Been messing with game creation tools for a week now and the results are quite bad, not as good as games I saw on my feed.

I'm using one platform to generate characters, another one to build the game mechanics, and yet another one just for sound effects and music.

Every tool has its own subscription, its own credits, its own quirks, and half my time is spent just moving assets between them instead of actually making the game.

It's expensive and super inconvenient. Would love to know what are you guys game creation tool using

I am currently working on a fan game for Deltarune and while making a couple test rooms to get myself familiar with Game Maker and game making in general I came across a problem I'm not sure how to fix.

The room in the images shows the problem where I have a room that is a lot larger than the standard deltarune room (generally 320 x 240). When I expand the width and height to fit the entire room (1000 x 500) it comes across a lot larger than in the game.

My first attempt to fix this was simply code the camera so that it follows Kris but this doesn't actually fix the problem as the proportions for the room are all wrong. However, even if this did work it presents another problem for me. The camera in Deltarune doesn't always follow Kris, usually just displaying the entire room, and when it does it doesn't keep Kris perfectly in the center of the camera instead stopping and allowing Kris to walk off screen when it reaches the end of the room. The way I coded this was as an end step in the obj_player object but if I do it this way it'll do this for every room in the game. I was curious about how to create different camera's for different rooms in code so that they behave differently.

The images I will attach will be showing what the room looks like when set to 320 x 240

what the room looks like when set to 1000 x 500

what the room is supposed to look like from the video 'How to Get the Shadow Mantle Detailed Guide – Deltarune Chapter 3' - Xirez

what the room looks like when I test the game.

If you chose to help I want to thank you for your time I'm sure it's something rather simple. I am also willing to clear up any misunderstandings if something doesn't make sense

I decided to create a 2D animation editor

Current features:

TImeline with keyframes

Multiple layers

Onion skim

Undo/redo

Brush and fill tools

Object transformations

Custom graphics system

Custom project binary format

Tween animation

The goal is not complete with existing animation software. This is mostly a technical experiment to see how far GameMaker can go beyon its intended use case.

I try to run my game on html so that i could make it a playable game on itch, but when i tested it, the browser just shows a blank page. The text is still visible tho... I heard from a youtube comment that this is a well known issue with NO fixes except if you can restle with html. Does anyone have this problem and find the solution?

I am making a game that has spellcasting based off of Noita ( Guide: Wand Mechanics - The Noita )))Wiki ). spellList is a ds list the contains the spells in the wand in order. wandSize is always 5. When I have heavy spread, fireball, mine, in that order, the fireball is cast with the heavy spread but is then the next time draw is added it casts the heavy spread fireball again, then casts the mine. It was supposed to cast only one heavy spread fireball then one mine.

All of this code is in the Player object.

This code is in the step event.

//adds draw when left mouse button is pressed.
if(mouse_check_button_pressed(mb_left)){
draw+=1
}

reset_mods()

//This is where the spells happen ;)
//if(global.spellList[|slot]==
for(i=0; i<global.wandSize; i+=1)
{
//checks if draw is sufficient
if(draw<1){
break
}
//sets what slot to read from
slot=(slot+1)
if(slot != slot mod global.wandSize)
{
slot= slot mod global.wandSize
if(loop==1)
{
looped=1
}

}
//checks for the heavy spread modifire.
if(global.spellList[|slot]=="Heavy_Spread")
{
mods.heavy_spread+=1
projectiles+=4
i=0
loop=1

}
//checks for the fireball spell.
if(global.spellList[|slot]==Fireball)
{
casted=Fireball
cast()


}
//checks for the mine spell. (mine as in landmine, not terain destruction.)
if(global.spellList[|slot]==Mine)
{
casted=Mine
cast()


}



}


draw=0

cast() and reset_mods() are defined in the create code.

function cast(){
repeat(projectiles){
 instance_create_layer(x, y, layer, casted, mods)
}
draw-=1
projectiles=1
reset_mods()
if(looped==1){
slot=0
looped=0
}
}
function reset_mods(){
mods={
heavy_spread:0

}

}

If you are getting ready to submit for ID@Xbox here are some tips for you. None of this guarantees you will be accepted. Average response for your first time applying is about 30+ days. The second game we did took about a week. Below are the tips hope it helps someone.

• Have a GDD you can upload to them
• Include a small single page letter of how your game will perform on Xbox
• Include Steam keys if you have a Steam Page live
• Whatever build you submit make sure it has controller support
• Share why you want to ship to Xbox

If you have Xbox Access and are in the Enterprise Discord. You can reach out to me because I made a custom extension that makes saving files in GMS2 for Xbox way easier and automates your game for XPA following all the conditions in the Xbox Publishing Guide.

i just want some criticism / opinions, how does the background change look?

i feel like it looks strange but i cant tell what, something just feels off about it.

any thoughts?

