I want to start this article with maybe another delusion for some of you. If want to create games, you will need to be able to code. Period. Yes, there is some programs that claim you can create your game without any knowledge in programming but this is not what a real game is made of.
If know people who are reluctant in learning to code and they don't see how much work they have trying to find the perfect software that will do the work for them, and then see their ideas being wasted because of the software limitations.
So, if you are in this path stop trying to find shortcuts. There ARE shortcuts and I will tell about them here, but you will still need to code.
Let's see how much programming knowledge you will need.
Programming Languages
You probably know the basics: In order to create a software, that is, a word processor, a web browser, or a game you need to tell the machine what to do, and you do that coding, writing text that the machine is able to understand.
That are a lot of programming languages and since the beginning people were arguing what was the best of all, the silver bullet. And it simply that's no such thing. They have different characteristics for different problems. When I started to learn them to create games, about 15 years ago one of the most famous was C/C++.
At that time, game engines were rare, and the ones that existed were expensive, so I tried to learn C/C++ with an API called Allegro. It was a set of functions that helped the process of a game creation. But still, a lot of work to be able to create a simple game up and running in a few minutes.
If you choose to create games with the basic tools (programming languages) you have a lot of work. You will need to worry about double buffer techniques, memory management and more technical issues that will slow down the process significantly.
Today we have a vast choice of game engines available who will do the heavy work for you, and without taking much of the freedom to create games. And that is the best shortcut you can have, work with game engines instead of raw coding.
Game Engines
Game engines, now are different of a game API. They have an IDE where you can work better, you normally have folders to keep your images, models, music. To understand this see a game engine like a craft table with a set of tools. You have the practicality of all tools right there for you, but you are limited to create something along with the table size.
But yo be honest this will work for most of people. There are already hundreds of commercial games created on engines, and know they are popular we have the new discussion. Which engine is the better?
We can always discuss preferences but it's really a bad thing to do saying which one is better. This topic has been discussed for all over the internet and I will not do it again. For this course I will use the engine that I use for my games: Game Maker Studio.
Game Maker
Game Maker is a mainly 2D engine. You can have 3D on it, but it's not created for it. Here you can find the 2015 showreel of gamemaker's games:
You can find more famous games created with it here:
http://www.yoyogames.com/showcase
Next we will going to talk more about GameMaker.
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