[HN Gopher] YoYo Games Is Now Part of Opera
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       YoYo Games Is Now Part of Opera
        
       Author : doppp
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2021-01-20 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.yoyogames.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.yoyogames.com)
        
       | otar wrote:
       | I still remember the days when as a child (age 11-12 or smth) I
       | was asking my parent few more hours before bed to complete
       | another chapter of my game in GameMaker. It was such a fun,
       | probably it pushed me towards coding.
       | 
       | Mark Overmars, thank you!
        
       | yNeolh wrote:
       | Wow, Game Maker 5.1 or something like that is how I started
       | programming, Its drag & drop was super easy to use, and then you
       | could add code blocks and program in a language near to C I
       | think.
       | 
       | I didn't like the YoyoGames look and prices, but GM and its
       | author Marks Overmas, which I think left the project years ago,
       | are part of my past so I really hope with this acquisition they
       | can make it work.
        
         | decko wrote:
         | Same here! Mark was like a hero to me back then as I was
         | learning Delphi (which Game Maker was written in at the time)
         | as a teenager. I even asked him some questions about Delphi but
         | I don't remember if he answered.
        
         | iratewizard wrote:
         | I'm in the same boat, having Game Maker as my first
         | introduction to programming. When I was using it, though, drag
         | & drop + scripting hit a wall pretty quickly and you have to
         | figure out how to create a dll.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | Otter Browser tries to be a libre rebirth of Opera 12, BTW.
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | I hope they continue to support and improve GM!
        
       | dgellow wrote:
       | Opera has become such a weird company and product. Does anyone
       | understand what they are trying to do?
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Trying to survive I guess, hunting for the portfolio that will
         | keep them afloat.
        
         | jakub_g wrote:
         | The takeover sounds weird at first, but
         | https://www.opera.com/gx is actually probably a good idea.
         | 
         | Mainstream browsers like Chrome are generic those days and
         | believe they deserve 100% CPU, RAM and network. Innovation in
         | UI/UX have been stagnant with little changes. Most development
         | is about APIs and other internals. Anything that will have
         | impact on less than 2B users is not prioritized / not worth the
         | effort. And doing significant changes for 2B users is risky.
         | 
         | Meanwhile Opera takes a market niche, bundles multiple things
         | to target this market niche and improve their UX considerably.
         | 
         | The browser is _user agent_ but the market leaders sometimes
         | forget it. Then smaller players show up and often come with
         | some really nice things.
        
           | keeganpoppen wrote:
           | the ability to run the browser throttled at < 25% CPU and
           | 500MB of RAM is actually amazing if you like having the
           | audacity to keep your browser open while playing any modern
           | video game
        
       | butz wrote:
       | How GameMaker compares to Godot Engine?
        
         | lightspot21 wrote:
         | I've used both. Godot is so, so much more natural and flexible.
        
       | TomGullen wrote:
       | Interesting move, and looks like it was sold for $10MM, down
       | $6.4mm from their initial sale to Playtech (although some of that
       | price might be performance related bonuses). I would of thought
       | given the Covid pandemic GameMaker should of benefited.
       | 
       | Looks like a potential focus on the Opera GX browser which I'm
       | still not entirely sure what the benefit of the product is
       | exactly. I expect will be made clear in time!
       | 
       | (Disclosure am a founder of a competing company in the space)
        
         | einszwei wrote:
         | > I would of thought given the Covid pandemic GameMaker should
         | of benefited.
         | 
         | I can confirm this. A few of my friends picked up game
         | development as hobby. Although they went for Construct 3
         | because it had better UI and was based on web technologies.
         | 
         | EDIT: Was pleasantly surprised to know that you are working on
         | construct.
        
           | waynecrescent wrote:
           | >based on web technologies
           | 
           | how is that a plus?
        
             | einszwei wrote:
             | Primarily because it is easier compared to compiling
             | binaries for different OSs. It is quicker to get something
             | simple running and share it with others.
        
             | TomGullen wrote:
             | It's been a huge plus for a lot of distance learning during
             | Covid where students have a wide variety of devices (eg
             | Chromebooks) and can all run Construct 3.
        
           | TomGullen wrote:
           | Yes am one of the founders! Always a thrill to see comments
           | like yours and hear how your friends went Construct 3!
        
         | offtop5 wrote:
         | Is it possible that dominance of engines like unity and unreal
         | actually make it hard for these small engine to compete. I love
         | unity and unity taught me how to program but I don't want to
         | live in a world which is basically only Unity development.
         | 
         | Like I see the bolt integration for Unity as being a direct
         | shot at no code engines
        
           | shiburizu wrote:
           | Unity/Unreal visual scripting still carries all the baggage
           | of understanding a bunch of concepts inherent to those
           | engines that visual scripting will not handwave.
           | 
           | This is not true of Construct, GDevelop, et al which have
           | spent a ton of engineering time to abstract all of the
           | engine's underpinnings to make it all very easy to understand
           | for the newcomer to make working behaviors with visual
           | scripting. There isn't any silver bullet to this for Unity
           | and Unreal and for that reason there will always be at least
           | a small market for editors that have significantly less
           | learning curve.
           | 
           | These visual scripting engines are probably eating
           | GameMaker's lunch since GML predates a lot of modern
           | alternatives such as aforementioned scripting and JavaScript
           | support in modern engines with more power available to savvy
           | users.
        
             | offtop5 wrote:
             | That's a good point.
             | 
             | I'll probably stick with unity just because I really love
             | programming in it, but I can imagine some of my non-
             | technical friends enjoying the above engines.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-01-20 23:02 UTC)