Game development platform recommendations?

When I created Knytt and Knytt Stories I'd recommend Multimedia Fusion 2 to everyone, but with the release of Saira and the development of this new game, I've just ran into way too many instability issues, particularily ones that is only reproducable on some particular systems. MMF2 has this huge pile of pre-compiled extensions, more than almost any similar product can offer, and yet most of them have at least a handful of features that doesn't work perfectly. There's too much to test, and a too small community to test it all, and as every extension is pre-compiled and closed source there's no way to fix them when something doesn't work. Ideally, I need a much more solid product to develop games with (one with a more powerful core and without the "pre-compiled pile"), and although MMF3 is comming and could in theory be all that, I'm dead scared they're going to keep it backwards compatible (so every currently feature must be supported, when what they really need to do is remove features), which means they'll just keep building on top of the current pile.

I might revert to MMF3 when it is out, but before that I need to switch. Problem is, I don't know what to switch to. Torque Game Builder? Unity? Something else? I don't have time to do the work in C++ since I need to do graphics, level design, sound and music too. Do you have any experience with game developing software? What would you recommend, and why?

I was about to reccomend Microsoft Visual C# but I see you don't want the hassle of code (I don't either). I can't think up anything off the top of my mind. I could say Game Maker but I don't know that much about it.

But I do think your mention of Unity has helped me!

I personally love Construct. It's still technically in beta, but it's rather stable now and definitely worth a look. It's also open source, and the plugin developers seem to be charing that mindset, although there aren't actually many third-party plugins/behaviours at the moment. The C++ SDK is pretty good too; I made a PC speaker plugin, as an example.

It also has a full integrated physics engine with box, ellipse, and arbitrary (user-drawn) collision masks, Python (which I don't like myself but is supposed to be a nice scripting language), and it's fully hardware-accelerated from the start (I understand that MMF2 only added this recently and as a hack to the existing engine).

It's missing Online and Joypad (apart from Xbox 360) plugins, but I can think of nothing else to fault.

You might like to take a look at Game Maker, but most stuff requires you to use a C++-style scripting language, so. It does have tons of plugins and extensions though.

I don't think neither game maker or construct will beat MMF2.

Both of them beat the crap out of MMF2's poor core programming options. Construct's event system is many times more powerful, and scripting is used to really take advantage of Game Maker. Construct is at the other hand really unstable at this point, and since I'm having major problems with stability issues in MMF2, I can't switch to that. Also, Construct is attempting to make everything 1-based which is wrong, objectively. The developers should know better than that. Finally, they're making the same problem as with MMF2, where extensions are pre-compiled C++ which will in the end add up to the "pile". In my world, a serious game development tool does not need pre-compiled assets unless they adds a new functionality that can absolutely not be accomplished with the program's own code language. Anything else just means the tool have a bad qualifier/class/widget system, and MMF2 greatly suffers from that.

Also, I'm interested in exporting to more formats than just PC Windows.

You might try Flash or blender. Both are used to create games, although blender has a steap learning curve, and am not entirely sure it can work for games. Flash will certainly work.

Other suggestions will involve programming one way or the other, and it basically comes to this: if you're using a tool to make a game, it will always be unstable or limited in some way.

Have you considered hiring or teaming up with a programmer?

I can never afford to hire someone. However, I don't agree with your statement either. Even indie teams of several people often use tools like Unity these days, I've met more people from indie companies that uses tools like that than companies who program their games from scratch, and I've met a lot of professional developers. And their products are more stable and efficient than mine, because they are using better products.

Of course I'm ready to do programming to some degree, I can learn a good scripting language, for example learn to use C# in Unity or Torquescript for Torque Game Builder. Flash & Actionscript would be an option, but without hardware accelerated graphics it's not really fast enough for anything like Saira. I'm just saying I'm not willing to build the game up from scratch in C++, I haven't got that amount of time.

I might actually give blender a chance.

I think you misunderstood me.

I meant to say: If I want to suggest something else, it would be a programming language. This also comes due to me not knowing many game developing tools.

I personally do like Game Maker myself, although I might be a tad biased. The extensions for Game Maker are (to my knowledge) editable in the GML (Game Maker Language), the same language used in the main program. GML is, of course, its own language, and you'd have to learn it to use it, but it was fairly easy for me to pick up, and you can always refer to the ever-useful help file, something I often do when I'm programming with it.

Game Maker is very clumsy, don't use it for serious projects.  Then again, I'd say the same thing about MMF.

Of all the things mentioned, I'd recommend Torque.  It's efficient and cross-platform, and there have already been many successful games made with it.

Nifflas, I am sure you did already, but besides asking us and other colleagues in the industry, try some specialized forums (tigsource, gamedev...).

Ok, i'm a bit biased like PickYerPoison, but i highly recommend GameMaker. It's inbuilt programming language is quite powerful, but has a simple syntax (similar to that of JavaScript). Also, for 2D games, is Torque Game Builder (TGB) developed by GarageGames, but I can't say that I ever have used it.

Finally, if you feel like taking that extra step, Unity is an extremely powerful 3D game dev engine, and uses simple syntax to get the job done. quite a lot of the editing can be done using it's WYSIWYG interface. Oh, yeah, did i mention? the basic version is 100% free, forever, no time limit. A good way to get your head around it before you buy the full package .  (yes, i do have unity as well, so i'm a bit biased on that one, too)

I've been using MMF ever since I went to a computer camp and learned about it. I've never had a problem, though I've never made such big games as you, Nifflas. For physics though, I don't think MMF is a wise choice. Construct would be better IMO but I've never evened tried it. And it's not out of beta either.

On another note, ACWL what does premium Unity have that the free version does not?

Unity looks like a tool I might use for creating games of my own. Thanks for telling about this.

The downside is that it's 3D, so there's a chance Torque Game Builder is a better choice for me. However, I do have one simple 3D game in mind I've always wanted to do even since before I created Within a Deep Forest, and Unity might be just the right thing for it.