I have discovered a somewhat easier way of creating 2.5D games with Blender but without trying to use the Game Engine: create your characters and environmental objects, but render them from a side angle save them around 32 x 32, or some multiple of 16. then you can use them as png sprites in Game Maker 8, making it a lot simpler to program stuff.
This could also work for top down games.
Hope this is easier for some of you. the main advantage is that it doesn’t require you to know Python, although Python could still help.
But as far as I know, there is no exporter to .gmk files in Blender.
PLEASE NOTE: you do not have to have Game Maker Pro for this method to work.
GameMaker as far as I know can make full 3D games too, but it’s not very advanced and you’d need to make a python script to convert the model to GML code. I do wonder if you can use a specially made .DLL to import whole .blend files into a GameMaker app.
As for animation you’d have to export an animation of the model to the .gif format (which for a long time was the only animated format that program supported).
Also on top of what the last post said I would say there’s a small number of open source 2D game creation tools that have been rapidly gaining on GameMaker in functionality and even surpassed it in some areas, Construct being one of the better known ones.
PNG also works. I just tried it. Go to the place Blender saved the animation (as .png), select all of the images at once, and Game Maker automatically strings them together. I used this to make a bird monster for GM in a platformer.
As a five-year veteran of Game Maker, and someone who has tried on numerous occasions to use Blender graphics in GM, I can say that not only would it work, but it would look damned good if done correctly.
The main problems are color palette and camera angles. It can sometimes be very difficult to make objects appear the same way between sprites, and without a program like GIMP to reduce the total colors, you tend to wind up with quite large image files, especially for lengthy animations.
But of course, with GM8 Pro and Blender together, you can make some wicked games.
I know what you mean by colors (I used to use GameMaker from version 4.1 to version 6 before going full blast with the BGE).
The .gif format is limited in color depth and that can limit the smoothness of graphics in games using that program. I would’ve liked to have nice gradients from time to time but the color depth ensured it was blocks of color rather than totally smooth, I know of GameMaker’s capabilities and shortfalls based on the 20+ games I’ve made with it.
I don’t know how well GameMaker’s reputation recovered from some recent debacles like the smiley face logo among others… (scattered in the depths of http://gamemakerblog.com/)
There is nothing you can show me that can compare to the fiery wasteland that was the Game Maker Community forum (climaxing in debauchery and foolishness v5.3-ish – just about the time I first arrived there).
If GM could survive having that kind of user base, it can survive anything.
But, back to the topic at hand:
When I use 3D or painted graphics in a game, I like to index the colors to a prefab palette. Photoshop is very good for this, but GIMP can manage it as well (you just have to change the colors afterwards by hand, whereas PS can index to a palette directly). This makes the graphics look more like hand-pixeled sprites and gives everything a more uniform tone.
OK. I do have one thing to say that cannot be argued: To each, his own.
Some like Gimp, others photoshop.
Some like Game Maker, Others like Construct.
To each his own.
Tom here from Scirra (please feel free to delete this if it’s not OK me posting here!)
We’ve actually got a new game making program out, Construct 2 (http://www.scirra.com) and we work really hard to create a friendly community which seems to be working! It’s not open source, but at the moment a license is very cheap and our free edition is generous and very extensive.
If any of you manage to get some good examples of this effect working in Construct 2 I would love to see them!
My bad please delete, I’m trying to work out how to delete my post but I can’t see how