Pros and Cons on Flash VS Game Maker?

Game Maker is the way to go for almost any game. Flash is greate for flash movies. Game maker, (GM) can do almost any kind of game. It could mimic Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Tetris, almost anything.

See, instead of some game making engines where "here is where you draw the main character" and "here is where you make the battle scenes" and "here is where you bla bla bla" Game Maker gives you a sprite design menu (makes almost anything you see on the game) and an object program menu (Where you take the sprites and give them commands like move around what whatever.)

These two details expand into almost any game genere. You can do a platformer (side-scroller), a top-down rpg, puzzle game, even with the $20 regestered fee, you can make your own first persion shooter!! It's crazy! If you want to see completed games with gamemaker, download some of them on the main website. or, you can download the tuturials where it talks about how to do things, thus what things are, which you may be interested in.

As for the programming language (GML) you can work with mathematical equasions such as absolute value, sin, cos, tangent, its all included. Variables also are quite helpful. It's similar to normal coding with notepad if i'm not mistaken. I don't know much about that but i've seen it. Also, with the $20 registration fee I mentioned earlier, you can include other programming languages. It will also accept .DLL files with registration. I don't know what they are, but i've seen them in the files professional computer games like Age of Empires III.

Everything is done by you, all the programming, stuff like that, yet gamemaker is not useless if you don't know everything, and there's a sweet forums page on their website where people can answer almost any question you may have. The only problem is that it takes a lot of time.

I would defenately get it. Once i tried Game Maker, I was wondering where it has been all my life!

For a given price: You can get more power from a desktop You can get more portability from a laptop. If you want more specific info, then you need to provide more specific details about the systems you have in mind. "Being a hardcore gamer (40+ hrs/week) can a laptop handle my lengthy gaming periods?" A laptop will handle that load with less power than a desktop. If you need that power for gaming and only need portability for school, then consider getting an upgrade for your rig (assuming it's a desktop) or a power desktop and getting a budget netbook for class. I'd be surprised if you can get a sufficiently reliable and powerful notebook for under 2 grand, let alone $1,500. Also, if you're going to school, spending more than 20 hours a week gaming is really not a good idea.

Go with flash to produce more customizable games.