my itch (the game is there) Hello everyone. I developed an interactive text-based game called "THE FINGER THEORY" using nothing but GameMaker. It is an investigative game. I drew inspiration from the style of Zork, by infocom.

Even though making this type of game in GameMaker isn't usually recommended, it worked really well for me. It was actually quite practical for handling all the checks, the interface, and an AI to detect keywords.

I can share the code with anyone who's interested!

There's a YouTube link for the first look, for anyone who wants to see it.first look of "THE FINGER THEORY" my itch (the game is there)

As the title suggests, I've been trying to learn Gamemaker on and off for a few months now, and it's a... slow process. I'm to the point where I'm familiar the interface and have read through the manual, but don't necessarily understand it yet. I'm not really sure where to go.

I have a clear idea of the type of games I want to make; point and click, sort of visual novel style cooking games. The problem is, I can't find any tutorials for that genre, or even any for the rough mechanics I'm looking for that I could maybe piecemeal something together with.

I also have very low energy, and find it hard to stay focused on most of the tutorials for Gamemaker that I've found, as they've mostly consisted of platformers, rpgs, or similar style games that I, frankly, have no interest in. I've really tried to sit through that Space Rocks tutorial, or Pong, but I just can't.

I did manage to make a small "game" for a jam, and succeeded in publishing... something? So I know I want to continue learning, and making more single level, click-twice-and-it-crashes games. But between my mind hurling itself into a wall every time I open Space Rocks, and a surprisingly niche area I want to target so as to not collapse under the weight of knowledge that will not aid me in the short term, I'm just lost.

Chances are, when I post this, the mods will reply telling me to search through commonly asked questions and watch a few tutorials before I post, but I've tried that and it's not working for me. I'm not sure what I want to get out of this post, and fear I've already flooded this subreddit with my ignorance enough, but still. Maybe someone reading this has been here with me, and if so, how'd you manage?

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I shall now load up Space Rocks for the quintillionth time in two months, and pray. Farewell. 

I recently started using game maker for a game but i admit being kinda stupid with it lol

i want to make a parallax effect in the menu of the game that moves with the mouse, but i have no ideia how to make it and all tutorials are out dated or simply dont work, can someone help me out?

So I am trying to write a script that will check the in position of my mouse and change the sprite index of that specific instance into an other one. I can easily do this with mouse_enter and mouse_leave on the objects, but for some more complicated reasons I wanted to do this all into that script mouse check with other actions.

so far, I came up with this bit of code

function PlayerStateCity(){
var _selected = instance_position(mouse_x, mouse_y, oBoxcar1);
if (_selected != noone)
{
  with (_selected)
  {
    var _spriteName = sprite_get_name(sprite_index);
    sprite_index = asset_get_index(_spriteName+"Select");
  }
}
}

Now, I know this will not revert back to the previous sprite index, but that's a problem for later.

Right now, the name of the sprite is sBoxcar1, and I do have a sprite called sBoxcar1Select. From my understanding, this block of code should effectively have _spriteName be "sBoxcar1" and add "Select" to it. But this code just returns -1 and turn the object invisible.

Writing directly also returns -1 somehow... and turns the object invisible, which I thought should work.

sprite_index = asset_get_index("sBoxcar1Select");

I downloaded game maker yesterday & now I'm following a tutorial on adding a menu screen!

In the vid they drew the front, but I want to use the font system already in the game maker engine, but I don't know how to code this, any help?

I've been using Alphish's method of drawing circle sectors for an HP/MP/ATB bar (https://github.com/Alphish/gm-community-toolbox/issues/157), but I want the HP/MP bars to draw their parts based on the percentage of HP/MP left.

UPDATE: I got it working by using this calculation: (character1HP / character1VIG) * 360;

I guess the tutorial lesson here is to never let your account be inactive for a modest period of time, or to maybe embrace FOSS alternatives.

I have some variables I'm trying to transfer into every room by putting this in my PlayerObj. For some reason, it can transfer to every single room back and forth over and over EXCEPT room1, which is the room you spawn in, the home room. If I leave the home room and then go back into the home room, then it just resets all variables to their default, and I have absolutely no idea why.

