The latest version of GameMaker: Studio (version 1.1.734) has introduced over 300 fixes and changes, and notably added support for increase and decrease operators. These operators have been a frequent request within the GameMaker community.
While this common functionality will be familiar to users of major programming languages and other engines, GameMaker has lacked this seemingly basic feature since its initial release in 1999. Mike Dailly told Game Maker Blog that the features “were pretty complicated to add” and that it “took a long time to figure out how to even go about it”. This can be attributed to GameMaker’s complex infrastructure and the relatively small team that is developing the program.
Another notable change in this version is the ability to assign variables on a single line. Dailly suggests recent changes have “started to bring the GameMaker language up to spec, as it were.”
GameMaker’s update screen provides further information on the latest changes and improvements.
Very happy YoYo added this. Along with the var name = 10, I think this is the best update! The next thing I’m waiting for is to pass arrays into scripts. <3
Nice move YoYo! Although I am so used to x+=1 and stuff 😛
Hurrah! I think GML is looking like a better and better language for development, though I would recommend adding variable declaration (i.e. “var enemyCount = 3” like Javascript). I can’t count the number of times I’ve created a new variable when I intended to assign a value to an existing one simply because I spelled the identifier incorrectly! I would also recommend forcing the “=” operator to be equality-only (“==”), since it might be confused with the assignment operator.
Please could someone explain the significance of the addition of the Increase/Decrease Operators? I’ve read a bit about them for C++ but they seem to just be equivalent to +=1 or -=1. I’m sure there must be more to it than that from people’s reaction to the news!
There’s no more to it than being a shortcut for +=1/-=1. The reason it’s such big news is because it’s so common across many, many programming languages, but has never been supported in GameMaker.
Well, turns out I misunderstood what additional actions can be taken. Start reading from this GMC post: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=563762&view=findpost&p=4165153