Quick Questions

It will be fullscreen and i want it to be 4:3 with like those black boxes on the edges ig

I'm trying to make a bullet sequence for my game and for some reason I can't just copy this animation curve to move a second bullet the same way it did the first, it just moves the original one when i copy and paste it.

I want to paste all 3 of the green tracks (same curve) and have them repeat 5 times before ending the sequence

Hi,

I recently downloaded Gamemaker on my Macbook but whenever I open the application, the ui is really spread out and my mouse is completely desynced, with buttons only being abled to pressed when my cursor is far away from them.

Sometimes if I close and restart the app enough times and mess with my display size it will work as intended and the buttons and cursor all work normally, but this is not repeatable and super annoying to do everytime I open it.

Has this happened to anyone else/any suggestions on fixing it? I've deleted and redownloaded Gamemaker twice to no avail.

I added an image of what it looks like when the ui is desynced and when I've managed to get it to work

TLDR: Cursor/ui desynced when starting application on Macbook

Hey everyone,

I am very new to game dev (under a week of using gamemaker) and ive been working on a simple platformer game. I wanted to add dialog into the game so I made an NPC called "dummy", which triggers dialog once the player is less than 32 pixels away from them and press the F key.

As well as adding dialog, I wanted to add a shader to the NPC to give it a dynamic outline that changes colour once the player is within the interaction distance, going from a black outline to a white one. I followed Sara Spaulding's tutorial on outline shaders from years ago and miraculously it worked completely fine. But now I'm at the point where I want to add the ability for the shader to change colours. I tried doing it myself but got confused so tried to look elsewhere for help, but I can't find anything on the topic, at least nothing that works with my code.

Here's the code:

sh_outline Fragment Shader

// Simple passthrough fragment shader
//
varying vec2 v_vTexcoord;
varying vec4 v_vColour;
uniform float pixelH;
uniform float pixelW;

void main()
{
//figuring out the size of a pixel
vec2 offsetx;
offsetx.x = pixelW;
vec2 offsety;
offsety.y = pixelH;

vec4 texColour = texture2D(gm_BaseTexture, v_vTexcoord);

//figuring out pixels location on the sprite
float alpha = texColour.a;
float original_alpha = alpha;

alpha += ceil(texture2D(gm_BaseTexture, v_vTexcoord + offsetx)).a;
alpha += ceil(texture2D(gm_BaseTexture, v_vTexcoord - offsetx)).a;
alpha += ceil(texture2D(gm_BaseTexture, v_vTexcoord + offsety)).a;
alpha += ceil(texture2D(gm_BaseTexture, v_vTexcoord - offsety)).a;

if (alpha > 1.0) alpha = 1.0; //claim alpha
if (original_alpha != alpha) {
gl_FragColor = vec4(0.1529,0.1529,0.1529,1.0);
}
else {
gl_FragColor = texColour;
}
gl_FragColor.a = alpha;
}

obj_dummy Create Event

//Outline Shader
uPixelH = shader_get_uniform(sh_outline,"pixelH");
uPixelW = shader_get_uniform(sh_outline,"pixelW");
texelW = texture_get_texel_width(sprite_get_texture(sprite_index,0));
texelH = texture_get_texel_height(sprite_get_texture(sprite_index,0));

//Default Dialog
text = [
"Default Text",
]

obj_dummy Draw Event

//Outline Shader
shader_set(sh_outline);
shader_set_uniform_f(uPixelW,texelW);
shader_set_uniform_f(uPixelH,texelH);
draw_self();
shader_reset();

obj_player Step Event

//dialogue initiation
if (keyboard_check_pressed(ord("F"))) {
if (currently_talking == noone){
var check_x = x + (32 * moveDir);
var who_is_here = instance_place(check_x,y,obj_dummy);
if who_is_here != noone {
audio_play_sound(sfx_interact,1,false);
current_text = (who_is_here.text[0]);
currently_talking = who_is_here;
current_text_index = 0;
current_text_line_number = 0;
instance_create_depth(x,y,1,obj_pauser);
}
} else {
if (current_text_line_number < array_length(currently_talking.text) - 1) {
audio_play_sound(sfx_interact,1,false);
current_text_line_number++;
current_text = currently_talking.text[current_text_line_number];
current_text_index = 0;
} else {
currently_talking = noone;
instance_destroy(obj_pauser); 
}
}
}

Basically, the code checks if the F key has been pressed, then if the player is in proximity to the NPC at the time of the key press, dialog initiates. Im thinking I should swap around the keypress and whoishere if statements so that whoishere is being detected constantly, then when the player detects theres an NPC infront of them they send a message to the dummy that tells the shader to change the outline colour to white. Only, thats the bit where I'm stumped.

I'd really appreciate any help I can get on this. Definitely dont want to use AI for coding advice.

Thanks!

Hello, while creating my open-world I ran into a problem with the hotbar. It follows viewort 1 but not smoothly.

