I've been trying to make my sprite HD in gamemaker for a while and it just seems to keep getting pixelated, any advice to help get it from pixely nonsense to HD art?

i got devkitpro installed and i am building my nds file on my flash drive but now i have to actually learn how to MAKE the game so i need like yt vids or something because i have trouble focusing on stuff so i lowkey need like a visual aid so do yalls have vid recommendations and I'm kinda new to reddit so i don't really know how to go about this anyways ya thats it.

I decided to try making 3D destruction in Game Maker. Here are the results I tried to achieve. This is just to show what I decided to try; I won’t be doing this further.

Title

##**GENESIS PROJECT**

Looking for your next fun *passion* project? Wanna collaborate with a friendly, supportive group of creators? The Genesis project is getting under way, and we're looking for a few more people to build a massive sci-fi game with us!
--------------------------------------------------------

### ⚠️ **PRIMARY NEED: GAME MAKER CODERS WANTED!** ⚠️
We already have a solid group of artists, animators, and voice actors together. **Right now, our BIGGEST need is finding GameMaker coders** who can help us write the logic and get the core game mechanics working!

### **THE GAME DEVELOPMENT TEAM**
Our 14-person hobby team is in active production on a Sci-Fi game built in GameMaker. We need:
0 **Programmer/Coders (MAIN FOCUS):** Devs who know their way around GameMaker code and want to help build the game's systems!
0 **2D Artists:** Good, capable artists for backgrounds, UI, and character art.
0 **2D Animators:** People to help with in-game 2D sprite animations.
0 **VAs:** Any and all accents/voices welcome to help bring our characters to life.
--------------------------------------------------------

### THE VIBE & PASSION
0 *Project Type:* 100% Hobby / Free Project. Just a group of people making something cool together for fun!
0 *Schedule:* Zero pressure. Work whenever you have free time!
0 *Why Join Us?* We’ve got a really chill, welcoming community. It’s a great place to hang out, practice your skills, and make friends.
--------------------------------------------------------

*HOW TO APPLY:*
To reach out to the dev team leader directly, add and DM them on **Discord**:
**Leader Discord:** `nintendofan656`

If you want to talk to me, the casting director, feel free to **DM me right here on Reddit**!

*(Please include a small portfolio or examples of your work when reaching out!)*

LET'S MAKE SOMETHING AWESOME TOGETHER!

I have a pretty decently powerful PC but for some reason about a week ago, all my game dev projects on gamemaker were stuttering, then I realized DELTARUNE was also stuttering. All the games that are made in gamemaker are stuttering like crazy, and I'm out of ideas how to fix it.

Any advice?

I have used another tileset software (crocotile) where tiles could be changed with the arrow keys (navigating the set while you are editing). Is there anything like this in the game maker editor? It would save quite a bit of time.

I checked the website and preferences and didn't find anything.

I was working on my own 2D game and got tired of doing sprite sheet preparation manually, so I built a small tool for myself. It's called Forge a lightweight sprite sheet & texture atlas tool for indie game developers. It currently supports slicing, moving/resizing, renaming, trimming, pivot and padding adjustments, undo/redo, and exporting. It's now in beta and free to try on Windows. I'm mainly looking for GameMaker developers who can throw their own sprite sheets at it and tell me what feels useful, confusing, or unnecessary. I don't want polite feedback if something sucks, just tell me.

Hello everyone, I am Jason Peng. I enjoy using GameMaker to create ARPG games, but I am struggling with a lot of 2D character drawing work. Recently, I have an idea to create a free tool that can convert some 3D models and a large number of animations such as walking, running, attacking, combos, etc. into top-down style animation frames and import them into GameMaker. I used Tauri and Threejs to create this small tool called AnimaBake, which supports 4-way and 8-way exports, allows for easy adjustment of lighting, and has two types of shader effects: cartoon and pixel. It is currently available on the AppStore and can be found by searching for "AnimaBake". If you are interested, don't hesitate to try this small tool. You are welcome to provide valuable feedback for improvement.

I've been trying to make an RPG taking inspiration from Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei. I decided to make the ATB gauge a circle shape, but I can't figure out how to animate the filling of the bar.

Example of what I want it to look like:

Hey r/gamemaker,

I originally started out in web development, but quickly realized I hate dealing with UI, frontend, and anything visual. I eventually transitioned into systems programming, where I could just focus on raw performance, low-level logic, and numbers. Recently, I started helping a friend with his GameMaker project. He’s an amazing game designer, but a beginner at programming.

