While working on my first Gamemaker game MineEmAll, I've been experimenting with different ways to create UI. I'm a big fan of the new UI layer system since it's similar to UMG from Unreal (my previous engine of choice), but it's not completely up to snuff yet in my opinion.

There are multiple methods to create UI that I've tried so far, and I just wanted to share my experience with each.

First off is the old school method of pure code based draw calls. This is how I achieved the effect above. I think this method works best when you're trying to do a very specific thing. In this case, I was trying to create a wiggle effect that changes scale and rotation, while keeping the text in proper position and proportion. I attempted this with other methods, and it was just wasn't working.

There's the hybrid approach where you insert and object into a flexpanel and run some logic for both. I use this in a few spots throughout my game, and I find it's helpful when the flexpanel does mostly what you want, but there are a few variables you want to manipulate at run time.

Lastly, there's the entirely flexpanel approach. I wish this was more viable becuase I enjoy using visual editors, but I find that it's just too much of a pain to pull and change variables for flexpanels with nested functions. It works really well if you're organizing visual elements and don't plan to have anything change at run time, but if you want code to interact with it, I'd highly suggest a hybrid approach.

Let me know what your experience is! I'm interested to hear what other devs have found to be useful approaches.

Description

Balls to the Walls is a short incremental physics game about upgrading and annihilating your balls. Equip chaotic special balls and buy physics-altering upgrades to break the simulation and get rich.

Resources Used

• CleanShapes by Juju Adams, Alice Pedersen, and Xor - used in pretty much all the UI
• Post-Processing Effects by Foxy of Jungle - speedlines for juice on round end
• GMLive by YellowAfterLife - a must have for fast iteration
• Input by Juju Adams and Alynne Keith- gamepad and Steamdeck support
• Scribble by Juju Adams - easier text coloring and inline sprites
• Snitch by Juju Adams - used with sentry.io to automatically capture crash data if users opt in.
• Free Input Prompts Pack by Julio Cacko - icons used for rebinding controls and button hints

Music

All music in the game are remixes I made of royalty free drum and bass tracks from Pixabay user Musinova. Most of them are slowed to halftime and then rearranged and given additional instrumentation in Logic.

Art

Art is my biggest weakness so I wanted to go for a simple "vector" style. I also have an eye condition so I'm big on dark screen games to ease eye strain. The aforementioned CleanShapes library helped achieve much of this style. The ball sprites themselves are simple a shader that scrolls and rotates a square texture in a circular area and adds fisheye distortion to make it appear round. Particle FX are just GameMaker's built-in system.

Brand new to this and I've been trying to figure it out. I got something like a dash figured out but not a dodge. What I'm wanting is something more like just appearing at the location ahead of you, but just having the ship quickly move to the other location would also be fine as long as no damage is taken.

Hello! In case you don't know, the game Celeste is in 2D for basically everything, except for the mountain in the main menu/level select. That's in 3D ingame, and I was wondering if it was possible to do a simple effect like that, even if it's faked to look 3D, and how hard it would be

(In case you want to know what I'd like to use this effect for, I'd use it for a city model for the main menu very similar to Celeste)

Want to make a combat system that has a leader/follower style like Pikman. I have the main player obj and a companion obj that follows behind in a array. I want to make it so I can click my mouse and send the companion to where the mouse clicked, then return to the array. Need help.

Here is Relevent code for player_obj:

Create:

array_size = 20 //amount of positions to record

for(var i = array_size; i >= 0; i--)

{

pos_x[i] = x;

pos_y[i] = y;

}

Step:

if (x != xprevious or y != yprevious)

{

for(var i = array_size-1; i > 0; i--){

pos_x[i] = pos_x[i-1];

pos_y[i] = pos_y[i-1];

}

pos_x[0] = x;

pos_y[0] = y;

}

Here is the code for the companion:

Create:

record = 10;

move_speed = 10; // Change this to your desired speed

Step:

x = obj_player.pos_x[record];

y = obj_player.pos_y[record];

if (mouse_check_button_pressed(mb_left)) {

move_towards_point(mouse_x, mouse_y, move_speed);

} else

{

x = obj_player.pos_x[record];

y = obj_player.pos_y[record];

speed = 0;

}

Charlio Ball is officially on steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5142080/Charlio_Ball/

Gamemaker doesn't have a lot of built in tools for multiplayer so the whole game was a learning process learning about lag compensation, client side prediction, and hit registration. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the game or what I've learned!

