Game Development3D2DVisual Scripting

What is the best game engine with visual scripting?

5

Options
Considered

10

User
Recs.

Jul 17, 2018

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

5 Options Considered

Best game engine with visual scripting	Price	Dev platforms	Desktop targets
-- GameMaker: Studio	-	Windows, Mac	Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, UWP
-- Unreal Engine 4	-	Windows, Mac OS X, Linux	Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOS, HTML5
-- GameGuru	£14.99	Windows	Windows
-- Construct 2	-	Windows	Windows; Macintosh; Linux
-- Buildbox	-	–	–

GameMaker: Studio

Top Con

Exporting to some formats costs extra

You need to buy extra modules to be able to export to platforms like Android, iOS, HTML5 and others. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

GameMaker: Studio is incredibly easy to learn. It requires almost no programming knowledge which means that those without the technical experience, such as designers or artists, can get create their projects without the help of a programmer. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, UWP

Mobile targets:iOS, Android, Windows Phone ( via UWP )

Console targets:PS4, Xbox One

Top Con

Lacks a cross-platform dev environment

The dev environment only runs on Windows. See More

Top Pro

Has a free version that still allows for creative game development

Game Maker Studio uses a tiered service beginning with its free option. This standard edition of GM Studio has all of the features of the professional edition, minus the additional export modules for cross platform releases. The free standard edition also comes with a non-removable "Made with Game-Maker" splash screen. All other features are unhindered by the free version. See More

Top Con

Expensive for what it offers

There are several options with more flexibility, better learning resources, and a lower price point. See More

Top Pro

Battle-tested

It's been around since 1999. See More

Top Con

No built-in refactoring tools

There are no built-in refactoring tools - for example, you can rename a resource, but GM:S will not automatically change the mentions of it across the code to the new name. At the same time, however, all file formats are text-based, meaning that the effect can be achieved by simply doing "find & replace in files", which is a feature offered by pretty much every external code editor nowadays. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform multiplayer support

There is the possibility of creating games that interact with different platforms and is not that hard. See More

Top Con

The scripting language used is quite limited

Language does not support actual objects, structs, real data types, functions, overloading, even argument naming. Developers generally have to code around the lack of these features in very tricky ways. See More

Top Pro

Easy to find resources/tutorials/assistance

GameMaker: Studio has a huge following, tons of people put up tutorial videos, and it's just generally easy to find help. It has a huge community. See More

Top Con

Poor level editor

No marquee select, no layers, only one undo, glitchy, poor manipulation of scale/rotation, can't manipulate draw order, no grouping, etc. See More

Top Pro

Has a Marketplace

Yoyogames website has a marketplace which opens up an opportunity for people to sell or giveaway created assets and resources (sprites, scripts, sounds, extensions, full source codes, etc.) for use in GameMaker. This benefits people who needs quality assets for their games, and for creative people to provide these assets for extra income. The Marketplace has a rating system so it can eventually increase the quality and competitiveness of the assets submitted. See More

Top Con

Destructive DRM

In late 2012/early 2013, YoYo Games released a version of their new Studio IDE for cross-platform development that would import games and destroy all of the image type resources for some legitimate purchasers of the software by superimposing a pirate symbol on top of the image. This was due to a fault in their digital rights management software implementation which they use as a method of combating pirated copies of the software. Though the false positives bug is reported to be fixed, the DRM is still in place and may affect placeholder graphics, etc. YoYoGames publicly stated they would remove the DRM at a later point in time, but that other less-invasive DRM techniques would remain. See More

Top Pro

Easy cross-platform shader support

Write your own shaders in one shader language and have it automatically ported to all platforms. You can even choose a specific shader language to wield the full power of the target device. See More

Top Con

The cost to buy for development is outrageous

The cost for this tool is hindering for indie developers who have little money to work with. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

GameMaker: Studio projects can be deployed to: HTML5, Linux, Windows, OS X, Windows Phone, Android, iOS and PS3/4/Vita. See More

Top Con

Tends to crash or not compile games properly

Top Pro

It has an IDE used for loading all of the assets

It is very easy to manage all these resources you want to put in your game, the UI widgets for each assets (sprites, sounds, backgrounds, rooms, objects and shaders) are intuitive enough for when adding or even editing the properties of each your assets. The included editors are also good and easy to use (sprite/image editors, shader editor and room editor). See More