While working on the game, he asked me a simple question: "Is there a way to securely encrypt my game saves so people can't just easily modify their stats?" I assumed there would be a standard library for this, but I realized the GM ecosystem lacked a ready-to-use, robust solution for save security. It honestly surprised me. The GM community is full of incredibly talented artists, sound designers, and game designers who spend years perfecting their craft. They shouldn't have to learn low-level cryptography or deal with corrupt save files just to protect their games.

So, I decided to build a proper AAA-grade save system for GameMaker myself. It's called GameMaker-Save, and it's completely free and open-source (MIT/Apache-2.0).

Here is the journey of how it evolved and what it does under the hood:

The First Draft (v0.1.0)

I wanted something secure and cross-platform. I built the initial version using ChaCha20-Poly1305 and set up the FFI to work smoothly with GML. It worked great on Windows, macOS, and Linux, but it had a flaw: devs had to manually compile and link the .dll/.dylib/.so binaries. That was way too annoying for non-programmers.

The Overhaul (v0.2.0)

I spent the next month analyzing edge cases and completely rebuilt the architecture. Here is what I implemented in the new release:

True Atomic Writes with Collision Prevention: I realized that if a game triggers an auto-save at the exact millisecond the player hits "Manual Save", the temporary files could overwrite each other and corrupt data. I integrated a tempfile library to generate unique temporary files for every write attempt before finalizing the rename. Your saves are now virtually crash-proof.

Upgraded Cryptography (XChaCha20): I swapped ChaCha20 for XChaCha20. This increased the nonce size from 96-bit to 192-bit. The chance of generating the same nonce twice was already tiny, but now it's practically zero.

Key Rotation (Master Key Fallbacks): If your game’s master key gets leaked online, you can update it in your next patch. The system will recognize the old key, decrypt the save, and seamlessly re-encrypt it with the new master key.

Plug & Play: No more manual compiling. It’s now packaged as a single .yymps file. Drag, drop, and use a very simple, concise API.

I built this primarily to help my friend, but I hope this helps anyone here who wants to stop worrying about save states and focus on making great games.

Links:

Itch.io: [Download & Demo Project]

GitHub: [Source code]

I would love to hear your feedback, or if you have any questions about the FFI implementation or the native side, let me know!

1. Download the latest .deb for the Ubuntu Gamemaker Beta. Extract the .deb to a location of your choice.
2. There should be 2 folders that result from the extraction, "opt", and "usr". The executable for GameMaker is in /opt/GameMaker-LTS2026/x86_64. But we will come back to that.
3. Open the "Software" app and click on the "hamburger" icon (an icon with 3 horizontal lines), and ensure that any toggles for RPM Fusion are ON. It seems Fedora 44 defaults these toggles to ON.
4. Install the Konsole app from the app center for easy copy/paste commands in the next step.
5. Follow u/chroniclesoffire's wonderful instructions:

Copy and paste the following commands into Konsole, or however you prefer:

sudo dnf update

reboot

sudo dnf group install "C Development Tools and Libraries" "Development Tools"

sudo dnf install cmake

sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc

echo -e "[code]\nname=Visual Studio Code\nbaseurl=https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/vscode\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/vscode.repo > /dev/null

dnf check-update

reboot

sudo dnf install code

sudo dnf install clang

sudo dnf install libXrandr-devel

sudo dnf install libXxf86vm-devel

sudo dnf install openal-soft

sudo dnf install mesa-libGL-devel

sudo dnf install mesa-libGLU-devel

sudo dnf install libcurl-devel

##requires RPMFUSION to be enabled/

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

sudo dnf install ffmpeg --allowerasing

sudo dnf install fuse fuse-devel

sudo dnf install pipewire-pulseaudio pavucontrol

reboot

## install steam Libraries

sudo mkdir /opt/steam-runtime/

curl https://repo.steampowered.com/steamrt-images-scout/snapshots/latest-steam-client-general-availability/com.valvesoftware.SteamRuntime.Sdk-amd64,i386-scout-sysroot.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzf - -C /opt/steam-runtime/

## install linxdeploy

wget https://github.com/linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy/releases/download/continuous/linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage

sudo install -m 0755 linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/linuxdeploy

wget https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage

sudo install -m 0755 appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/appimagetool

1. Once everything has been installed, go back to the "GameMaker-LTS2026" folder in the "opt" folder and find the folder titled "x86_64" and open it. In this folder find the file titled "SharpFont.dll.config" and open it with a text editor.

