Will these bundles come back, or should I get the software elsewhere?
Can they come back? Sure as you said they've been rebundled in the past so seeing another bundle that includes them is not out of the question but it's not guaranteed that they will.
As for recommendations maybe try Unity or Unreal Engine if you haven't. Both are free and you can sell your games (I don't know what the conditions are in unity but in UE4 you don't have to worry about anything while you make less than $3000 per quarter, after which you have a 5% royalty)
Unity is a lot friendlier when it comes to 2D games as their 2D tools are a lot more developed than UE, however I'm not sure if it has a built in visual scripting language like Unreal does (I haven't used it in over a year so they could have added that recently and I missed it, I am however seeing some good features coming up in newer 2018 versions). There are a few different visual scripting plugins you can get from the asset store I'm not sure about their prices, but last I checked they were in the $50-$100 range. If you want to try it you can check out Brackeys, that's the only Unity channel that I know and follow and his videos/tutorials are good + beginner friendly. The asset store also has a ton free projects and assets which you can use to learn or help you achieve what you need
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Thanks for the recommendations! If I were to make 3D games, I'd use UE for sure, but yeah, it's not ideal for 2D.
As for Unity, one can use it for free until their annual gross revenue or funds raised exceeds $100k, and Unity Plus (25$ a month) until they exceed $200k (Pro is 125$ a month). Not sure if they get to downgrade if their revenue goes down, but I would assume so.
Unity does not have a built-in visual scripting language. The one that is considered the best from what I heard, Playmaker, is 65$, which isn't that bad I suppose, if that's the only paid asset you're getting, but I'd like to try it before paying that much, which is to the best of my knowledge, sadly, not an option. There are also some free visual scripting assets in the asset store, but I'm not sure how good any of them are. I might give them a try, but I don't think they're comparable with either Playmaker (which isn't even as good as UE's Blueprint, from what I read) or that of a game engine that has it built in. We'll see, once I get around to trying them.
Thanks again, for answering. :)
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Unity was an interesting choice back when they had the option of paying once for a lifetime access to the engine. After they switched to a monthly subscription model I lost interest.
As for Unreal Engine the 5% royalty is quite a turn off. Not only because it's 5% of gross revenue rather than profit but because you have to send them the report for royalty every quarter of of a year (4 times a year) which is bothersome and I imagine it being a real pain in the ass to track once you have multiple games being sold.
Also while 5% doesn't seem that much by itself, when you count in taxes, the ~30% cut most digital stores take and possibly marketing costs then you really don't want to pay that 5% royalty on top of all of that.
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As far as I am aware you don't need UWP exporter. Normal windows games should work on Windows 10...
GameMaker is an engine a good amount of great indie games was made in. However I don't think you should feel bad for missing out on its bundle. There has been GameMaker 2 for a while now and as far as I know the original GameMaker (the one that was in the bundle) is no longer being updated. So if you wanted improved engine, more features, better support and what not you'd have to purchase GM2.
Clickteam Fusion 2.5 seems to be an engine that's mostly focused towards people who aren't good with coding such as yourself. I don't really know much about it, but I've been talking with one developer who is using it and he likes it. He's an artist so coding isn't really his territory and he is satisfied with what he can do in that engine. He's currently making a roguelike space shooter with it.
Anyway both engines were bundled more than once so far, so I assume they might get bundled again one day.
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Thanks for the answer and the info! I didn't realize it was a previous version of GameMaker that was given away, not the new one, so that's good to know.
Clickteam Fusion 2.5 seems ideal so far. Fusion 3 is supposedly going to come out at some point but I'm not sure it's worth waiting for, as the release date is still a mystery, so yeah.
As for that game you linked, it looks fantastic so far! I'm not really into shooter games, but the graphics are incredible. I love his style.
I really hope they are. I can live with playing around with the free versions and seeing what I can do for now, but I'd like to get more serious with it at some point.
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Oh, I didn't even know they were working on CTF-3. I wonder will owners of 2.5 get a discount, probably not. In this case it might be worth just waiting for CTF-3 instead of buying CTF-2.5. Or you could start messing around with the free version of 2.5 and then if you like it buy CTF-3 when it comes out and transfer your project to it and get serious.
If you like the artstyle of that game take a look at Death Skid Marks which is a game he previously made with another developer (that other guy was programmer who as far as I know used his own engine). Unfortunately the screenshots don't look that good because they have some crappy filter over them that you can actually turn off in game to get clear graphics.
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Unless they give a large discount or put it into a bundle like 2.5, I doubt I could afford CTF-3, at least not right after it comes out. I guess we'll see if/when it happens.