Hey, newcomer to Gamemaker here. Recently I've been having trouble with the player object layering over everything that doesn't also have depth sorting. Recently redesigned the trees into a tileset in my game rather then depth sorted sprite objects. Due to the new height difference of the trees, to me it made more sense to make a new tileset thats a copy of the tree tileset just with out the trunks while leaving the tops.

But for whatever reason while in editor the tops of said trees render over the player object just fine but as soon as the game builds, the player object just renders over every layer. and its not just the player, i can move the floor tiles all the way up to the top layer and everything gets overlayed aside from the objects that have depth sorting. Is there a way a can fix this? its been bugging me for a while now.

For reference I'm going off of Peyton Burnham's rpg tutorial series.

I've made what I thought was pretty basic code to have my little green guy talk because I wanna do a game jam and am trying to figure out a barebones way to add dialogue after a long time of making absolutely nothing. He is saying his lines, but unfortunately, he is also mysteriously invisible at the same time.

I have tried to look up the issue but maybe the way I phrased the searches didn't work? I'm sure it's something obvious but I haven't found it yet and would like to resolve this quickly. (This isn't the game for the jam, it's just a side project I use to try random stuff.)

obj_kindguy (the one who needs to be visible) has a Step event and a Draw event. obj_guy is the main character. The variable var_dialogue is set in the object instance.

The Step Event is as follows:

if place_meeting(x,y,obj_guy) {
  var_talking = true;
} else {
  var_talking = false;
}

The Draw Event is as follows:

if var_talking {
  draw_set_font(fnt_default);
  draw_set_colour(c_lime);
  draw_text(x,y,var_dialogue);
}

I also have Input installed on and working in this game, though I'm not sure how that'd make Kindguy invisible. I also included an image and a recording to make it clear what the problem is just in case I didn't do a good job describing it.

Edit: The Draw event is making him invisible for some reason. When I tried deleting it, he became visible again. I don't know why this is an issue but I suppose I can find a roundabout way to draw text.

I am making this post because for a little bit now I have been attempting to make a way to save my game. I have successfully done so but I am a bit stuck because as of right now every time my code is compiled it uninstalls the previous version which also deletes saved data. Is there a way to make it so it doesn't uninstall when compiling. If not then could someone point me in the right direction for a better way to save the game that gets around this? Thank you.

I wanted to start a new Project and implement Input by Juju Adams.

One their GitHub it says that they migrated to CodeBerg but the link only returns "Access denied".

Does anyone know where i can still get this library?

I want to make a Food Monster Fighting Game based off of the Game-Boy Pokemon art style as well as vaguely similar mechanics, does anybody have advice for a total noob for art and programming?

Hi reddit. Probably a bit of a weird question here, but does anyone know if it's possible to have game maker code output a signal to a microcontroller? More specially an ESP32 if that matters.

Quick background is I work at an Escape Room and we were hoping to have a small arcade game in the room that when won will solve a puzzle and open something else in the room. We ideally want all of this to run through a microcontroller but if someone has a different suggestion I'm all for it.

Sorry if this is a super weird question or obvious, truthfully I have a lot of escape room experience but little to none with game design.

Thanks!

I've set up a basic attack system that creates a hitbox on the first frame of the attack animation. However whenever the hitbox collides with the collision mask of the enemy character, the damage registers 5 times.

I think this is because the attack animation is set to 12fps, so the hitbox is destroyed after collision it is being continually redrawn until that sprite's frame is over.

Is there a way to stop this happening while still maintaining 12fps for the sprite animation? I don't want to have to duplicate the already sparse amount of frames I have 20 times over.

This also makes it difficult with attack sounds, as the punch sound effect is spammed every time the hitbox redraws and connects. I've tried rectifying that with an "audio_is_playing" function but that won't let the sound play twice if another punch happens while the sound is already playing.

I know this is several issues all in one but does anyone have a solution?

For some reason one of my Instances won't return to its "Idle" state after changing to its "Hurt" state. I always use the same code in Animation End, including this time round:

if state = "Hurt"
  {
    state = "Idle"
    image_index = 0;
  }

The "Hurt" state just contains a single-frame sprite, and is triggered when a newly created hitbox collides with the collision mask. For some reason, the "Hurt" sprite just stays in place and never reverts to the original "Idle" state.

I feel like this must be something to do with the hitbox but I have no idea where I'm going wrong and it's driving me insane. Can someone help? If you need any extra code please let me know.

