Machinations.io -- Game Design Software

Link

[EhKurd]

I think it's more the cloud part that bothers people, not the browser. Maybe if they offered an external client with Electron or something that runs offline.

[bonehelm]

This tool was originally written in Flash and initial purpose was to design and simulate game economies, not necessarily any mechanic. For example you couldn't design a physics based platformer with it. The original tool was a companion to the book Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design written by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans (great book btw). The original tool was free and an Adobe Air version was also available. Sadly it appears this original Flash version had been taken down. I assume so this new version can be monetized.

Learn more of the background from this Gamasutra article:

[theohallenius]

Cloud >_< If there is something I learned in a decade is to never trust a cloud app to always be up when you need it.

[WerIstWieJesus]

I like story based tools for game design: Little story telling game engines like "Novel maker" can be used for game design. Parallel stories can be combined to a game.

[firstname]

0:12 "people use general tools like ..." pencil and paper, whiteboard and dry erase markers

[slackingsource]

The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.

[CharlieO_]

This is a much better explanation than the one offered on their site. Im going to check it out. Thanks!!

[arturkarlov]

This looks like a useful thing for sure, and like you said it is rare to see these tools (but I am sure more will come eventually). However, their reasoning for pricing is rather broken: they create an application that runs only on their servers and then charge you for the fact that running it on their servers costs money. Why not have a version that you could download, so that the cost of servers does not need to be taken into consideration? In that case, small teams or one-person developers will not overload the servers with their simulations, but a big corporation will still be able to take advantage of the convenience of a web-based tool and would also be able to afford a large number of server simulations.

[AlekseyLoykuts]

Thats like shenzhen i/o for game developers

[willnations]

06:00 Wait, so in the commercialized version, people will have to pay to run the simulations? You get charged just for running the calculations, not for how many maps and such you have stored on their servers? That...sounds like a sleazy/cash-grab move, unless I'm mistaken. Couldn't you program an app like this to run the simulations *locally* on one's computer? The vast majority of people will be interacting with an app like this on a desktop or laptop/tablet, in which case, running the calculations should be a cinch. Instead, to allow people to also use mobile (which has too small of a screen to effectively use a tool like this anyway), they're going to charge people on a per-simulation-run basis (which will rack up too fast if, ya know, someone actually prototypes game design with something like this) and just rip money from people's hands when they could offer a better alternative service at the cost of less money.

Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding their ability to offload processing to the local machine through modern browser APIs (thought that was starting to be possible?), so if I'm wrong, then whoops. But if it's possible, I don't really see how this is at all desirable compared to the community banding together and building an open source tool that runs natively and accomplishes an identical task (say, as a Godot Engine plugin or something). I mean, c'mon...

[vetu]

8:00 Wow, you're never gonna belive what time it is man

[elfdrow]

- @Gamefromscratch you have the link in the artice as -edited not needed anymore-
so the link is sending you to a non existing url XD
- and sounds great actually. gotta try it XD
-6:55 best guess? visual scripting. so after making the charts they mostly would convert that to... lets say a C# script.

[LeoStaley]

Can you recommend a game engine for someone looking to learn programming, which would facilitate learning how to code, while being beginner friendly enough to see results quickly?

[kettenotter]

Seems for me to much work. Why not prototype direct in the game engine? Probably takes not that much longer and you can test the gameplay.
Like Blueprints in UE4 seem like the same but I can actually use it for my game.

[duphus]

As a person who hates any form of browser-app (including Electron, et cetera), here is my reasoning: it kills performance and introduces this massive, temperamental JavaScript/HTML5/CSS interpreter as a dependency, which is insecure, prone to bugs/crashes, generally doesn't work a large percent of the time, and requires frequent updating.

[lylewyant]

Maybe i'll give it a try. I used a flow stencil ages ago for programming

[kornel]

Sadly, I don't think much has changed in that time

PS: Thanks for doing a great job with your videos! You rock! :)

[JosiahIronclad]

The UI reminds me instantly of Draw.io.

[TechieCrow]

This is something I'll probably check out :O

[iLikeCoffee]

I was wondering if there was something free like this out there! Going to have to play around with this tool to see if I can get some of the more complex logic parts my next game worked out.