Top Con

This is very flat for games

They are not beautiful, for example, Undertale. See More

Top Pro

Supports 3D

There is also 3D support that doesn't interfere with the primary 2D focus. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Game Maker Studios simple interface allows for rapid prototyping, and easy development. See More

Top Pro

Access to the GML scripting language

Game Maker Language (GML) is the primary scripting language that is interpreted similarly to Java's Just-In-Time compilation used in GameMaker. It is used to further enhance and control the design of a game through more conventional programming, as opposed to the drag and drop system. See More

Unreal Engine 4

Add Video or Image

Top Con

Bad support

The epic games team only assists with billing and account issues, not bugs. See More

Top Pro

No coding experience needed

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOS, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Console targets:PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

Top Con

C# not supported

Top Pro

Proven track record

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Especially when compared to its primary competitor, Unity. See More

Top Pro

Realistic graphics

Top Con

Poor quality assurance on their releases

After each release they almost immediately release a hotfix. And another one. And another one. See More

Top Pro

Professional feature set for all aspects of game development

Almost everything a game developer wants has a deep and sophisticated tool waiting for them in UE4. No external plugins are needed to make powerful materials, FX, terrain, cinematics, gameplay logic, AI, animation graphs, post process effects, lighting etc. See More

Top Con

Tutorials do not go in-depth enough

The blueprint tutorial just teaches how to turn on a light when you press f. See More

Top Pro

AAA Ready

This is ready to make the next AAA game. See More

Top Con

They spend more time adding features than fixing existing ones

Top Pro

Cross-platform editor and export

This engine exports for a big range of platforms including Linux. The editor can be run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Early Access). See More

Top Con

C++ - oriented development cycle: slow turn-around times

The Unreal Editor is the main place to do stuff (of course), so if someone wants to do a lot of C++ stuff, the compilation and linking turn-around times can be painful. Still they probably are quite fast in comparison to the provided featureset. Still, they are far from optimal. See More

Top Pro

Quick release-cycle

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Con

Extremely long build times

Making a full rebuild, including engine can take a good 30minutes. If you plan to use Unreal professionally, you better get some licenses for Incredibuild as well. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation for quick iteration

Recompiling an entire game to test a small change takes up a lot of time. UE4 quickly compiles in seconds instead of minutes improving iteration time by an order of magnitude. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation

Most of the "documentation" for code is actually just automatically generated from the source. If you're interested in knowing how things are supposed to work, you must either go to their answers site or pay for UDN. Often their examples won't even compile, since they were written for now outdated versions. See More

Top Pro

Spectacular lighting visuals

Top Con

Royalty based

5% of profits will go to Unreal after $3000 earned in a quarter. See More

Top Pro

Active community

Forums have many active and friendly members that are quick to respond and help out. Even staff is very active on forums. See More

Top Con

No drawcall batching, performance is very bad on mobile

There's no dynamic batching support to minimize drawcalls. There's InstancedStaticmesh concept in UE4, but it's 3d only, functionally limited and requires hardware support which rules out most mobile devices. See More

Top Pro

Powerful material/shader system

Allows a texture/material artist or VFX artist to create amazing effects from the ground up. See More

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Epic provides multiple official video tutorials, lots of free example projects and content, an extensive wiki and regular streams showing how to use latest features. See More

Top Con

Very high build size

A blank project will build in to a minimum of 200 MB. See More

Top Pro

A visual scripting system for non-coders enables quick prototyping

Blueprints are authoring tools designed for non programmers so designers and other team members can help tweak and prototype. UE4's Blueprint scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish and games a lot faster to prototype. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic global illumination with voxel cone tracing decreases the computational power needed

Voxel cone tracing is a similar algorithm to ray tracing, but uses thick rays instead of pixel thin rays to be able vastly decrease the amount of computational power needed. See More

Top Pro

Developers have full control of the engine and source code

UE4 gives full access to the C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Pro

Free development license, including source code

The engine, including full access to source code, is licensed to developers for 5% royalty on resulting revenue if it exceeds $3000 per quarter. See More

GameGuru

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Friendly GUI

Awesome friendly GUI, and quite easy to use. See More

Top Con

Currently in beta

FPSCR is currently a beta product with features potentially important to a specific project still in the roadmap. Obviously this is expected of a beta product, and new features are constantly being added, but should be taken into consideration when choosing a game engine for a game right now. To see what's currently implemented, being implemented and in the roadmap go here. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows

