When comparing Engine 001 Game Maker vs SFML, the Slant community recommends SFML for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” SFML is ranked 35th while Engine 001 Game Maker is ranked 62nd.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Light weight
An amazing minimal download size at around 100mb.
Pro Easy to use
Engine 001 allows you to get to making games quicker since you aren't putting allot of time into figuring out complicated interfaces.
Pro Visual scripting
By using pre-build behaviors\actions and more you can 'program' your game by simply 'linking' they in the editor.
Pro Very efficient and usable
Pro Zlib/PNG license
In short, SFML is free for any use (commercial or personal, proprietary or open-source). You can use SFML in your project without any restriction. You can even omit to mention that you use SFML -- although it would be appreciated.
Pro Can be combined with OpenGL
If you hate something about the way SFML handles graphics, you can just combine it with OpenGL. It's completely smooth and works as expected, without any additional dependencies.
Pro Active community and wiki
You can ask questions on their own personal forum which is full of users, and their wiki is constantly being maintained. They even have an IRC.
Pro Works on every platform
SFML 2.2 brought forth Android & iOS functionality, and SFML games work on Linux, Mac and Windows out of the box, since SFML is written with OpenGL.
Pro Great documentation
SFML is very well documented, even with short examples of use for many functions and modules. Furthermore, there are books like 'SFML essentials' and 'SFML for game development' which teach you how to use this library to its fullest.
Pro Good for OpenGL
If you are thinking about using OpenGL, look no further, you can open a window, and handle events in less than 15 lines, and it provides input, time, and even networking, plus alot more. It has become my favorite c++ library :D
Pro Great library
SFML is a collection of modular, well designed libraries you can implement an engine or game on top of. The API provides tons of good documentation and is very straightforward to use. You can get a game up and running with SFML quite quickly and with minimal effort.
Pro Clean code
An SFML project's code-base is usually clean and easy to read. All public SFML classes are under the namespace "sf" so it is easy to tell which code is yours and which belongs to SFML (of course you can stop this by typing using namespace sf;
).
Pro Available in many languages
There's support for many languages besides C++, current supported languages are: C, .NET, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, Nim, OCaml, Pascal, Python, Ruby and Rust, and this list is constantly growing.
Pro Beginner-friendly
SFML is extremely beginner friendly and even provides pre-built libraries for your IDE of choice on Windows. Besides the fact that it's extremely well documented, they also have a set of tutorials that walk you through every module.
Pro Modern C++11 implementation
SFML is one of the few good C++ frameworks out there to actually make full use of the language. It's extremely well optimized and it plays well with anything you throw at it.
Cons
Con New tricks for getting more money
As it doesn't have enough tutorials, and they don't wanna make more, so they just add some new services about one on one help which that cost 40$ for an hour.
Con Windows only
The editor is Windows only, no OSX or Linux versions are planned.
Con 3D features may not be enough for some users
The 3D capabilities of the engine are a bit limited (for today standards), and some of the times you'll need to work around to create something.
Con Not for beginners
Even those few tutorials don't teach you the very basics, and first you must learn the basics somewhere else (the submitted pros are by professional guys).
Con No successful/ good games
Just ask them about games made with this engine and you will see that even if you find some good games, those are mostly simple/small ones.
Con Poor performance
If you want to use more than a few actors/light/events, or you're trying to get a pretty look, you will get a significant drop in frame rates. This is especially true if you want to implement a moving light (something like a flashlight).
Con They don't fix the bugs for you quickly
If you encounter a bug or problem and report that as bug report, it will take about 1 week to get any answer, and if they solve that, the fixed version will just come up with next update for engine which that isn't be soon and no specific time, so maybe you have to wait for one month.
Con Some workflows can be confusing
Sometimes you have to do a time-consuming workaround to just do a simple function.
Con HTML5 export is poor
There are significant drops in frame rate; some bugs that can even ruin your game (also, looks like just run on firefox).
Con No IAP or Ads support
Are you a mobile developer? If so it's good to know that it has export for ios/Android but no support for IAP or Ads.
Con Relatively slow
Compared to SDL2, GLFW, it is slow.
Con No GUI editor or IDE
Does not include any IDE or media editor. It's purely source code.
Con May take longer to learn and understand
Con Messy sprite management
Sprites retain all of the operations applied to them, whether that be a new position or a rotation. This makes sprite management somewhat annoying.
Con Not specifically a 2D game engine
It isn't really an engine, more of a collection of modular, well designed libraries you can implement an engine or game on top of.