When comparing Genome2D vs GameMaker Studio 2, the Slant community recommends Genome2D for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Genome2D is ranked 47th while GameMaker Studio 2 is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose Genome2D is:
It's the fastest gpu-based framework out there for flash. It's beautifully optimised. It has very low rendering latency, low level OpenGL calls that other tech simply cannot do (ie Unity) due to Stage3D, and thus can render a lot more data quicker
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Pros
Pro Lightning fast
It's the fastest gpu-based framework out there for flash. It's beautifully optimised. It has very low rendering latency, low level OpenGL calls that other tech simply cannot do (ie Unity) due to Stage3D, and thus can render a lot more data quicker
Pro Cross-platform mobile, desktop and web
Supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Web and native Flash.
And with the HTML5 export, it also potentially supports development for the Wii U :)
Pro Haxe!
Haxe is a strictly typed programming language that saves development time but still compiles high performance executables, and can build for tons of different platforms (flash, c++, html5, java, c#, etc.)
Pro Access to direct draw features
Has access to direct draw features so you can make you own rendering structures (scene graphs etc).
Pro Automatic dynamic batching
Automatically batch geometries with dynamic batching techniques (by using constant buffers).
Pro Component based architecture
Pro Quick prototyping
Pro Good user interface
Pro Well-optimized engine
Pro Has a trial version (but limited functions, can't export)
Pro Many unofficial tutorials
Most GMS1 tutorials are fine for GMS2
Pro Highly customizable IDE
Although users must work within the IDE and editor, GMS2 has many options to customize the look and feel
Pro Good documentation
Pro Huge, generous community
Cons
Con Lacks documentation
The API documentation is minimal, there's not many tutorials and the ones that are there are very small and only cover the basics. If you want to learn how to properly use it, you have to ask the community or read the source code and figure it out.
Con Not too many games to showcase it
Con Slow development rate
Con Not the best scripting language out there
GML is just weird; if you want to learn programming, it is not the best because it teaches bad habits and has many odd shortcuts and shortcomings that won't transfer to a real language
Con HTML5 export is buggy, doesn't "just work"
Con Quite expensive
Windows ($100) + HTML5 ($140) + Mobile ($400) + UWP ($400) is $1,050, plus $800 anually for each console export separately. But doesn't do anything any of the free engines can't do, and the stability and tech support aren't great.
Con Unstable
Users frequently report crashes and hangs, particularly when working with assets, and the software uses a complicated underlying meta-file structure that may become corrupted and cannot be rebuilt
Con Limited support for OOP
Con Small development team
The core programming team is only 5-10 people, with about 30 employees total, so bug fixes can take a long time to be addressed, and there aren't many official tutorials