Mobile targets:none

Console targets:none

Top Pro

Awesome tech support

Top Con

Windows only

There is only one supported platform. No macOS/Linux or mobile. See More

Top Pro

Royalty free

Games you publish with GameGuru can be sold without any restrictions or commissions. See More

Top Con

Lack of user-interface

Although you can customize a lot, the user-interface does not show that. But plans are in place to improve this with some front facing GUI into the LUA scripts so you don't need to code as much. See More

Top Pro

Building editor

Currently in development but already looking very good! Easily create big and customized buildings with default building blocks and share them with others. Also very easy to use in the designer: The buildings are treated like entities but still directly available in the 'building editor mode'. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

Users share ideas, help, and advice through the official forums. The community also provides a wealth of free assets, and the GameGuru Assets Store sees constant additions. See More

Top Pro

Powerful scripting language

Uses Lua. See More

Top Pro

Designed for ease of use

Simplicity and accessibility are the core design goals of FPS Creator Reloaded. See More

Top Pro

Optimised engine for editor

The game engine is optimized for efficient use of memory. See More

Top Pro

Massive community of users

The gamer creator forums have a large number of users, developing games, making models for sale and to give away for other users. They answer questions, help each other with problems in their games, and can make using this software so much more fun and easy. See More

Top Pro

Feature priorities are chosen by the community

The Game Creators team frequent the forums and ask the community for feeback and suggestions both there and via an open poll on the website. They have a great history of reading suggestions, viewing screenshots, and generally working with the community. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use your own custom assets

Easily import your own 3D models with the built-in importer and create custom characters with the Character creator. Custom weapons are much more difficult, though. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use editor

An easy 3D editor to create your own maps in seconds with drag-and-drop function. See More

Top Pro

Continuous development and updates

News and improvements are released on a monthly schedule. Interaction between The Game Creators and project backers is excellent. See More

Top Pro

Large asset store

A store where you can buy various assets for your games like sounds, 3D models, weapons... Very good prices and a lot of assets are even free. See More

Construct 2

Top Pro

No coding required

Construct's powerful 'Event System' allows you to make thing happen without code. Example: When Space is Pressed -> Player Jumps. See More

Top Con

Only extensibility is with code

JavaScript is required to extend the engine. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Console targets:Wii U

Top Pro

Easy learning curve

Seems a bit overwhelming at first, but it is very quick and easy. See More

Top Con

HTML5 is very dependent on browser performance

Theoretically all browsers should run HTML5 pretty much the same way, but thats not always the case. Something that worked fine on Chrome, for instance, might malfunction on Firefox (or vice versa). And there's nothing the devs of Construct 2 can really do about it, but to hope next Firefox update might fix it. Internet Explorer is not even recommended. Add to that the fact that exporting to mobile or desktops rely on these sort of stripped down versions of web browsers (Node webkit, Crosswalk, Ejecta) that you pack with your game, and you can have a real headache if you're trying to make your game work properly through multiple platforms. See More

Top Pro

Rapid development

After using a few quick tutorials you can quickly catch on to the event system this program uses and quickly be able to build any type of 2D game you want. You can download a few sprites from google and put together a working level of Mega Man with character movement / animation / enemies / collision detection / scoring / Tile map and AI within about 2 hours. The built in behaviors are incredible. It's amazing how Construct can simplify the most redundant tasks in game development. See More

Top Con

Tilemap object could be better

C2 requires that there's a tilemap objects for each tilemap layer meaning each tilemap object has to be updated when modifying any layer. This could be simplified by adding layer support for tilemap objects. See More

Top Pro

Very fast preview

In Construct 2 you can preview your games instantly at any time. There’s no need to wait for compiling or other time consuming processes. See More

Top Con

Dependency on 3rd parties for all exports

Unless you are creating a game strictly for browser/HTML5 usage, exporting to desktop or mobile is risky, as Scirra have no control over your final export quality. Since desktop uses NodeWebkit and mobile is Crosswalk, Phonegap or CocoonJS there is no guarantee that your final export performance and quality will be up to scratch for pro level 2d games. These 3rd party "browser wrappers" are very prone to breaking and introducing lag and bugs that can't be controlled from Scirra's side. See More

Top Pro

Built-in tilemap object

The tilemap object allows tile-based games to be designed more easily. The object's tilemap can also be edited in the layout view using the tilemap bar. See More

