Game Maker Studio 1.4 was actually really good - it was basically Game Maker 8 with a ton of quality of life improvements, including optimised collision systems, OGG support, short circuit evaluations, the fact that all of your code is converted to C++ and then compiled (this provides a MASSIVE performance boost - I remember one of my old games ran at ~50fps in GM 8.1 but once I imported it into Studio 1.4 it ran at about 400fps) and - best of all - the free version of it had no restrictions beyond compiling platforms (you needed an upgraded license to compile for mobile and other devices, but you could make EXEs using the free version without any restrictions)
Unfortunately when Studio 2.0 came around I think they realised that could make more money by forcing everyone to buy a license to get all that. As a result GMS2's trial is pathetically limited. The worst part about all of this is that you can't get the free license of Studio 1.4 anymore - people that already had it get to keep it but they won't give out any new ones. They even removed the Game Maker Studio 1.4 page from Steam entirely, meaning you can't download it unless you already had it to begin with.
If I were you I would look for a crack of Studio 1.4, if you can find one.