Why create a GameMaker export to the Raspberry Pi?

Okay, these are very much personal opinions...

So I've been asked a couple of times why bother? It's a tiny machine with (probably) zero chance in making money from it - so why?

First, the Raspberry Pi is an amazing thing, Eben Upton and his various partners have done a phenomenal job getting it out in the first place, never mind the subsequent work of getting the Pi Zero - which is beyond amazing!

What I love about the Pi more than anything else, is that you no longer have to decide to take out a second mortgage on your home to give your kid a computer in their room! What's more, you no longer have to worry about them breaking it. At $25 you can just get another one. With the Pi Zero, this is and even simpler decision. Having a computer in my bedroom when I was growing up was life changing. Without that, I'd never be where I am now.

Of course.... there were other factors that helped. First - content. Without games to play, I'd have grown bored very quickly, and my ZX81 would have ended up in a drawer. What you need to inspire development is inspirational content. You want to play games, use programs and hardware and think - "That is SO cool! I want to do that!"  This is what drove me. We used to play the simple games available, type in programs from magazines, and spend hours trying to do stuff ourselves. 

Put simply, this is what I want to help achieve. With GameMaker, we have access to users who can provide these inspirational games, games that you want to play over and over, games that make you want to try and create stuff yourself.  Sure, there are limits. This isn't a Quad core i7 with 16 Gigs of ram and enough HD space to store most of the internet on. But....games don't have to be full 3D ultra-realistic to be good. Vlambeer have some amazing games, Locomalito has made some astounding games - ALL FREE!  All they need (in theory) is a port of the GameMaker runner to help make it happen.

So... that's my reason number one. It's how I started, and if I can help others do the same, I'm all for that.

Second - Education. Not so much for game creation itself, but for Electronics. Currently most folk seem to use Python to do this, and to be frank - python sucks. Even with simple GPIO commands I've been having great fun with it. Remote development is ideal for this kind of thing, because when things go wrong and the Pi crashes (as it inevitably will), you can simply reset while your entire dev environment is safe and sound on a separate machine.  At some point I'll get the remote debugger working as well (It almost works now), and that means you'll be able to step through your code and development will be even easier.

On top of this there is an emerging home brew arcade scene. Folk like Locomalito take their games and stick them in PCs inside arcade machines - like a mame cabinet does, and then run their games like in the old days, complete with arcade buttons and joysticks. These days, they appear to be moving more towards using the Raspberry Pi - it's cheap, has lots of easy to use pins for interfacing and if it blows up - meh, they can buy another one. The runner port will allow games to be run on the machine, while the GPIO commands I've added will help them interface with buttons and joysticks easily.

Lastly... a word about the Pi Zero. I can't begin to say how much I'm impressed they made this happen. It's such an incredible break through, They even gave one away on the cover of a magazine! I'll let that sink in...

They gave away a whole computer on the cover of a magazine.

Wow.....It has the same GPIO pins as the PI, and while only a single core, it is a 1Ghz core. This means you could make a case for it with a 3D printer, get some very cheap SD cards, and then sell your game as a plugin console - probably for $20 or so. That astounds me. Even without the case etc. you could sell you game - complete with computer, for less than $10.  You can buy 50 micro 4Gb micro SD cards for £1.36 each, add that to the price of the Pi ($5) and you're still going to make a profit at $10. Wow.

Before the Pi came out, we tried to get GameMaker 7 actually running ON the machine. We almost got there, but ran out of time. We were doing it for free because we believed in what they were doing, but commercial pressures reasserted and we had to move on. Long term, I'd love to see a GameMaker IDE of some kind running ON the Raspberry Pi. It would be an amazing thing to behold, and would make learning so much more fun.

..........one day perhaps.....one day.