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Comment by bananabat | Hacker News Reader

Thank you! How's your experience with GMS2?

I'm really enjoying it so far. It seems to fit with my mental model of making video games, which basically ended when I was 15 and writing games in MBASIC on my Heathkit (and later QuickBasic on MS-DOS, but I sort of stopped making games at that point) Obviously the language is very different and it's object-oriented, which MBASIC definitely was not, but it sort of feels... similar somehow? I can't really explain it.

Some things about the GML language are a bit odd, and sometimes it seems like people on the forums believe wrong things about it (I read more than one person complaining that you couldn't define your own functions, which is not correct, but the docs could be a lot clearer on that) But overall I'm happy enough with it.

I'm recreating a game I wrote in interpreted BASIC back in 1987 [1] and so far I've got the levels, basic player movement, simple enemy AI, and a very basic game loop. It's nothing fancy but I'm learning a lot so far.

[1] https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=282

If you're looking for something a bit more BASIC-like, I recommend checking out AppGameKit, made by the people who did Dark Basic back in the day.

I just looked at your blog post. Artwork is amazing for your original game. I wouldn't say great for a 15-year old...it's super well-done, period.

And it's adorable that you had stuffies on your monitor.

Thanks! I think it's just a combination of the limited graphics character set on the Heathkit, plus eight years of practice (at the time) making games using it.

The stuffed animals are from my childhood, so I kept them on my childhood computer. I think they're happy there. :)

Very cool to have a piece of your own computing history that you can reinterpret/carry forward.

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