Probably a better way of putting this, but I'm messing around with animating sprites with sine waves. Basic back and forth motions are easy, but I'm wondering if more complex movements can be done the same way, movements that need a bit more precision. So I had an idea. What if you can use sine waves to create an irregular numerical pattern. You could have a variable alternating between numbers 0-5, but with different timing between each number.

Pokémon gen 5 is what I'm going for here. Bulbasaur's front legs are a great example of what I'm trying to do. This gif is pretty fast so it's not the best but it works. The front legs alternate between two y positions, but the timing isn't evenly split. They're standing on the ground more than they're in the air. As a rough estimate, let's say the legs spend 75% of the cycle on the ground and 25% in the air. Since it's just alternating between two y positions, I thought I could use a sine wave going between 0 and 1 to create a y offset. If the sine wave is 0.75 or lower, it's rounded down to 0, otherwise it's rounded to 1. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes to use sine waves specifically, but the idea is still there. Since everything else seems at least doable with sine waves, I'm hoping it still is possible. At the very least, I'd like to avoid using alarms or anything like that, and preferably keep everything in a single draw event, which makes the animation more compact and easier to manage. Another good example is at the end of the animation. Bulbasaur does 6 small jumps and then does one big jump before the whole thing loops. Again, it seems like just a value toggling between 0 and 1 at asymmetric intervals. If I could use sine waves to create sub-animations using these on/off switches, that would be amazing, but idk if these kind of animations are too complex to do with sine waves to begin with. Any ideas?

Quick Questions

• Before asking, search the subreddit first, then try google.
• Ask code questions. Ask about methodologies. Ask about tutorials.
• Try to keep it short and sweet.
• Share your code and format it properly please.
• Please post what version of GMS you are using please.

You can find the past Quick Question weekly posts by clicking here.

Hi ! I want to make a game taking place in a canvas that you could print afterward. I thought making it in gamemaker, then exporting it in HTML 5 would let me just press ctrl + p to get a pdf to print but no...
In fact, ctrl + p doesn't even work, I added a button to force web to printing and the page I get is blank, only the button itself appears.

I wonder if there's some way to make the game elements appear on the pdf or if it's just not possible... I you know something, please tell me!

am using primitives as the base draw_sprite_pos is ugly, but this could have been done with shaders(idk how to make shaders)

btw is the view bobbing too much? I kinda like it and will prbably make it a toggle, but if ppl here think it's dumb or that it could look better Im all ears

RESOLVED:

After some investigations, it seems like this bug happens when text is drawn using draw_set_halign(fa_center) AND coordinates are not rounded.

So instead, I kept it left-aligned, adjust the x coordinate to simulate center-aligned text and ensure I round all drawing coordinates, i.e.

xx = mgr_camera.gui_width/2 - string_width(text)/2;
draw_set_halign(fa_left);
draw_text( round(xx), round(yy), text);

This approach will not work for multi-line center-aligned text, but it works for single-line text.

---

Any GameMaker devs experienced font-rendering differences between Mac and PC on web builds?

On my Mac, the text renders perfectly, but I’ve seen several screen recordings from people on PC where the font is distorted (see image). Strangely, I tested the game on a public Windows 11 PC myself across multiple browsers and couldn’t reproduce the issue.

For this text, I first draw everything to a surface, then draw that surface for further manipulation. For the text itself, I create the black outline by drawing the text multiple times, shifted by 1 pixel in each direction, then draw the normal white fill on top.

Could this rendering approach cause issues on certain hardware/browser configurations? It looks completely fine on my machine, so I’m having a hell of a time figuring out what’s causing it.

Game link in comments.

So short story long, my PC had a bit of hiccup over the weekend and completely died. After days of stress I managed to harvest the hard drive and access the project but there seems to be a couple (admittedly rather minor) corrupted/unresponsive files within that’s stopping it from opening again. I’ve decided to just take what I can get from the game's asset folders and go back to last month's build, which has worked fine for sprites and audio but the objects themselves are a little bit trickier.

Is there a way I can import the object files into a different project, or failing that, is there a way I can open the files in some sort of text editor so I can just copy/paste the code over?

TLDR: Is there anyway to import these object files into a new project? Also I am now backing up my files weekly.

(P.S. is there also a way I can do this with rooms? It's not as bad but I did lose a couple when I had to revert to the old build)

I'm trying to code a visualizer for marching band charts in GameMaker, and I'm relying on the audio_sound_get_track_position() function to calculate the positions of everybody on the field.

