Try this new HTML 5 game maker! It runs in Firefox as a restartless add-on. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gamestar-gcs/

I noticed people here, as elsewhere in the design community, have failed to give Gamestar the hearing it deserves. Let me assure you: this is the fastest, easiest system for making any type of 2D game. And if you lend me your support, I will enhance this system to be capable of producing Xenogears and Xenosaga-type games.

 

What advantages would you say Gamestar offers over existing well-known packages such as Game Maker or Construct 2?

Do Gamestar games also run in other, non-Firefox browsers?

 

Well Gamestar runs in your browser. That is a big bonus in that you can restart it easily. I have a background in psychology and have applied it to make Gamestar "gel" easily with gamer minds. The interface isn't perfect but there is little I can do to improve it with HTML.

It's also free, and will remain so.

Games don't run in other browsers now but in a couple weeks I will release a new version that packages games as HTML pages that run independently of the development system. I would that it worked in other browsers, but only Firefox offers the saving/loading functionality that is so crucial to useability. Webkit's dominance has been a particular problem, elsewise I could have made it run in Opera.

I've no plans to open the source at this time. But I'm not about to give up on it, either. 3D is in the works. The reason I don't want to open source it, is because 1) I don't want exploit versions floating around that I can't kill with a DMCA if it comes to that, and 2) I want to rethink the game making process from the ground up. Gamestar in its current state represents that questioning. Questioning is good and there should be more of it. Fun in particular is lacking in the design process -- game making is a chore -- and I implemented the real-time design feature with that in mind. I want Gamestar to be easy and fun to use and I want it to have a rock solid reputation for the same.

Tell you what I will do: I'll make an add-on system for Gamestar proper, that will permit Gamestar to be used as a vessel for tools. This might not seem like that big of a deal, but it would save a lot of memory compared to using separate apps with their own heap for the same purposes. I don't intend to open Gamestar's code though... rather, this system will read all HTML files from a given directory, and load them in with innerHTML. But they won't be active unless specified by the user.

Also worth mentioning is that Gamestar can be styled: just make a file called Gamestar.css and put it in your directory. The element IDs are apparent in the source.

Mozilla is making a big deal about Gamestar's reliance on innerHTML... they think it's a means for exploiting vulnerabilities in their own code. But it's essential to the rationale of making a game maker web app, because without the freedom of HTML 5 you really have nothing.

I think that critical thinking should be considered: yes for some apps, made for use by hundreds of thousands or millions, there should be caution regarding innerHTML. But I really don't expect that tens of thousands of people will want to use Gamestar regularly. I really don't. Game dev is niche -- very niche -- and always will be. As such it is highly unlikely Gamestar's doubtlessly very intelligent users would fall prey to a scammer.