This is my objects end step event:

x = camera_get_view_x(view_camera[1]) + camera_get_view_width(view_camera[1]) / 2;
y = camera_get_view_y(view_camera[1]) + camera_get_view_height(view_camera[1]) - 20;

Hope you find a solution to this.

I made a game that only uses mouse inputs. My playertesters think 2 player would be fun, but I don't want to get into online stuff.

Would it be possible to have two player local play where both players use a mouse on the same machine?

I have been looking on Udemy and other sites on how to learn GameMakerLanguage since I have already learnt python and my main coding languages that I am going to be starting to learn this year are

• ✅ Python
• 🔲 GML
• 🔲 HTML
• 🔲 CSS
• 🔲 JavaScript
• 🔲 C
• 🔲 C++
• 🔲 C#
• 🔲 Java
• 🔲 Lua

If there are any GML courses or videos out there for GML, lmk.
-Thank You

Basically what the title says. I want to make a video game, but have like little to no background in computer programming and coding. Is there anything that I can do to help. I know that there's videos up on yt that can help with it, but I was also considering trying to teach myself a little bit of computer programming so that I can have some back round. What do y'all recommend?

Managing branching RPG quests and dialogue with raw GML and endless switch statements was turning into a spaghetti nightmare.

Out of frustration, I moved all my logic into a raw CSV spreadsheet (1 row = speaker, text, choices, triggers) and wrote a parser to handle it. It feels way easier to manage on the data side, but I’m worried I'm building a house of cards for a larger game.

I packed up my GML logic and the base structure into a free demo here if anyone wants to poke around the code and critique my approach:

https://francisco-89549.itch.io/rpg-quest-system

Is relying heavily on CSV grids in GameMaker a trap? Should I be converting all this to JSON and Structs instead? Would love to hear how you guys handle heavy narrative data in GMS2.

For localization purposes, I was using load_csv() but that meant i couldn't use commas since there was no way to tell gamemaker what seperator i was using.

i dont like working with the text functions because they always confuse me

but ultimately I

read each line into a string

used string_pos to detect where my seperator was (¬)
string copied to where that was

read it into the grid (global.file_grid[# x,y] = string)

then string deleted that part of the string.

I checked how many loops I needed horizontally (languages) by string_pos for ¬¬

all in all a fun brainteaser, and now i can use commas in dialogue again

I’ve made a battle system turn based but I want something similar like DELTARUNE like with the bullet hell Ive have no idea how to do it I’ve tried before I’ve even followed tutorials but I have no idea how to make the bullet patterns

I have an idea for a minigame, where you have sentences with missing words and a pile of words and you have to put the right words in the right empty spaces. But I'm unsure on how to make something like that, is there a tutorial that could point me in the right direction?

All I ask is that you let me know when you use it. Enjoy!
https://arranger-boi.itch.io/thisisoneofmyfree8bitbgmtracks

[wuyupei090@gmail.com](mailto:wuyupei090@gmail.com)

I created an MCP connector that does alost everything within Game Maker Studio. Check it out.

https://solosj13.itch.io/game-maker-studio-workbench

This is the toolkit that lets connects your AI agent to help  build your project, run it, read the compile errors, watch the running game, and get the art in — without corrupting the .yyp.

Four MCP servers and an art pipeline, installed with one command an agent can run for you unattended.

735 tools across four servers

Project (190) — edit/analyze/generate .yyp/.yy/.gml: assets, rooms, objects, events, shaders, static analysis, a 0–100 health score, snapshots, and GML unit tests that actually run.

Control (9) — build, run, reload and watch through your real local Igor. The loop the others lack: edit → build → run → read errors → fix → reload, no human at the IDE.

Runtime bridge (529) — inspect and drive a running game: instances, variables, rooms, cameras, audio, input, physics, frame-stepping, and screenshots that include the GUI layer. Loaded on demand, so it costs almost no context.

Reference (7) — look up any GameMaker function/variable/constant from your installed runtime's own spec.

Plus gmpipe, a 14-command art pipeline that does what no MCP server can — starting with putting a real image into a sprite.

Why it's worth paying for

The edits don't corrupt your project. Built while shipping a real game with these tools.

The agent runs the whole cycle.

The art gets in. gmpipe import-sprites writes a real, loadable sprite — frames, layer GUID, IDE-accepted .yy — from a folder of PNGs, a sheet, or a strip.

Just a game where you can play card games such as go fish, crazy eights, that sort of thing. I've never had to deal with allowing the user to change the resolution of the game and so I want to start tackling it here. Problem is I don't know what the best way to go about it is and every way I've found is yielding different problems.

Worth noting I have variations of each card sprite designed for both 1920x1080 AND 1280x720 (I wasn't initially sure if I was going to go further than just those two and I was having the same issues before as I am now so it seemed practical. Yes, this was probably a waste of time).