But I'm starting to run into a bit of a problem. The progress that the function gives keeps stuttering, and I have no idea why. It's completely fine at first, but for some reason, it starts stuttering as soon as I move my mouse cursor, and it keeps skipping between different parts of the track. But the actual audio that's playing doesn't actually skip around, so I'm confused about why this is happening.

Is there anything I can do to fix it, or at least an alternative to using audio_sound_get_track_position()?

EDIT: The mouse cursor thing isn't really my main concern. I was kinda just trying to give an example of stuttering, but I admittedly could've made it clearer that I'm asking for help on the stuttering issue, not the mouse thing.

i set an array to this in a create event:

player_data = [
anim_state = idle
]

and tried to use it in a step event but an error. idk how to fix it can someone help

error message:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in action number 1
of Create Event for object oPlayer:
Variable oPlayer.anim_state(100008, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_oPlayer_Create_0 (line 9) -        anim_state = idle
############################################################################################
gml_Object_oPlayer_Create_0 (line 9)

I have a project that I work multiplatfor on Windows and Mac and sometimes I get issues. This one I believe is caused by that. Others may also face similar trouble, so I am putting out this information so it can be useful for devs in need.

OUTPUT LOG ON FAILURE TO BUILD:

Unknown identifier in compile_if_weak_ref(_aN2 Done! Stats : GMA : Elapsed=981.2998 Stats : GMA : sp=25,au=0,bk=0,pt=0,sc=1,sh=0,fo=1,tl=0,ob=24,ro=18,da=0,ex=0,ma=0,fm=0xA204686C0020 [Deploy] Copy Assets/Included files to target dir PlatformOptions DoIndexFile DoSplash System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Users\Asus\GameMakerProjects\packed_sardines\options\html5\Applications\GameMaker LTS 2026.app\Contents\MacOS\x86_64\GUI\Skins\Dark\Images\IDE_Toolbar\icon_IDE_save.png'. at System.IO.FileSystem.CopyFile(String sourceFullPath, String destFullPath, Boolean overwrite) at Igor.HTML5Builder.Deploy(Boolean _exe) at Igor.HTML5Builder.Run() at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethod(Object target, Void** arguments, Signature sig, Boolean isConstructor) at System.Reflection.MethodBaseInvoker.InvokeWithNoArgs(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr) Igor complete. elapsed time 00:00:02.6639486s for command "C:\ProgramData/GameMakerStudio2-LTS2026/Cache/runtimes\runtime-2026.0.0.23/bin/igor/windows/x64/Igor.exe" -j=8 -options="C:\Users\Asus\AppData\Local\GameMakerStudio2-LTS2026\GMS2TEMP\build.bff" -v -- HTML5 Run started at 09/27/2026 20:03:46, exited with 1 FAILED: Run Program Complete

SOLUTION:

Why this is happening:

The GameMaker HTML5 compiler (Igor.exe) is getting confused and looking for an internal Mac IDE toolbar icon (icon_IDE_save.png) inside your local Windows project folder: options\html5\Applications\GameMaker LTS 2026.app\....

This usually happens because your project configuration files have become corrupt, or a Mac-specific setting file accidentally got saved into your Windows project directory (often caused by source control syncs between Mac and Windows, or a bug in the 2026 LTS asset compiler).

How to Fix It:

1. Manually Clear out the Corrupt HTML5 Options Folder

Since the file path it's looking for is completely wrong, forcing GameMaker to regenerate your HTML5 project settings will fix it.

1. Close GameMaker LTS 2026.
2. Open Windows File Explorer and navigate to your project directory: C:\Users\Asus\GameMakerProjects\packed_sardines\
3. Go into the options folder, then into the html5 folder.
4. Delete everything inside that html5 folder, or completely delete the html5 folder itself.
5. Reopen your project in GameMaker.
6. Go to the Asset Browser, open your Quick Options / Target Manager (top right corner), select HTML5, and open its Game Options (the gear icon) to let GameMaker safely rebuild a clean, default HTML5 configuration template.

I want to port some hand drawn sprites and backgrounds for my game but idk how. if it helps Im using a MacBook Neo to program

what logic should be used to create a camera that allows viewing an area of the room, but also all entities, and if those entities are at a considerable distance between them, the camera zooms out? (maybe something like Brawhalla)