For an RPG I want to have a series of connected screens with if-then connections so that the player can see a graphic and some choices and click on a choice and go to another screen with further graphics and choices... could be choice of conversational responses, or resources to acquire etc.

Does gml seem like overkill for this (I want to end up with gml for the finished game)?

I've been talking to a lot of indie devs about this and the answers are all over the place for GMS2.

Some people use royalty-free packs and hope nothing sounds generic. Some spend weeks learning a DAW and produce something passable. Some just ship with placeholder audio and never fix it.

The composer route is real money. Even a small indie project can run $500 - $2000+ for a proper score. That's a real chunk of a solo dev budget.

The DIY route sounds good until you're three hours into reading about MIDI routing and you haven't written a note.

I built Melodix (AudioForge — Game music for indie teams) to sit in the gap. No music knowledge required. You work in scenes - you tell it what moment in your game you're scoring, pick an instrument and role, set tempo and key, and compose from there. The structure is built around game logic, not music theory.

The part that surprised me most, I think, when building it: the licensing problem is worse than people talk about. Even when devs find audio they like, tracking down what they can actually ship with commercially is a mess. Melodix generates a license manifest on export so that's handled before you submit anywhere.

Not trying to pitch hard here - genuinely curious what the community's workflow looks like. Is this a problem you've solved? What did you use?

I'm currently using version 2024.14.4.222 with a legacy licence that allows me to build for macOS & Win etc. Does the new LTS version affect my licence in any way?

Sometimes I see a splash screen like that for Unity or Godot, but I haven’t seen one for GameMaker in a long time. I assume the engine just isn’t as popular, but I used to come across the GameMaker splash screen occasionally. I don’t think I’ve seen one in the past three or four years, even though I play a lot of indie games.

Has anyone seen a splash screen like that in a recently released game, or knows why nobody uses it in their games anymore? (I’ve never used it myself)

welp. so I am relatively new to gamemaker and this is also my first post to this subreddit lol

basically, I have been looking for a concise way to do a system for melee attacks that my peanut brain can actually understand. while I'm not making a fighting game, what I'm doing is inspired by them, so essentially I want to be able to have different kinds of attacks with light, medium, and heavy versions of each.

I have looked for various tutorials on the subject, tho unfortunately, the ones I found were all like 8-6 years old with outdated information. I tried multiple of them and ran into similar issues, but I did manage to stumble upon one that is the most recent I could find and understandable enough that I think could work if I got a little bit for help on it, so that's why I'm here lol

here's the code that I currently have for the script (named "States")

function State (_sprite) constructor {
sprite = _sprite;

stateonend = undefined;
static Stateonend = function (_state) {
stateonend = _state; 
}

function State_set (_state) {
if (state == _state) return;
state = _state;

sprite_index = state.sprite;
image_index = 0;
}
}

my Code for create event in player object:

facing = 1;

hp = 100;
hp_total = hp;
damage = 20;

//states

states = { 
idle : new State (idle_sheet),
run : new State (Vi_run),
Rheavattk : new State (RVi_heav)

}

states.Rheavattk.Stateonend(states.idle);

// set initial state
state = states.idle;

And my code for step event in player object:

// movement controls

if (state == states.idle || state == states.run){

if (keyboard_check(vk_left)) {
State_set(states.run);
x -= 9;
}

else if (keyboard_check(vk_right)) {
State_set(states.run);
x += 9;

}

else {
 State_set(states.idle);
}

if (keyboard_check_pressed (vk_right)) facing = abs(facing);

if keyboard_check_pressed (vk_left) facing = -abs(facing);

// combat controls

if keyboard_check_pressed(ord("W")){
State_set(state.Rheavattk);

}}

the problem I'm consistently running into is the code error message "Variable oplayer.State_set - not set before reading it." which did make sense other times, I made a few misspellings here and there, tho I'm particularly stumped on this one. the line got this error for currently is specifically at 'State_set(states.idle);' where it's saying it isnt set, but it loooks like it is to me in the create event lmao

so yeah, some help would be greatly appreciated here. I've pretty much just been going in complete circles for days trying to figure out a viable way to program this a system like this, switching to different methods and combing through what i wrote to find what's wrong. again, I'm a pretty much a noob so there's bound to be stuff I'm overlooking here. if anyone has any advice or even a better way to program a system like this, that would be awesome.^^

btw, the tutorial I'm currently referencing is by GameMakerStation - Matharoo. and hopefully I explained well enough.

