The problem with BGT is its making coding too easy, guess what, its not supposed to be easy, its supposed to be damn difficult, frustrating, aggravating, you know why? Because as the end of that, what you've got out of it is knowledge,, and a product. BGT doesn't just make learning coding easier, it dumbs it way way down. You cannot just take the essentials of something, pass it to someone, and be like OK now go out and be brilliant. Would you want a neurosurgeon operating on your brain to remove a tumor if you knew the sum total of their knowledge was, "Alright, this here's a scalpel, here's yer suction, clamps, pads, alright, now don't go screwin' nuttin' up." Is that enough? Not to me it isn't. Now, you get your aspiring young programmers out there and say OK this is what variables are, this is how you define a function, here's your flow control statements like if...elseif, here's all about loops. OK, Now we've taught you all about data types and all this other stuff, go out and make an awesome game. But there's more to coding than knowing the syntax of the language, there's more to it than knowing what the difference between a float and a double are. What you have to learn next is how to conceptualize what you want to do. What you have to do is learn that coding is telling a very dumb machine what to do, and you need to tell it precisely what to do. Computers are not smart, at all. We can add this abstract layer of AI, or so-called AI to it to make people think they are, but they're not. You want to see what happens? Take some code with at least two if tests in it, and then start moving around your endifs or your right braces. Make sure you have the requisite amount to close all the if statements in the code, but move them around, misplace them, and then run the code and see what happens. What if you had several layers if nested if statements, and you ran into that problem.
People do not know how to code just from reading the BGT manual. It is a very good manual, very well written, and I've used it before. But it does not teach you all you need to know. People have their heads up in the clouds, and think that when they finish it, they're ready to make games, but they're really only just beginning their journey. The problem is, they think to themselves, well, I don't know how to build a game engine, I don't know how to design a game inventory system, I don't know how to design an entire weapon class. So what happens? They find all they need out there, pull it into their project and make a few modifications to variable values, constants, etc. and think they've done something. OK, you've demonstrated that you know how to use the internet, you've demonstrated you know how to use BGT's include keyword, you've demonstrated you know how to save and compile your code, but you haven't done much more than that. I've written this blog post that explains my position fully.
Now, to be fair, especially to the dev, Phillip Benefall who really does get dumped on, my problem isn't with him, I'm sure he didn't set out to destroy the audio games community, he couldn't have know the course of events that would follow, he was trying to help, and in no way can be held responsible for what happened as a result of BGT being released. When it was released freely, I was excited because I struggled to code all my life but it was something I was interested in. I read the manual a few times, but I still couldn't get it. I'm finally, and I mean at the age of 32, finally starting to be able to get a handle on coding. I still struggle with it and I always will because I lack the natural talent for it, and some of the traits really good programmers have. Last weekend, I read a bunch on javascript and PHP, and built a thing on my website that generates a page based on every audio file in a folder. It adds a row to the table with three columns, the file name at the left, the file size in the middle, and an HTML5 audio player at the right. When new files are placed in that folder, or files are deleted, the next time that page is generated, i.e. someone visits, or you refresh from your end, the new files will show up, and the old ones will be removed. It's not that much code, but it took me like 4 hours, most of which was debugging. But I have this determination to do something, and I just keep hammering away at it. I was proud when it first worked, despite the fact a lot of people would look down at me with a sneer. To them, something like that would be no biggy at all, maybe they could do it in the space of five minutes or less. But to me, someone who has worked off and on all their life at trying to learn to write code, yeah that was kind of cool when it all came together, and the files actually played.
You cannot, can... not take shortcuts when you learn to code, if you do, you're doing nothing more than setting yourself up for failure. And that would be a shame if you did that, because you could have otherwise might have made good games. I know its hard, I know its daunting, overwhelming, frustrating, damned aggravating at times, but if you have the passion, and the drive, and a bit of talent at figuring things out, working the problem logically and methodically, you'll probably end up doing well. This is why I have a problem with BGT, and hey, if people who already know how to code well, or learned how to code and they do it well on BGT want to keep making games on it, I would say go for it, just be aware that you're creating potential issues if its a paid product because of this antivirus thing, and its beyond windows defender now.