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Add to SafariWhen comparing Adventure Game Studio vs Modd.io, 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 Modd.io is ranked 94th. 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
Question Ranking
Pros
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).
Pro Its Fun, its easy to script
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Pro Runs well on low-end devices
The game client doesn't use much CPU nor bandwidth.
Pro Free
By far, this engine is completely free to use.
Pro No installation required - super easy to get started
Modd.io runs in browser, it provides IDE, map editor, and asset manager all in one platform, so you don't need to download or setup anything.
Pro Easy to use free Asset Library
You can easily change your game assets (images, sound, etc) with a single click using modd.io Asset Library
Pro Has multiplayer support baked in
This engine supports up to 64 concurrent players, and hosts servers for you as well
Pro Perfect for Impatient game developers
It literally takes 5 minutes from signup to publishing my game
Pro Easy to use
Modd.io is designed for new/intermediate developers who wants to get into game development. You should be comfortable using the engine after spending about 15 minutes in watching tutorial videos
Cons
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)
Con The engine is evolving in a bad way
Over the last updates, many useful features have been removed, making it harder to create more complex games.
Con Not very secure
Modd.io comes with its own security issues. Many of them have been used to destroy eachother's games, which completely busts your progress on your game unless you have backed it up by exporting it's JSON.
Con Not Possible for stuff
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Con Annoying asset size limit
Each asset is limited to 800kb (except for audio being 3mb) which is okay for simple assets but unacceptable for creating spritesheets for animations or tilesheets for the map.
Con Very flat map
No matter how well game maps are made, all of them look just not beautiful.
Con No/limited camera manipulation
You cannot create a shake effect which is also urgently needed in complex game creation.
Con Certain variable datatypes are urgently needed but do not exist.
Such datatypes as arrays composed of numbers, strings, etc are needed to create complex games but just do not exist in this game engine.
Con Joke-y community
Most of the staff team in the community are constantly behaving like jokers. It just always feels like 80% of the staff team is not the right pick for such a community.
Con The homepage is not good
The homepage allows players to join your game, but the way it works is just not good. The "unpopular 0 player" games get less exposure than the popular games. The tier system also puts a star on your game card which also lures players to your game making them think this game has a special event or something, giving a disadvantage to the less popular games which are still so called "Tier 1".
Con Not very powerful
This engine is ready to use right away, but already starts dropping framerate at over 1000 units which are not very active.
Con Tier-based servers with certain lockdowns
Modd.io "tiers" all the games you create. The very basic tier, commonly called "Tier 1" is very limited and removes motivation to develop a game.
Con You'll have to learn a new programming language
This engine has it's own IDE with a drag and drop style programming language. It does take a good 2 hours to get familiar with the API..
Con No lower level API access
You cannot access lower-level APIs through this engine, such as the renderer.
Con No single player support
All games in modd.io must support multi-player game mode.
Con Limited customizability
Modd.io is designed to be good at making "specific" kind of multiplayer games. Its strength unleashes if you don't care too much about the specifics in UI. For example, if you wanted to make a casual death match game, it is extremely easy to make it using modd.io. However, if you want to create a puzzle game with a unique UI, it becomes very time consuming.
Con No 3D support
This engine is limited to 2D only.