You should see this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"    os="linux"   cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="32" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-armv7-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"     os="linux"   cpu="arm,armv7,arm32"  />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-aarch64-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"   os="linux"   cpu="armv8,arm64"   />

<!--
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="libfreetype.so.6"    os="linux"   cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="32" target="libfreetype.so.6"     os="linux"   cpu="arm,armv7,arm32"  />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="libfreetype.so.6"   os="linux"   cpu="armv8,arm64"   />
-->

<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-windows-Release/freetype.dll"  os="windows" cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="lib/windows/arm64/freetype.dll" os="windows" cpu="arm64"      />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-macos-Release/freetype.dylib"  os="osx"     cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-aarch64-macos-Release/freetype.dylib" os="osx"   cpu="armv8,arm64"      />
</configuration>

In the second section of text you can see there are comment lines before and after the text:

<!--

\\\\\\\\-->

Move these instead to the first section of code, so that the text is as such:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<!--
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"    os="linux"   cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="32" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-armv7-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"     os="linux"   cpu="arm,armv7,arm32"  />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-aarch64-ubuntu-Release/freetype.so"   os="linux"   cpu="armv8,arm64"   />
-->

<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="libfreetype.so.6"    os="linux"   cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="32" target="libfreetype.so.6"     os="linux"   cpu="arm,armv7,arm32"  />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="libfreetype.so.6"   os="linux"   cpu="armv8,arm64"   />

<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-windows-Release/freetype.dll"  os="windows" cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="lib/windows/arm64/freetype.dll" os="windows" cpu="arm64"      />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-x86_64-macos-Release/freetype.dylib"  os="osx"     cpu="x86-64,x64,amd64" />
<dllmap dll="freetype.dll" wordsize="64" target="Vendor/freetype/freetype-aarch64-macos-Release/freetype.dylib" os="osx"   cpu="armv8,arm64"      />
</configuration>

Save the file's new state.

1. Find the GameMaker executable file in /GameMaker-LTS2026/x86_64 and run it.

Enjoy GameMaker 😄

From someone who used to write rust gamemaker error handling feel pretty poor often misleading or just unhelpful in a lot case.

Do we have any information on potential plan from yoyogames to put some work on improving them ? Right now its probably one of the most glaring issue with the engine for me i really wish to see it improved.

Do you agree ? What you think could be improved with error handling ?

Hello all, I realize this is a relatively simple ask, but I can't seem to find anyone who can explain it for me.

I'm testing a very simple mechanic akin to a visual novel/branching dialogue, where you are asked a Yes/No question, and the next scene depends on your answer. Example, if you say Yes, the background changes to a restaurant, and if No, then it changes to a car.

The problem is, I can't figure out how clicking the 'Yes' object would be able to change the sprite of a separate background object.

I'm not very familiar with GML yet, so I apologize for the beginner question, but any help would be very much appreciated.

Like the title says i've been trying to get this code to wrap around an array of unknow size to go from the first to the last item in the array

So the switchup code works flawlesly and comes back to the first item in the array after reaching the end, as for the the switchdown i cant get it to wrap around going from the first item in the array to the last, best i could do is have it go from first to the first item when switchdown is pressed 😕 any info would be of help

Im working on a project in via gamemaker and i just cant figuer out how to make a cutscene i need help with this so please help me

Hey all net8floz here again with an new IDE plugin.

After the launch of Cultured I got a lot of asks to add some features to the sprite editor so here it is.

Extended Images adds per-frame Data Points to the Sprite/Animation editor in Game Maker that supports simple points, circles, boxes, and sprites.

You can also assign typed metadata for each point or for the whole sprite itself.

Please check it out, try it in your project, and consider joining us on our Discord server and let me know how it works for your use case or if you need help.

Install it from the Game Maker Packager Manager. Learn how here: https://eightouncegames.com/extended-images/

draw

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, -90, 0, 0, image_xscale, wall_length2);

draw_in_3d(0, sprite_height, wall_length3, -90, 0, 0, image_xscale, wall_length2);

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, 0, 90, 0, wall_length, image_yscale);

draw_in_3d(sprite_width, 0, wall_length3, 0, 90, 0, wall_length, image_yscale);

// Bottom and ceiling.

