Game development platform recommendations?

$1200 

i wouldn't even pay that much for a laptop.....

anyway, Blender is open source and free, and I can't see any water mark?

oh yeah some programs can seem to be at a ridicilous high prize. But then programs like these can make a living for you. So yeah.

I'd say get pirated version of whatever you are getting.

I'd say get pirated version of whatever you are getting.

*gasp!* I can't believe you said that on a public forum! Nah, I'm kidding. Though I think if you get Unity pirated it might have compatibility issues with licenses and stuff.

<offtopic> Opensource ftw!!  </offtopic>

lets get back on topic. 

Judging from the fact that Iji was created in Game Maker, Spelunky was also created in Game Maker, and more other noteworthy games were created in Game maker, I would suggest...


...Game Maker! You guessed it!

Game maker games tend to have frameskip issues, from my experience (no it's not my computer's fault).

It's not that Game Maker can't make good games.  It's that Game Maker games are universally really, really resource-inefficient, so graphics and physics have to be pretty simple.  Windows-only, too.

Right.  Recent versions of wine were to run all the game maker games I tried them on, albeit without sound effects (background music worked fine) and some window issues (I don't know if these were due to my window manager's tiling or whatever but they were all fixed by using the "emulate virtual desktop" thing).

I think it would be better if I sticked to something multi-platform though, it's a more accessible way for people than running emulators or wine.

I am completely ignorant on this subject.
I want to say, though, that I used to think Game Maker was a bad tool until I found Glum Buster and, later, Spelunky. I can really imagine a Nifflas game being made with it.
However, it is not compatible with Linux, which is an issue for me. Blender would be great, from that point of view and the fact that it is free/open-source just makes it more attractive, as I think we should all embrace this philosophy.
I am very glad to see Nifflas go multi-platform.

Judging from the fact that Iji was created in Game Maker, Spelunky was also created in Game Maker, and more other noteworthy games were created in Game maker, I would suggest...


...Game Maker! You guessed it!

Just to back you up, VDWeller, I do believe Cave Story was also made in Game Maker, but I don't know this for sure.
And I think that Game Maker's good for both beginners and advanced programmers, but, if you're really advanced, you should program it from scratch.

Just to back you up, VDWeller, I do believe Cave Story was also made in Game Maker

I'm quite certain that's not true, as I've never heard about that anywhere, all game maker games (at least the ones I've seen) have a loading screen and the ones I have tried don't run on WINE.

it is possible to remove the loading screen, however Cave story was almost definitely not made in GM. The style of the game is similar to that of MMF2, or a from-scratch coding.

Cave Story: On the right side of the page, you'll notice it says "engine: custom"