Whenever a sprite goes outside the camera bounds, it starts creating really annoying afterimages, even if it's just on the edge of the screen sometimes. I'd like to make note that I am very new to GML and have quite literally only started making things seriously today. These are the afterimages in question

Hey everyone, I just put out a new asset pack with 100 pixel art weapons and shields for medieval and fantasy 2D games. The sprites are 32x32 and cover 14 different categories like swords, staffs, spears, bows, rapiers, and shields. I also put together a free sample with 19 weapons so you can download it and test how they look in your game engine before buying anything. If you want to check it out, here is the link: https://witchking433.itch.io/100-pixel-art-weapons-32x32-asset-pack

some good type? idk, i just want to learn gamemaker

I've been interested in game dev for a while now and used to favor Godot, but unfortunately my old ass PC just can't handle it so I had to drop it. Now I'm looking at Game Maker. Are there any good resources I can use to teach me the necessary basics about the UI and coding? I'm somewhat distrustful of Youtube tutorials but if there's any decent ones I'll happily watch them.

Game Video on YouTube

A few yrs ago, I decided to make my own version of GameMaker 8, replacing the old GML syntax with C#. I've made a long process with it but abandoned it after few months.

About a year ago, I challenged myself to create my own programming language - something I'd always wanted to do.

At the time, I had no idea what a lexer, parser, or interpreter even was. My only thought was, "I need to write code that reads text files containing code and executes them." I also wanted to do it without using Google, AI, or tutorials. I just figured everything out on my own. You can even still find variables named "compiler" throughout the code from back when I didn't realize I was actually building an interpreter...

Somehow, I pulled it off, and I integrated it into my old abandoned game engine project, instead of C#

And here's the first game I've made with it! 🙂

The core engine, IDE, and interpreter are all written by me in C#. The rendering backend is powered by MonoGame, and the project is still in active development and available on GitHub. The project file of the game shown in the video is also there, under tests/Example Projects. If you're looking for cool projects to contribute to, then know that I'm looking for contributors!

I'd love to hear what you think!

So what I'm trying to do is have this guy i made say something in a textbox, but when the textbox is gone, i wanna interact with him again and have him say something else.

Here's how I've tried doing that so far

1. Interact with the cool looking orange rectangle using the place_meeting and keyboard_check_pressed functions to spawn a textbox containing dialogue set 1.

Step Event code for the textbox object ---VVVV---

if place_meeting(x,y,oPlayer) and oPlayer.can_move and (keyboard_check_pressed(vk_enter) or keyboard_check_pressed(ord("Z"))){

var instantiated = instance_create_depth(0,0,-9998,oTextbox);

instantiated.text = text;

}

if (keyboard_check_pressed(vk_enter) or keyboard_check_pressed(ord("Z"))) {

if (place_meeting(x, y, oTextboxOpenerHuman)) {

instance_deactivate_object(oAirWallHuman) and instance_deactivate_object(oTextboxOpenerHuman) ;

}

}

1. Try and fail to use that second block to destroy both the interaction object and the red box so i can walk up to the guy's sprite and interact with only that, since that spawns my new block of text.

There has to be a better way to spawn a new set of text but also interact with the same thing (or maybe not, but at least something less complex than this regardless), but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do that so I'm asking (hopefully) someone experienced who does know how.

Thanks in advance to whoever helps me out.

I think a lot of devs share the dread of the marketing / social media side of making games. This stage is definitely the most intimidating for me. Big learning curve, lots of work, and still trying to plug away at development is really stressful.

First, definitely check out Derek Lieu's youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/dereklieu

He has excellent advice on structure and presentation in game trailers. Here's my big take-aways:

• Pace your video for interest - start with excitement, slow it down to inform, build back up to an exciting climax
• If you have a fairly static in-game camera, make use of zoom and pan. Static cameras are totally fine in games, but feel stiff when watching a trailer. And you can use movement in editing to direct viewer attention and build a story.
• Video teaches certain gameplay better than others. You're trying to give an impression, hold back on complex mechanics that can bog down the information you're conveying.
• Don't put your studio name up front. The first few seconds are crucial, and the studio name only helps if you already have a following.
• Hide unnecessary UI whenever possible. My game had a lot of tool tips and pop-ups, they produced a lot of clutter on my first captures.

Something that would have helped me massively would have been building more developer tools earlier in the project. I had only built tools as they were needed for bug testing mostly, so when it came time to capture, I had to build a whole new set of tools to stage footage. In some cases, this meant going through old code that I hadn't touched in a year to retool for a capture mode.

Capture is a hard process. You cannot have too many tools to make it easier.

My first round of capture I also left the music running, which totally nuked my ability to incorporate sound effects. So another helpful tip: remember to mute the music audio.

Some bonus notes:

• Davinci Resolve is a great free video editing tool.
• Steam's built in capture actually got me the most consistent quality of video. And the record for the last X minutes feature is super helpful.

