mmf2 and gamemaker slapped toghether and i highly suggest you try it out, and its capable of doing anything gamemaker and mmf2 can do, also more since its fully hardware accelerated and can use direct x 8 pixel shader 2.0 effects. its currently still beta, but it is open sourced and free so thats a plus,
please everyone, realise gamemaker sucks, its clumsy, and only staying alive due to its name. nothing else
I think Stencyl’s initial release will be quite big and popular but then I think it’ll do something different. Normally projects like this go dead in the water after the initial hype. People get bored of it and it just gets left. But I think Stencyl will stay popular, due to the constant updating of new kits.
At least, I hope that’s what will happen. It would be a shame for a project like this to loose popularity.
Thanks for popping by Justin and providing us with some more information. One major benefit I see that Stencyl will have over Game Maker is the fact that it is open-source so there should be a community writing extensions and constantly improving the software.
I am certainly looking forward to the release of Stencyl to see what it truly has to offer, and as Robin said earlier hopefully this will give YoYo a kick up the backside to actually do some visible work on GameMaker which has been receiving much more criticism in recent months.
‘Ello everyone, Justin (aka Forest Hunter) here. I’m Stencyl’s PR manager and I’d like to clear up some misconceptions.
Stencyl is not designed to be a simple level maker. It makes full blown games with a large array of capabilities. At launch you’ll be able to make anything from platformers to turn based strategy games.
Stencyl derives a lot of its power from a robust trigger system (akin to Warcraft 3’s). With triggers you can do many things. That is what most users will use to make their creations, and for most users it will suffice. If you want to make your game go beyond the capabilities that come with Stencyl, then you can program additional capabilities using Java. With Java you can make your own kits, add onto existing ones, or even add onto Stencyl itself (since it is open source as per the BSD license).
Thanks for your time and understanding.
Justin “Forest Hunter”, Stencyl PR Manager
I’ve been eying this since last winter when the rumblings of it started 🙂
I think it’ll compete with the “Drag & Drop” GM audience, and make wack some sense into YoYo to provide more for free, and charge for pre-created dll and libs for GM instead of for GM.
Robin
Personally I think we will see a release of Stencyl before the year is out. And with it being open-source there should be a lot of extenstions and resources that will be developed for it. So once it is released I think it will quickly expand as the community help to build it.
Actually, I’m taking back what I said about Stencyl. It’s pretty extendable and potentially could have the same functionality as GM eventually. I look forward to its release (though that could be years from now).
I think it will be quicker and easier to make games with Stencyl, but you probably won’t be able to do quite as much as you can with GM.
Maybe some of the newer users on YoYo will migrate away from GM and stop posting crappy games with descriptions like “I made this in 5 minutes, don’t be to hard on me, rate it high!” and screenshots that are actually pac-man sprites…
– Leif
Yeah, I’ve seen that program before, I do want to try it to be honest, looks like it’s got potential.
Yes, after taking some more time to look into Stencyl it appears to be more of a glorified level editor than something like GameMaker, however no doubt the newbs will love it.
It looks very simple. I’m thinking that it probably won’t be advanced enough in comparison as Game Maker but people who want to make simple games to show off will love it.
Congrats on the domain registration though.