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They are, and it's why I've vowed never to use them again. I've contributed to Gang Garrison 2 (GG2), an open-source 2D multiplayer shooter (a "demake" of Team

They are, and it's why I've vowed never to use them again. I've contributed to Gang Garrison 2 (GG2), an open-source 2D multiplayer shooter (a "demake" of Team Fortress 2) for several years. GG2 is built with Game Maker 8.0, an obsolete commercial game engine/RAD IDE product. Why? Because Game Maker 8.1 is buggy and broke things we needed, and its successor, GameMaker: Studio, broke even more (and is also much more expensive). We did try to move to GM8.1, but we had to give up on it. This is unfortunate, because Game Maker 8.0, being now completely unsupported, does not even have working DRM servers. We literally have to pirate the product in order to continue development. Game Maker 8.0 also produces executables that crash on recent versions of Windows when too many sounds are played simultaneously. This is probably fixed in newer versions, but we can't use them. So we have to work around it. And “black box” bugs? This is a consistent theme of development with Game Maker. It's filled with them. There are lots of workarounds in our source code for such bugs. And there are some bugs we have never been able to work around, so sometimes the game crashes with inexplicable (i.e. incorrect) error messages. Because of these experiences, any game I make in future will use an open-source engine. Proprietary engines are just too much of a risk.

ivm 10y ago
For 2D there's a new Nez framework from the developer who've done dozens of high-quality plugins for Unity: http://blog.prime31.com/introducing-nez-2d-framework-for-monogame/ http://blog.prime31.com/introducing-nez-2d-framework-for-mon... I'm watching it closely and I hope it will be possible to leave Unity one day. Now it's too comfortable and incredibly fast to build 2D in Unity.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  I haven't tried it personally, but after playing with the Godot Engine's 3D capabilities, I wonder how well its 2D fares.
user5994461 10y ago
> [Proprietary] engines are just too much of a risk. ALL software are at risk of being poorly maintained and abandoned. open-source VS free VS closed-source VS paid is not directly relevant to the direction and the future of a software. What you need to do is a proper risk analysis before you pick an engine (or any important dependency for the matter).
- Cpoll 10y ago
  But OS means you can fix the problem yourself instead of being at the mercy of the maintainer. We can use the parent post as an example: > Game Maker 8.0 also produces executables that crash on recent versions of Windows when too many sounds are played simultaneously. If GameMaker were open-source, they could fix this. They could probably even backport a fix from 8.1 or Studio.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  > ALL software are at risk of being poorly maintained and abandoned. Yes, sure, but open-source at least gives you some hope of maintaining it yourself (even if poorly) if the creators abandon it, and it also means you can try to fix bugs that creators don't care about.

ivm 10y ago

For 2D there's a new Nez framework from the developer who've done dozens of high-quality plugins for Unity: http://blog.prime31.com/introducing-nez-2d-framework-for-monogame/ http://blog.prime31.com/introducing-nez-2d-framework-for-mon... I'm watching it closely and I hope it will be possible to leave Unity one day. Now it's too comfortable and incredibly fast to build 2D in Unity.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
I haven't tried it personally, but after playing with the Godot Engine's 3D capabilities, I wonder how well its 2D fares.

user5994461 10y ago

> [Proprietary] engines are just too much of a risk. ALL software are at risk of being poorly maintained and abandoned. open-source VS free VS closed-source VS paid is not directly relevant to the direction and the future of a software. What you need to do is a proper risk analysis before you pick an engine (or any important dependency for the matter).

Cpoll 10y ago
But OS means you can fix the problem yourself instead of being at the mercy of the maintainer. We can use the parent post as an example: > Game Maker 8.0 also produces executables that crash on recent versions of Windows when too many sounds are played simultaneously. If GameMaker were open-source, they could fix this. They could probably even backport a fix from 8.1 or Studio.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
> ALL software are at risk of being poorly maintained and abandoned. Yes, sure, but open-source at least gives you some hope of maintaining it yourself (even if poorly) if the creators abandon it, and it also means you can try to fix bugs that creators don't care about.