Best 2d Mobile Game engines?

ENODMI

Thread title should have read: Best 2d Mobile Game engines for beginners?

Been applying for a lot of jobs lately and getting no feedback. It's really bummed me out, so Ive decided to switch gears for a while and try to make a simple 2d game,yet I have zero experience programming. Does anyone have any recommendations for a 2D engine, with a beginner in mind? Digging around I have found these, but cant seem to draw any conclusions due to my lack of knowledge. They claim ease of use, but can you really make anything worth playing as an artist?

Torque2D by Garage Games

Gamemaker by Yo Yo Games

Andengine - Looks like progamming knowledge is a must for this one.

I suppose the big question here is, do I take some time and learn some programming first, or is there a way I can jump right in and start making something worth playing?

Ged

unity can do 2D especially with the help of spritemanager 2.0 and ezgui but the game creation environment is still 3D you just use an orthographic camera

Justin Meisse

I have some experience programming, I originally wanted to be a programmer and went to school a bit for it - I haven't found any engine that's easy for a novice programmer besides the old DOS RSD Gamemaker - which is old and creaky now - I can't even get it to run on a modern computer. EDIT: lulz, I missed the "mobile" part of your question

hobodactyl

I've seen some really nice stuff made with Gamemaker, but I'm sure you'd need to learn some of the scripting for that.

If you're not wanting to mess with any type of coding you're going to be pretty limited, but Gamemaker seems to be a good choice for that (I haven't used it much myself, though).

chrismaddox3d

Well i tried Game Maker and made the 1st demo game it walks you thru.
You should try it out, i am looking to make a 2d game as well.
I think the mobile market for iPhone and Android is good.
My self i am looking to make 16bit type graphic game if possible.
I think a puzzle type game may be easy enough for 1 person to handle.

Have played with a little c++ a couple years ago on and off.
One reason Game maker looked so nice is it seems cheaper to publish a game.
I know i looked a Unity and it seems to cost a little more for moblie.
Right now i am on a budget and think i will just use Game Maker for my 1st simple game.
Will be keeping a eye on this thread to see others opinions,Thanks

Ben Apuna

I've heard Gamemaker is good because you can start off without needing to code at all. Then as you get more comfortable with the concepts you can start to learn how to code through it's scripting language.

There's Stencyl which I've heard is similar to Gamemaker but works with Actionscript 3 the language of Flash under the hood.

There's also Scirra Construct which has a new version under development and looks very promising as well. It'll export to HTML5 which should let you reach a lot of different platforms.

I think with any of these engines you can get off the ground without having to know how to program at all.

As for myself I've been re-learning how to program first before tackling any game projects. I was interested in programming and studied it in college long ago but much has changed (and I forgot a lot) since then. So far it's been a uphill battle and not nearly as immediately rewarding as creating art though I think that it will be worth the effort in the end.

There are many free resources available to learn how to program. Here is the one I ended up doing over the last few months and recommend:

(copy/pasted a bit from another thread)

You can learn the fundamentals of computer science and programming here, course materials here, free pre-press version of the textbook here, and the other textbook here, at the course website.

jipe

Pretty interested in Corona SDK myself at the moment -- 2D cross--platform development (iOS & Android) using Lua, which is way more approachable than either platform's native code.

http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

Edit: Forgot to mention, it's apparently a lot faster than Flash on the mobile platforms, which is a huge plus.

ENODMI

Wow, thanks guys, a lot of useful info to dig through. Ive always had an interest in learning programming, even threw it down with "hello World!" once, ha, but just have never had the time to devote to it, or actually grasp any of the base concepts.

Thanks for those links, Ben, Ill be sure to check out those Stanford vids.

Anyone here made a game with either Gamemaker or Corona?

Ben Apuna

I haven't done anything with Gamemaker but there is a HUGE Gamemaker community over at TIGSource forums that has. There are many tutorials over there as well.

Minos

You can check out flixel too, it's similar to stencyl from what I've heard: http://flixel.org/

Ben Apuna

Yup Stencyl is based off of Flixel, though that route would be more programming intensive.

If you go into programming there are tons of other options as well.

Flashpunk, another Actionscript 3 game library like Flixel.

PyGame for Python. Python is very useful as a scripting language in many 3D apps.

Love for Lua.

Slick2D for Java.

XNA for C#.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

Fomori

Sorry to hear about your job situation ENODMI, but your portfolio is pretty sweet so it shouldn't be too difficult to land a job, just stick in there maybe.

Looks like there's a lot of engines out there to have a look at.
I'm in a similar situation in that I want to learn some basic programming, and create a basic game, but with my time outside of work.

Had a look at Game Maker and tried the tutorial. Seems like something worth messing around with.
I'm also trying to learn some programming for http://www.processing.org/ which gives me pretty instant visual feedback to code I write.

Noia

You should try looking at GameSalad.