The Games Factory

From Mario Fan Games Galaxy Wiki
The Games Factory's logo

The Games Factory (TGF), is a game-creation tool created by Clickteam. It allows games to be created easily with very little programming compared to other game creators and is a watered down version of Click & Create. There are two versions, a 16bit version and a 32bit one, although most people tend to go for the more advanced version. It is considered outdated due to the release of Multimedia Fusion and afterwards The Games Factory 2 and Multimedia Fusion 2 (all of which contain more functions and are generally less buggy), however it still seems to be quite popular among fangame developers.

Registration

TGF offers a trial period of 30 days before demanding a registration code. The home version is retailed at $29.00 and the pro at $49.00 from Clickteam's official site. Although there is not much difference between the two, the professional version gives you the license to sell your games without an advertisement at the end of the program.

Without registering, TGF is unable to save games as stand-alone applications, meaning the only people who can compile games made with the trial version of TGF are those who own TGF. It also means that screensavers and online applications can't be made too. It can, however, still save in its open-source .gam format.

Known Issues

Main article: TGF Bug List

Unfortunately, TGF is known to have quite a number of bugs, especially with more advanced computers.

For one, TGF has a tendency to "Run out of memory" if certain events are created. This can result in the whole game crashing, and may cause a "Read Error", corrupting the entire game. Usually however, TGF can restore previously saved data when you restart the application. However, sometimes, when it restores the data, it will mess up the MIDIs in your game and text will be replaced with something like "CATWKWOK" or something similar. One way to avoid this is taking out all the midi events, closing TGF, then opening it again and putting your MIDIs back.

TGF's built in platform engine is also frowned upon for being full of collision errors and glitches. Whereas some games use this to their advantage, most game creators try to develop a 'Static engine' based from TGF's 'static movement' option. Static engines need to be coded from scratch however, which can be frustrating and take a long time. Usually the end result is far better than TGF's platform engine, however. The engine was kept for MMF too, though it was only slightly fixed.

TGF only allows about 260 objects to be on screen at once, even though it will allow you to place as many as you want. Unlike MMF which allows hundreds of objects on screen, TGF may 'cut' some out, leaving them invisible and therefore not work correctly.

There are many other bugs involved in all sorts of areas, some that can be easily avoided, and some that cannot be. It is wise to back-up games regularly when using the program, as it can be unreliable.

Products by Clickteam
First Generation Klik & Play (1994-1996)
Second Generation Multimedia Fusion Express (1996-1999) · The Games Factory (1996-1998)
Third Generation Multimedia Fusion (1998-2002)
Fourth Generation Multimedia Fusion 2 (2006-2013) · The Games Factory 2 (2006-2013)
Fifth Geneartion Clickteam Fusion 2.5 (???)