Thanks for the game rec! Looks interesting. Not sure I'd enjoy playing it myself, but I may look at some gameplay videos if the mood strikes. :)
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I came here to recommend just Unity. Don't bother getting clickteam-fusion as it's just a wrapper interface (you can find those free on the asset store).
You can get a number of 2D game engines freely. I'd recommend the open source Anura Engine. The dev team is nice, they have lots of love for their game Frogatto & Friends, and they support fellow indie devs who want to use their engine.
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Would you mind explaining what you mean when you say fusion is just a "wrapper interface"? I quick google search didn't turn up anything useful for that expression.
Thanks for the recommendation! I looked into it, and this page says that I need to learn to program in FML/FFL, which means it doesn't have a visual scripting option. If I ever got proficient at learning how to code, I may give it a try, but as of now, I couldn't really use it.
Thanks for the answer. :)
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"wrapper interface" is a concept from programming (kind of), it means something that isn't "doing" anything on it's own, but instead "wrapping" something that does, simply showing a different (maybe better) interface.
A good example is Linux UI, it doesn't actually "do" anything by it's own, but it provides a pretty user interface that allows users to do the same actions as they would by running linux commands, using UI instead.
Another example is add blockers in your browser. When you're using an add blocker, it takes the functionality of the browser (showing web pages) and "wrappes" it by adding it's own functionality (not showing adds). So it's not really performing the main functionality (which is to show web content) but uses it and modifies the way user interacts with it.
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I'm so sorry, I was mistaking CT Fusion for Axis Game Factory, which is mostly just an overlay for Unity.
You're really putting the cart before the horse with the learning process. People learn how to code by making programs they're interested in, they don't somehow learn everything and then start their projects. I didn't read the part about you wanting to visually script it though.
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Oh, I see! No problem.
I think people need at least the basics of programming before they start their projects though. I tried learning programming before but I never really got to the point where I could use what I learned. I thought I would have an easier time if I started off with visual scripting.
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that depends, most likely there wont be (for those popular games/app)
but if they've been rebundled, then yes theyll come back sooner or later
still, who knows?
just PnP (Pray and Pray) for rebundle or click trade button above and also PnP lol
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Thank you for the offer! :) I think I'll try the free versions of some of the software before I decide. I wouldn't want to take it and then not use it.
Also, is the Studio Pro version GameMaker 1.4, so from before GameMaker Studio 2 came out, or does it correspond to one of the versions here? I can't really find any info on a version that's called 'Pro'.
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I'm guessing it's 1.4. When I try to go to the Store page for it, Steam just redirects to the homepage.
Maybe the forum thread has some useful info for you.
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Thank you! I looked up the differences between 1 and 2, and 1 does seem a good software still. The only concern seems to be incompatibility with future systems, but if I only used it for windows, it should be fine because of its backward-compatibility.
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So here's the thing. I just recently became aware of bundles and all that, so I missed a lot of good stuff, some of which I really would have wanted to get. Specifically, I'm wistful over the Clickteam Fusion 2.5 bundle from 2016, and the GameMaker Studio bundle from 2017 right now. And yes, I know that second one was a rebundle, which makes my question kind of silly, but is it, like, guaranteed that they come back at some point? If so, can we know when that might happen? :/
I thought about trading for the bundles, but I could only find parts of them, not all the parts I would have wanted from the bundles. For example, I couldn't find the UWP Exporter for Clickteam Fusion 2.5. Well, it's around 20€ on G2A, but that's a bit much if I could get the whole bundle with everything for 15$, and I'm not sure I should trust that site in the first place. >> (Also, does Clickteam Fusion 2.5 not export games compatible with Windows 10 by itself for real? Because my PC is Win10, so that would suck a lot. And if it does, is the UWP Exporter actually only for Xbox One?)
On a slightly different note, which game engine would you recommend to a beginner at game making? I'm more of an artist and I can't code to save my life, so visual scripting would be ideal. I'd like to make 2D top-down/isometric games, more story focused than fighting. It'd be nice I could get it for cheap, eg. in a bundle like those two I mentioned above, or on a sale. Preferably not subscription based, and I eventually want to be able to sell my games after I get better, on a variety of platforms if possible. RPG Maker is nice and fun to use and all, but it's very limited, so not that one. I'd love, love, love to use Godot, but like I said, I can't code, and the visual scripting they implemented is incredibly confusing to me. If you think either Clickteam Fusion 2.5 or GameMaker Studio is not a good game engine for any reason, or just unsuitable for me specifically, please let me know.
Thank you! :)
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