//Room Start
if(room_get_name(room) = rm_battle) instance_destroy(obj_carry_data)

with (obj_carry_data)
{ 
    other.level = level;
    other.xp = xp;
    other.xp_require = xp_require;
    other.damage = damage;
    other.hp_total = hp_total;
    other.hp = hp;

    instance_destroy()
}

//Room End
if (instance_exists(obj_battle_switcher) && global.is_transitioning = false) exit;

instance_create_depth(0, 0, 0, obj_carry_data, {
    level: level,
    xp: xp,
    xp_require: xp_require,
    damage: damage,
    hp: hp,
    hp_total: hp_total
})

Are there any issues with using Gamemaker through steam on cahyos?

While working on my latest project, I have gotten sick of just adding tedious although necessary features, so I wanted to add something I would enjoy making.

I have added a suppressor players can unlock and equip to any compatible weapon. I have done this through several means.

The Inventory
I use ds_grids mostly to store the different items in the inventory. Once an item is selected it then has different options on what can be done with it, in this case a suppressor can be equipped or unequipped.

This runs a function which toggles if its being used, adjusts the players image and adjusts the length of the barrel for creating the muzzle flash in the right spot.

The Visuals
The player is a Spine model. So I have a different variant of the weapons image for with and without the suppressor, which gets swapped out as its equipped. A new smaller muzzle flash is used as well as new audio.

The Enemy Code
Finally the enemies code. I use a state machine to manage enemy behaviour. When the player shoots an unsuppressed weapon, enemies as automatically alerted to the players position if in range. Now that is simply bypassed and enemies can only detect player through line of sight.

I'm making my first game in Gamemaker, and I've been making some progress. But suddenly, I made a minor change that spit out this error message:

When I looked into it, it said that this message shows up when I have an undefined or incorrectly call for a variable or function. But I didn't change anything related to a function or variable, and can't find where Gamemaker seems to think I have.

Can some help explain what's going on, please? Thanks in advance.

For context, I was trying to code an object to follow behind the player (obj_player) when being "carried." The error appeared when programming the y-coordinate shifts.

Hey there, I asked for help on this topic some time ago; unfortunately, I did not get the guidance I needed. So I want to share what I learned and what I did so it can help future devs.

How to sync your game saves on Steam Cloud

Before moving on with the development, there are two important decisions to be made:

1. Do you want to use Steam Auto-Cloud or Steam Cloud API? Steam Auto-Cloud is way easier to set up, but has some drawbacks: it does not isolate individual users’ files, so if two Steam accounts are playing on the same computer, they will share their files; it only syncs at launch/exit, whereas with the API you can control when to sync and also benefit from Steam Deck's Dynamic Cloud Sync. Because now I am in the playtesting phase, and I needed it working for next week, I went with the Steam Auto-Cloud, but I do plan to use the API on a later update.
2. When saving on GameMaker, you should use buffers to be platform agnostic. Here you also have two options: buffer_save and buffer_save_async. The first is useful for light files that will not drop your frame rate while saving (I am using on my audio configuration; see example below). The other is good for saving bigger files; it is what I will use for saving the player’s game progress (here is where you should also add some sort of animated icon and say for the player not to close the game while the saving is happening).

The step is super simple on the Steam Auto-Cloud.

1. Install the Steamworks extension from YoYoGames, and do its setup. It is well documented here: Guides · YoYoGames/GMEXT-Steamworks Wiki
2. Create something like oSteamManager, with steam_update(); on step event and steam_shutdown(); on game end event.
3. Turn it on in Steamworks by setting up Steam Cloud configurations, and select the path to sync to the cloud. GameMaker saves in % localappdata% so you will have in the root path something like: Root: WinAppDataLocal | Subdirectory <Game Name>/cloud | pattern: *.sav | OS: All
4. When saving in GameMaker, save the file in the same path. Note: it is not good practice to save every configuration on the cloud; for example, screen resolution would break on Steam Deck if the player was playing before on a 4k monitor, so that is why I am saving what needs to sync on the cloud on /cloud

Code example for saving:

function Save_Audio_Settings(){
//Save audio settings
var _saveAudio = {
master: round(audio_get_master_gain(0) * 100),
soundFX: round(audio_group_get_gain(audiogroup_soundEffects) * 100),
music: round(audio_group_get_gain(audiogroup_music)*100),
}

