When comparing Engine 001 Game Maker 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 Engine 001 Game Maker is ranked 62nd. 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 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 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 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 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)