Top Con

Editor is Windows only

Although Construct 2 is able to export projects to Windows, OS X and Linux, the program itself currently only runs on Windows. See More

Top Pro

Built-in pathfinding

Top Con

Free version is severely limited

Although a free version of the engine is available, it lacks features that are essential to creating a high quality product. See More

Top Pro

Runs great on mobile

Performs well on most devices and browsers. See More

Top Con

Does not export to native mobile code

Construct 2 builds to HTML 5 only, which can cause performance issues on mobile devices depending on the HTML5 engine that the OS is using since that will be the biggest bottleneck. Even though it's not really the engine's fault, it still is at a disadvantage compared to native game engines. See More

Top Pro

Allow server-less multiplayer game creation

Construct 2 uses WebRTC technology to support it's multiplayer functionality. The nature of the technology allows peer-to-peer connection which does not require game developer to create server side architecture to allow communication between games. See More

Top Con

Not so good visual editor

he uses loops and if clauses like if it was events See More

Top Pro

Supports camera, microphone, speech recognition and synthesis

Can use cameras in PCs and on mobiles. You can use the synthesis that can recognize your speech or you can write something and it can talk for you. See More

Top Pro

Supportive devs

The developers are always available to help. See More

Top Pro

In-depth event system

Construct 2's event system allows for deep, detailed control over all aspects of your game. You aren't limited to just a few options. Rather, Scirra has thought of nearly everything in advance with access to any desired parameter of any object all paired with simple and intuitive ways to interact with them. Your events can be organized with event sheets (that can be included in other sheets), event groups, sub-events, loops, and functions that make the coding portion of your game as efficient as possible. You don't need any programming knowledge, but if you do have some, you'll feel right at home with the freedom C2 offers. See More

Top Pro

Interface similar to that of MS office

This engine provides an intuitive workflow for people that are used to the Windows environment. See More

Top Pro

Free (feature limited) version available

A free version of Construct 2 is available. It's not time restricted in any way, but is feature limited. See More

Top Pro

Export control for all major platforms

All platform exporters are part of the subscription. There are no additional fees and new exporters are added quickly and maintained well. Currently, 15 platforms are supported, including HMTL 5, iOS, Android, Windows, Chrome Store, PhoneGap and Scirra. See More

Top Pro

Easy to create particles and animations

With spriter file implementation and internal animation editor Construct 2 provides an easy way of creating particles and animations. See More

Top Pro

Active plugin ecosystem

Construct 2 has an active plugin ecosystem providing behaviors and features that smooth the workflow for certain game types. See More

Top Pro

Built-in physics system

Thanks to the great power of Erin Catto's Box2D, Construct 2 is able to make physics games which are similar to Cut the Rope and Angry Birds. See More

Top Pro

Affordable with robust runtime license agreement

There are three editions of C2: Free, Personal and Business. The Free edition has some limits in functionality, and prohibits you from making money from your C2 creations. With the Personal edition ($129.99), you get more features and are free to make up to $5,000 with your C2 creations if you're an individual. If you haven't reached $5,000, you don't need the Business edition ($429.99). Non-profit organizations also don't need the Business edition. After you've made $5,000, you must upgrade to the Business edition ($299.99); but once you've made $5,000, this should be easily affordable. If you're a for-profit business, you must purchase the Business edition, unless your company hasn't made $5,000 business revenue. There is no difference in terms of features between the Personal and Business editions, just the runtime license agreement. There is also an education license specifically for educational institutes, where they offer site licenses and take-home licenses. See More

Top Pro

Supportive community

Construct 2 has a supportive community. Their forums have tens of thousands of topics with ten times more posts. The core maintainers are very helpful and friendly and often reply to questions or issues that may be discussed in the forums. See More

Top Pro

New features are released constantly

Developers provide regular updates (usually bi-weekly) with new features and bug fixes. See More

Buildbox

Add Video or Image

Top Con

Free to use

Game Salad and Amazon's Lumberyard (more 3D here) are better choices to learn with. These game engines are free to use and also have a low learning curve. Before you invest in any game engine, you need to see if its right for the game you have in mind to build. See More

Top Pro

Great tutorials and community to help your game making process

Clear tutorials and a friendly community. See More

Top Con

Very expensive

$99 a month or $1008 per year (yearly subscriptions has a discount) See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Buildbox is a drag and drop engine, making it easy for beginners to pick up. There are many tutorials available to help get you started. See More

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