When comparing Monkey X 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 Monkey X is ranked 27th. 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 Native code support
Developers can make native calls directly from Monkey code. This allows access to any native functionality and platform-specific features.
Pro Native module support
You are not restricted only to the modules you get from the official release. You can build your own stuff. Even build your own "app" module. It feels limitless. In comparison with other cross platform solutions, you actually get the translated source code and you can play with it if you want.
Pro Built-in modules for quickly building games
Monkey X has a selection of great built-in modules.
- Graphics
- Audio
- Input
- Data and Filesystems
- Networking
- Math
- Text and Strings
- Collections
- Online Services
Pro You can create custom targets
The language gives you the possibility to build your own targets. You are not limited to the targets officially supported.
Pro Low cost license fee
All target platforms for a fair one off license fee.
Pro Easy to learn
With it's Object orientation and clean syntax its a brilliant language to learn if you have never done any programming before and yet still has all the power it needs to make full games and apps.
Pro Uses a great, easy to learn language
Monkey X uses a custom programming language (called Monkey) for all its scripting needs. Monkey is rather easy to learn, it's object-oriented which will help most programmers with understanding it. It's also statically typed and uses a garbage collector, helping to avoid manual memory management.
Pro Partly open-source
The entirety of the base-language itself is open source. Commercial modules such as Mojo for non-free platforms cost a one-time fee. Though Mojo is not free for all targets, the targets for these platforms are, meaning it is possible to implement other frameworks for these targets.
The Desktop (GLFW and C++ based) and HTML5 implementations of Mojo are currently free and open source.
The language's development is completely public, and is managed via GitHub.
Pro Free HTML5 and Desktop (GLFW) target platform
The free version of Monkey X lets you compile to HTML5 or Desktop (GLFW). Other platforms such as iOS, Android (and OUYA), XNA, Flash and Windows 8 (Phone) require the paid version of Monkey X Pro.
Pro Cross-platform
Monkey X is a cross-platform game engine. It allows developers to run the same code on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Flash, Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
The development environment supports Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Pro Not running in its own VM
Unlike other multi-platform engines (Unity3D, Corona, etc), Monkey-X games do not run explicitly in their own virtual machines. Your code is translated into the native languages of each target platform, and then compiled as a native executable. However, just as native games, on platforms such as Android (Currently), and HTML5, games will be ran through the targeted platform's usual VM(s). That being said, you won't be dealing with a proprietary virtual machine, so you won't experience any real overhead when compared to a native game.
Pro Made by the Mark Sibly Factor
The Mark Sibly Factor denotes that a programming language will be easy to learn, fun to learn and allow any age group ( within Cognitive Reason ) to program games and great games. The Mark Sibly Factor denotes also that the games programming language you purchase will be backed by decades of compiler programming experience, game making tool programming and finally a Game Programming Language that kicks Ass.
Pro Free for commercial releases
With the free version of Monkey you are still able to create commercial HTML5 and Desktop games.
Pro Many community modules available
The community has created essential modules:
- Spine for animations
- Box2D and Chipmunk for physics
- Game frameworks such as Ignition, fantomEngine, and Flixel
- Diddy for lots of extra functionality
- FontMachine for custom bitmap fonts
- MiniB3D for 3D gaming
- And several others...
Pro Drawing Commands
Drawing commands are easier to read and edit than is manipulating scene graphs. You can immediately see in your code what's going to be drawn and in what order. Transformations are a no-brainer too.
Pro Lots of great examples
Monkey X includes over 50 examples ranging from complete sample games to demos of single features.
Pro Object oriented programming
MonkeyX is an object-oriented dialect of BASIC that's easy, clean and powerful.
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 You'll have to learn a new programming language
Even though Monkey is rather easy to learn and borrows a lot of concepts from more popular languages, having to learn a new language develop games is a lot of friction for people that already know how to program in other languages..
Con The documentation is not very thorough
The documentation contains a reasonably detailed language overview, and a somewhat-generated list of the included modules, classes, and methods. Module descriptions are rather lax, but usually present. Method descriptions tend to be short, and a majority of them contain no usage snippets; most parameters have very minimal descriptions. And there are no community collaboration features to help improve it, besides GitHub.
Con The included IDE is poor
Although better IDE'S are availabe for a price, the default one is bare bones and lacks functionality
Con No real asset store
Untangling how to keep assets in the ".data" requires attention and a filenaming convention.
Con limited OS export targets with free version
Free version only targets Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux) and HTML5, not mobile.
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)