Garry Kitchen's GameMaker was an IDE for the Commodore 64 created by Garry Kitchen and released by Activision in 1985. It was the first sophisticated game design product for the average consumer. [1]
The system was divided into 5 subsystems, all of which provided a graphical interface controlled with the joystick:
The programming language used in gamemaker was reminiscent of other early programming languages like BASIC, but with many built in graphics and sound facilities that tied in components created in the other parts of the system.
The language was not keyed in via the keyboard, but used a novel system of selecting possible instructions from a menu, and then customizing the active parts of the instruction, like variable names or numbers.
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There were some notable limitations, some imposed by the Commodore 64 architecture and some imposed by GameMaker, most likely because the IDE itself used a good deal of resources.
Still, GameMaker proved to be a powerful game development environment for its day. As a demonstration of its power, a remake of Pitfall! (one of Activision's most popular games) created entirely with GameMaker was included with the package.