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Add to SafariWhen comparing BYOND vs GameMaker Studio 2, the Slant community recommends BYOND for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” BYOND is ranked 29th while GameMaker Studio 2 is ranked 67th. The most important reason people chose BYOND is:
BYOND is in active development and updates are released constantly.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro In active development
BYOND is in active development and updates are released constantly.
Pro Easy to use
The software itself is very easy to learn and use for beginners.
Pro Helpful community
BYOND's community is relatively large and extremely helpful. Any question a beginner or an experienced user may have is quickly answered.
Pro Large Community
Fairly large player base and multiple games to play.
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 Highly supports multiplayer, but can make solo games ready for download.
Con Exclusive programming language
The language is known as DM, and is modified using Dream Maker. It is an object oriented, interpreted language, which closely resembles C++, Java and PHP. More information available in the DM Guide.
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