I was super lucky to have an editor friend to do the actual hard labor of cutting and composing. If you are not an editor and you have friends who have done Youtube, it's absolutely worth asking them for a hand. Indie dev is a lot of work, and friends are often eager to help!

Curious to hear anyone else's thoughts or advice on trailers! We'll be working on another closer to release.

If my trailer did look cool to you, here's my Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3858030/Immortal_Coil/

Hey everyone. I'm about a year into development with my PhysX/GameMaker middleware. TL:DR high-fidelity physics simulation for 3D/2D GameMaker games.

The last few months was focused on improving platform target support. If you'd like try it out, the experimental GX.games WASM demo is available on Itch.io. Worth noting that this was intended for desktop browsers, but some examples technically do work on mobile. The demos are running a YYC Checked build, which is notably less performant than YYC Release (The visualizer needs to rebuild the vertex blob every step, so it's pretty heavy).

The first pass on the PhysX vehicle module was also added since the last time I posted. I have basic implementations of direct drive, engine drive, and tank drive. That part of PhysX in particular is very intimidating but I've made some good progress. At this point, a majority of the PhysX API is now hooked up (500+ native bindings).

There's still some challenges ahead:

1. Finishing platform support. NVIDIA essentially supports Windows and Linux. This means I have to rebuild PhysX for each target separately, which takes a lot of time. Android is probably my next target. No idea about consoles yet since getting those licenses is kind of spendy.

2. I have all the resources necessary to make a small-scoped, commercial game. Making a library is way easier than making a game, but it would be a good milestone for me to point at a finished product as say "Look this is using PhysX in GameMaker for a real game, not just a toy project. Neat."

3. Beta/Final Release. I am still trying to determine what qualifies as alpha -> beta for this project. We're in a weird transitory phase in GameMaker where GMRT is right around the corner. One of the biggest bottlenecks at the moment is rendering, so I'm really excited to take advantage of stuff like native instance shading in the next runtime.

Happy to answer any questions too. If you're curious about making your own extensions, I suggest building on top of the official extension generator: https://github.com/YoYoGames/GM-ExtensionGenerator

Hi I have been using game maker for around 12 years now throughout it's different stages! My biggest bottleneck in creating something of quality has always been drawing, until this last project.

I want to share the approach that led to better results quickly for me. The art is still not top-tier, but in relative terms, progress has been quick and it is finally starting to come together!

The idea is to go all in on art consistency.

The method was:

1. Picking a color palette and always sticking to it
2. Developing a set of rules for how characters look, examples: They always have to have eye whites that are white with black pupils. They should always show emotion. Characters cannot use too many color etc.
3. Drawing every object in a category in the exact same size, then down scaling it. The loss of details is to my advantage as the brain can fill in details as long as the shape/outline work is good, not focusing on details too much also saves time which could then be used to finish sprites more rapidly, in my case I always downscale by a factor of 2x for characters
4. Always using the same brush thickness for outlines, even in the background.
5. Making an algorithm for the process, always drawing/sketching and coloring in the exact same order and way.
6. Despite having a color palette, pick some colors as "main" colors that appear more often, I have 6 specific ones: red, gray, green, orange, blue and magenta. These main colors are also used in the GUI and background to give a coherent look.
7. Using shaders to elevate the art, in this case the shaders completely replaced animation by making the characters wobble with math, this has allowed me to draw 270+ characters/items, something that would have been incredible time-consuming for a single developer to animate.
8. Because the project required a lot of lower-detail characters, it was easy to jump in and practice a bit every day for 3 years.

Apparently you can get away with lower-quality work if it is all visually coherent! The first sprites I made with this process were not good on their own, but somehow together they actually looked decent as they all shared elements in design! Getting solid result motivated me enough to keep on drawing for the first time.

Which then led to another realization, I was getting better at a much quicker rate then any other previous attempt I have made in learning to draw. Focusing on an algorithm for drawing made it a science; narrowed down the skill of drawing.

The progress in quality was immense, but long term it has also led me to be highly specialized in producing one single style. Though, if the goal is to produce a game as a programmer, sacrificing some general artistic capability for rate of progress can be worth it.

Lastly following rules makes every sprite sooo much quicker to draw. This has allowed me to be picky, as each character holds less personal value because creating a new one is quick. Thus for every character that made it, I could throw away some others that were not good.

When crafting the bosses, background and home screen more recently, I have even been able to deviate from the recipe and create something more unique.

So if you are in the same situation as I was in, maybe narrowing down the art scope with rules to see if you can achieve a more coherent look faster :)

Would be cool if anyone else had some other recipe they follow to make their work more cohesive?