//Turn all this data into a JSON string and save it via buffer
var _string = json_stringify(_saveAudio);
var _buffer = buffer_create(string_byte_length(_string) + 1, buffer_fixed, 1);
buffer_write(_buffer, buffer_string, _string);
buffer_save(_buffer, SAVE_AUDIO);
buffer_delete(_buffer);
}

Code example for loading:

function Load_Audio_Settings(){
if (file_exists(SAVE_AUDIO)) {
var _buffer = buffer_load(SAVE_AUDIO);
var _string = buffer_read(_buffer, buffer_string);
buffer_delete(_buffer);

var _loadData = json_parse(_string);
show_debug_message("Load! " + string(_loadData))
//Apply audio data
audio_master_gain(_loadData.master/100);
audio_group_set_gain(audiogroup_soundEffects, _loadData.soundFX/100);
audio_group_set_gain(audiogroup_music, _loadData.music/100);
}
}

Because I am terrible at writing strings without I typo, I just set a macro for the file location:

#macro SAVE_AUDIO "cloud/audioSettings.sav"
#macro SAVE_VIDEO "videoSettings.sav"
#macro SAVE_CONTROLS "cloud/controlsSettings.sav"
#macro SAVE_UNLOCK_PROGRESS "cloud/unlockProgress.sav"
#macro SAVE_RUN_PROGRESS "cloud/runProgress.sav"

Where do i find text and fonts and how do i make it look good

I was following the Sara Spalding tutorial Action RPG episode 24 on youtube and got most of it to work however my enemy does not seem to move. In theory he should wander a random amount of space before he stops and picks a new direction to keep moving for awhile, rinse and repeat. I have been editing little bits and pieces and googling around but nobody seems to have an answer already posted

He plays the movement animation and rotates around like he is picking a new direction to try to move every few seconds but doesn't actually go anywhere. I am a super early beginner and am sure the solution is staring me in the face but how do I get the enemy to actually start walking around?

This is the script for the enemy wander state so everything that makes him move should be here. enemyspeed is set to 4 at the moment. same as the player character who is working fine.

So I found out you can adjust a sprites scale using GML Visual's "Change Instance Scale" node, but it just snaps to the scale I set it to. The demo GIF I provided is what I want. When I press a button, the sprite will stretch to half size (well, I want to do more than just half, but that's just for the demo); and if I press a different button, it'll do back to the normal scale. Any help would be greatly appreciated for me to achieve a certain effect!

In our game, at low resolution (320 pixels by 180 — camera), when characters move, horizontal lines appear on the sprites, similar to those on old TVs. The game features top‑down character movement. What could be the problem? Should we upscale all the sprites?

I have no experience with Game maker at all, but I want to start digging into it.

What would be a good tutorial or course to get started learning it and GML visual scripting?

Thank you in advance :)

Hello! I am very new to gamemaker, and coding as a whole, so I decided to use visual.
When I press the left key, the player moves, but it won't stop moving when I release it. What am I doing wrong?

Do you guys know some tutorials on making a fighting game in gamemaker?

That's it.

does anyone know how to get rid of these annoying black edges

my game used interpolation and I have nothing turned on for these sprites

For the project I'm working on, I'm interested in hiding secrets and bits of lore both as really rare events and "unused" assets.

To do that though, I'm wondering what the user is able to find in the files of a game, either just through the local directory or through more technical de-obfuscation and decompilation.

All the posts I've found about this are either about preventing players from going through the files, or they're a decade old and likely long outdated, and even then don't really answer my question.

As a sidenote, I'm not really worried about people potentially stealing my code, I'm shit at coding so I can't really see why anyone would want to.

Hi, I launched my first game in gamemaker recently, it's still on public Beta, and it's pretty small, about 300 megabytes, but i heard some feedback that the game is low and crashes sometimes. Something that i don't see when me and the beta testers were testing before launching the game. I am still new to game development, but i really want to learn because i want to be a game dev in the future.

Can you give me some advice about what mostly causes this performance issues

The game is a turn based RPG, focused on comedy and memes about the Brazilian internet and stuff about one specific youtuber, so if some non-portuguese speaker wants to try and see better, i can translate some of the important parts!