I tried upscaling/downscaling the whole game using 1280x720 and/or 1920x1080 as a base, but there were always issues with the pixels not scaling properly to each resolution. I'd like to avoid texfiltering if I can (because so far it's look bad when I tried it) but without enabling it the sprites would get extremely distorted.

I tried rendering the whole game at each different resolution, which I managed to make it work logicstically, but I had the same issues with the sprites and poor scaling.

I'm just not sure what to do man. Any advice is appreciated.

I'm terribly afraid to seek help from others and I'm deeply insecure about being bad at things but I'm trying to ask for some help and I just want some advice. Please help me. I just want to if anyone has some tips or tricks as to how to learn and keep mentally the knowledge one learns when working in Gamemaker. I don't want to be a consumer anymore. I want to be a creator.

I've started messing around with gamemaker and have been following tutorials to learn how to code. I've recently have been trying to add moving platforms to my game but when I try running it now it shows me this. What am I missing?

My game has a pixel-perfect camera, it is drawing on a surface that is my pixel resolution that is scaled up. I have parallax backgrounds in my game but when it is also pixel perfect, it leads to jittery movement (look at the stars) as it is moving too subtlety for the pixel grid to account for. Does anyone have any experience with making this look better?

So I've been on gamemaker discord server for a while but i didnt chat there in months, usually when i did its just about either getting help about something or searching for potential partners for game development.

But after like months and months i got back into gamemaker and wanted to join a server in case i needed to ask any more questions, but when i tried to it seems i've been IP banned, cos not my nor my brothers can join the server to see what happened.. odd, my user is ExUkiku, but my old user which got suspended a while ago by discord for them suspecting my age was now adult age was CursedUkiku. And since I didn't want to give them my personal information (visa), i won't have that acc back until like 2028.., if anyone's in the server, can you check why I was banned or if there is any way for me to be able to bypass the IP ban I got on discord?

I appreciate it lots, thanks!

Hi all, my Indie (M)MORPG is having a public playtest!

It's a 2D side scrolling platformer with a single open world, all built in Gamemaker. I'm really happy with Gamemaker's capabilities for this type of project and happy to answer any questions about the process.

The game was inspired by an older Gamemaker game called Stick Online, which some of you may remember.

The game is totally free with no ads, no cash shop, no hidden monetisation at all!

Please consider trying it out and letting me know what you think!

Content is a bit light right now but we've got:

- 12 unique mobs
- 20 unique weapons
- 35 unique hats
- 2 major zones, each with 2 sub-zones

You can download and try the game here: https://loafygoat.itch.io/stick-universe

And you can Join our Discord here to give feedback, leave suggestions, report bugs, etc. https://discord.gg/Be9MFQMC

So I have a problem that has arrived at the worst time. I made a game on Reddit called Rock Bottom, and I have never had issues with audio until now. My audio, everything, sounds all staticy, and it's awful. For reference, please refer to the video link below:

https://youtube.com/shorts/9zdxO94XVeg

If you want to play the game and see if you are experiencing the static yourself, please feel free to do so by heading to this link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RockBottomGame/s/82zczuEAdd

I have no idea why this is happening and why it's happening now. What's weirder is that no one on my game's subreddit seems to be reporting it (which is a relief), but I have to imagine some are being affected just as I am. When playing my game on either Android or Mac, my audio is awful and staticky.

I haven't made any updates to the game that affect the audio at all, and yet it's totally cooked on my mobile device. There is no reason, as far as I can tell, for this to be happening now. I don't even know what to say to provide any additional context for my issue, because I don't even know where to look.

My sound effects are uncompressed WAVs, and my music tracks (of which there are very few), whereas my music is compressed-streamed. One thing worth pointing out is that, when building my game, I do get noteworthy output at some point (shown below). This is something I have always had appear in the output from basically the beginning, and it never made any difference, so I don't know why it would be causing a problem now...

If anyone has any ideas or guidance they could lend me, it would be much appreciated. I am desperate to solve this as quickly as possible. Any help at all would be amazing. Thanks again.

Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_char_chirp/Snd_char_chirp.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_char_chirp to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_hop_off/Snd_hop_off.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_hop_off to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_step/Snd_step.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_step to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_wall_bounce/Snd_wall_bounce.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_wall_bounce to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz

Im trying to set up a load game system where you can see a hand full of var from each save before loading.

I have the save and load system working as intended but im having trouble with the text itself.

To save im using

Var buffer = buffer_create(1024, buffer_grow, 1);

buffer_write(buffer, buffer_f16, player_cont.level);

And to load i use

buffer_seek(buffer, buffer_seek_start, 0);

player_cont.level = buffer_read, (buffer, buffer_f16);

How do i get "text_obj" to display the players level on the title screen (along with 20 other numbers) without having to go back and write 100s of new lines of code to manually update the info and then save it in its own file

Edit: i figured out a solution. In the code that saves the game i added a new block that overwrites the objects variables before saving that information in the main save under text_obj.level.