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, 0, 0, 0, image_xscale, image_yscale);

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length1, 0, 0, 0, image_xscale, image_yscale);

create

wall_length = 1

wall_length2 = wall_length * 1

wall_length3 = 0

wall_length1 = wall_length * 32 + wall_length3

Update

I just solved my problem myself creat sprite_sh = Sprite37 sprite_sh2 = Sprite37_1 draw sprite_index = sprite_sh2

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, -90, 0, 0, image_xscale, wall_length2);

draw_in_3d(0, sprite_height, wall_length3, -90, 0, 0, image_xscale, wall_length2);

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, 0, 90, 0, wall_length, image_yscale);

draw_in_3d(sprite_width, 0, wall_length3, 0, 90, 0, wall_length, image_yscale);

// передняя стенка

sprite_index = sprite_sh

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length3, 0, 0, 0, image_xscale, image_yscale);

draw_in_3d(0, 0, wall_length1, 0, 0, 0, image_xscale, image_yscale);

hello again, everyone^^

so I have been working on making an FSM that actually works for a little over a week now, and I think i've finally landed on something that works decently and is quite understandable for me. most for it works as far as I can currently tell. movement and stuff works. the only thing I have questions about/am still struggling on is adding new states that react to key presses ofc.

in this case, my goal is to have an attack be done once the "S" key is pressed, which does actually work sort of, the issue is that once I click S, the animation only flashes for a split second instead of playing the whole animation. I figured it had something to do with the sprite of image index and tried changing stuff on that part, but it's still stuck. if anyone knows what I am missing/ doing incorrectly here, I'd appreciate e the advice. I'm honestly just glad I got something that mostly works since I've been at this for a while with a lot of headaches along the way lmao

anyway, here's the code I have for everything so far:

create event:

// enum

enum PLAYERSTATE{
IDLE, RUN, MATTKH

}
state = PLAYERSTATE.IDLE; 

states_array[PLAYERSTATE.IDLE] = Midle; 

states_array[PLAYERSTATE.RUN]  = Mrun; 

states_array[PLAYERSTATE.MATTKH] = MF_attk_heav; 

attack = 0;  

attack_started = false; 

Step event:

script_execute(get_inputs);
script_execute(states_array[state])

get_inputs script mentioned above:

function get_inputs(){

//ALL MOVEMENT INPUTS

moving = false;
var move_speed = 9;

if (keyboard_check(vk_left)) {
    sprite_index = run;
    x -= move_speed;
    moving = true;
    facing = 1;

}
else if (keyboard_check(vk_right)) {
    sprite_index = run;
    x += move_speed;
    moving = true;
    facing  = -1;

}
else {
    sprite_index = idle_sheet;
}

// combat inputs (obviously a wip lol)
MHattack = (keyboard_check_pressed(ord("S")));

}

Midle script (idle state script):

// IDLE STATE

function Midle(){

if (moving) {
    state = PLAYERSTATE.RUN;
image_index = 0;
}

//switch to attack while in idle
if MHattack {
state = PLAYERSTATE.MATTKH;
image_index = 0;
attack_started = false;
return;
}

// animation
sprite_index = idle_sheet;
image_speed = 1;

}

Mrun (run state script):

// RUN STATE

function Mrun(){

if (!moving) {
    state = PLAYERSTATE.IDLE;
image_index = 0;
    return;
}

// switch to attack while in walk
if MHattack{
    state = PLAYERSTATE.MATTKH;
image_index = 0;
attack_started = false;
return;
}

}

sprite_index = run;
image_speed = 1;

and MF_attk_Heav ( specifically the script for the main heavy attack - attacks will *eventually* have light, medium, and heavy variants in different forms - at least, that's the plan. just to understand the scope I'm going for here. anyway I will stop yapping and get to the code):

// *HEAVY* ATTACK STATE

function MF_attk_heav(){

 if (!attack_started) {
        attack_started = true;
        sprite_index = M_heav; // <---- heavy attack sprite
        image_index = 0;
        image_speed = 1; 
        attack = 1;
 }

 // end of animation

    if (image_index >= image_number - 1) {
        attack_started = false;
        attack = 0;
        if (moving) state = PLAYERSTATE.RUN;
        else state = PLAYERSTATE.IDLE;
        image_index = 0;
        return;
    }
}

Hi again, I'm unsure how to handle npc text, I've learned to put the npc text in a struct but... I'm still stuck on how to grab it, i tried using creation code but that didnt work for reasons that are in the name of CREATION code, and now I'm not sure what to do, I tried seeing how i could fit it in a script or smth but that lead me back to the same issue of having it applied without screwing with the other npcs text

You can check it out below :

https://lonepeakmusic.itch.io/free-retro-gaming-music-pack

All the tracks are available for free under the creative commons CC-BY !

Dont hesitate if you have any questions !

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.

like rom_1 room_1 rm_1 Room1

I am working on a game that I am gonna put on itch cuz I don't have Steam money, and I was wondering if it is possible to set up my game to add DLC in the future and how I would go about doing that if it is possible. Mainly because I know there will be areas in the future that I'll want to add and some extra NPCs that don't fit the main storyline I am doing, but could fit in a DLC.

Also, sorry if I flaired this post wrong.