Quote: "Make this a no coding engine like it was suppose to be way back when it was Reloaded and you will have a winner."
I can't remember Reloaded being any different to GG, coding has always been required for anything other than basic features. It was GG's move to Steam that first really pushed the Easy Game Maker idea.
Quote: "For coding we need visual drag and drop coder with standard commands for the peeps that cant code."
Pretty sure there is one available. Personally I find coding like this awful. Unreal has it's blueprint system, which I find terrible to use. I much prefer coding actual code rather than having to look for things to drag about. Still, there is a drag and drop lua code utility available, or there was, for people who prefer that. Check out the scripts section, it should be in there to download.
Quote: "The only thing GG has going for it right now is how easy it is to make static objects"
I agree with Wolf. GG is a lot easier to add game-play elements in, than other engines overall. Yes, you generally have to code stuff, but that's nothing new in game dev. There are many built in scripts to make it easier for non coders though. Loads of free ones to choose from and also the store ones. It is easy to use there's no denying that.
For me AI is the biggest failing at the moment for making a good game. Performance is not as big an issue. Although if I were at a point where I wanted to release a game, I'd want it to run on as many systems as possible, not just top end machines. I always find myself spending forever on getting things running well (often to the point where I am sick of the sight of it), it would be nice to have to wrestle with that less often.
Just seen a new GG game on Youtube. Nothing said it was a GG game, but I can spot em pretty quick. It looks fairly decent for a GG title graphically, but the frame rate was not the best considering it was probably running on a pretty decent system. Overall though, it was a tiny map and looked quite repetitive. The AI was as ever, not very good and pretty much ruined the effort at atmosphere the dev had obviously spent some time putting in to it. That's why most GG games to date are basically walking sims (in the dark). Get the AI up to par and GG would certainly see more sales.
Lighting as well needs updating. 3 lights is not acceptable these days, it feels like I'm still using DB Classic at times in this regard and that was DX 8
Baking is pretty nice, and can add many static lights to a scene, but adds so much to the memory footprint I find I can't bring myself to use it. It's the best option at the moment though for good lighting. More lights and different types would be luxury and also really improve what can be done graphically! Lighting is so important these days and done so well in other engines. GG would look way better with a lighting upgrade!
I have put in 1620 hours according to Steam so far since it's relaunch so can safely say it's my most used software. You can probably double that, as I used Reloaded even more often (it was new). Game speed is normally what knocks any project on the head in the end, so I'd say it's quite important. If I start hitting less than 30 fps it's normally toast.
SPECS: Q6600 CPU. Nvidia 660GTX. 8 Gig Memory. Win 7.