When comparing Gideros vs Adventure Game Studio, the Slant community recommends Adventure Game Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Adventure Game Studio is ranked 23rd while Gideros is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Adventure Game Studio is:
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Instant on device testing
Gideros provides on device players for iOS and Android that can be used to instantly try out your code directly from the Gideros IDE.
Pro Auto scaling and image resolutions
Gideros provides an easy way to target various screen sizes by providing automatic scaling options and choosing the best image resolution based on device screen automatically
Pro Local builds
You can build apps without an online dependency.
Pro Friendly & helpful community
Gideros has an active forum where you can find friendly and helpful advice.
Pro New features and improvements are released regularly
Gideros is being constantly updated and improved by the main developers.
Pro All in one studio, no complicated setup
Gideros Studio is incredibly easy to set up. Once installed it is very easy to create a new project or open one of the many example projects. Trying out an example on the desktop is two clicks away.
Pro Easy plugin architecture
Gideros Studio has a very powerful feature which enables developers to use a C/C++/Java/ObjC library next to Lua. This way it's possible to call the library functions under Lua, get the results and interpret them directly under Gideros Studio.
Pro Supports many platforms
Gideros supports iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, WindowsRT, Windows Phone and HTML5 platforms.
Pro Amazing 2D performance
2D performance is amazing.
Pro Very easy to learn
Gideros uses the Lua programming language which is very easy to learn (and very powerful). There are some excellent video tutorials too, to help you get started. The Gideros forum community are also very friendly and helpful if you any any problems.
Pro Easy to learn tool
Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.
Pro Completely free and open source
AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games.
Pro Relatively well documented
Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community.
Pro Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases
Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia".
Pro Lots of assets available
An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing).
Pro Friendly community
An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc).
Cons
Con Few resources, but growing
Gideros has a small community, and therefore do not have as many "How to make a game" tutorials. However, there are a couple of excellent books available that can take you through the fundamentals.
Con The Gideros IDE is not as fully featured as other IDEs
The Gideros IDE is not as fully featured as other IDEs, but you can easily use the very powerful and compatible ZeroBrane Studio IDE.
Con Natively supports only 2D
2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though.
Con Uses dated tech
Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities).
Con Graphics renderer is a bit dated
Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects.
Con No visual editor for scripts
You have to actually write all scripts yourself.
Con Development is slow
Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time.
Con AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages
Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages.
Con Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre
The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch.
Con Workflow is closely coupled with the editor
Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc)