I've heard rumors that unity is making a dedicated 2D engine for a future release. No release date though. Of course it's just rumors, but it seems really logical seeing as how successful 2D games are on mobile phones and even in handhelds and XBLA and PSN.

Something like Angry Birds, which is awesome, would be really trivial in a 2D version of unity despite it being awesome.

sorry if I get it wrong here, but I think there is a sprite engine at Unity new shop, maybe it can help make a 2d game quick with Unity?

I don't have time to try, busy with my animation project and proposal and all...

Quote: Original post by hupsilardee
I can't say I agree with the Game Maker suggestion. It's not bad, perhaps too slow, but you can't use shaders, so no graphics post processing, and you'll have to implement GUI yourself.

I use GameMaker myself. Speed so far has not been an issue. I guess if you really try to do something complex, than it could be. The scripting language(gml) is slow compared to most interpreted languages. It is not compiled either, so it doesn't improve. On the other hand, you can make dll files with C++ or I believe any non .NET assembly compiling language which when used properly can increase GameMaker's speed and capabilities. I have a dll which is a "translater" for IrrKlang, because GameMaker is rather limited in the audio department.

Yes, you can't do shaders or the "newer" graphics stuff, that you could do in other software. But there is an extension/dll for Gamemaker that is a wrapper for the Ogre3d engine, so you can even get around that problem, but then you are doing 3d and may be better of just using something like Unity.

And the GUI, yes, you make your own. It is rather easy though. Objects in GameMaker can work like OOP classes, where you can have parents/children. I have a parent button that makes the color change for the sprite when the mouse hovers over, and plays the clicking sound. Then each child button does whatever happens when it gets clicked, but never has to reimplement the sounds or sprite color changes. This parent/child system comes in use for many other things as well, not just the GUI.

Overall, GameMaker is very good at what is does. Yes, you can get some better things with other software, but also remember GM can be used for free, or you can get a few more features with the "PRO" version, which is only $25.
Also, remember that with 2D games, gameplay is suddenly much more important. Yes, it matters with 3d too, but with 3d some games get by more on looks, whether we like it or not. With 2d on the other hand, it is much harder to get by on looks, and GM makes implementing the gameplay relatively easy.