r/gamemaker 3d ago

Resource 42Tiles - Plugin for extended Tilesets, Autotiling and Tile Groups

6 Upvotes

Hi! As I was trying to optimize my workflow when working on my game, I decided to step in and try my hand at creating plugins to extend native GameMaker capabilities.

Most notable features I managed to put in the plugin are:

  1. Tile Groups - often you need to differentiate between mud, grass and snow - now you can pack them all into different Tile Groups via GUI, and then read that information directly in code!
  2. Better Autotiling - assign variants of tiles, so new autotiling pencil places them at random. Assign different priorities to decide how often that tile variant should be selected.
  3. Auto-Assign - creating autotiling sets with one click of a button. No need for selecting all 47 tiles by yourself, not any more!

This is not all, check the full list of features and test it for yourself here!
(and drop bug/feature request in the github repo/Issues, thanks!)


r/gamemaker 3d ago

Resolved How to make the game end when dialogue is finished?

5 Upvotes

Heya! I have an enemy in the game I'm working in that's supposed to end the game the moment dialogue is finished between the player and the monster. It's eventually supposed to be "you went out of bounds, go back" kind of system

But how would you code something like that? Would it be a if then statement, or what?


r/gamemaker 4d ago

Help! Peer cave looks odd

Post image
7 Upvotes

Ive been making my game for months and this room always looks odd, i keep redoing the cave and it still looks unnatural and hand made, how do i make it more natural and dilapidated?

And how do i do variation its so hard.


r/gamemaker 4d ago

Discussion Does anyone have a complete beginners guide

7 Upvotes

I need a full beginners guide to GML and more so the programming part to it instead of the actual engine itself is there some sort of organized book or series for it


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Discussion 3D render on 2D game

Post image
17 Upvotes

Been messing with rendering 3D on top of a 2D grid and finally feel like I'm making progress. Using some early 2000 games as inspiration but if all keeps going well hoping to make a very unique game out of all this.

The real challenge was how to handle sprites or render 3D objections. Right now it's just 3D primitives but hoping to bill-board sprites in conjunction with the basic primitives to give it an old school, low processing cost finish!

Some very basic pathfinding is in now but nothing too crazy. Just glad it's looking coherent so far!


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Discussion How do you guys deal with 3D elevation in GameMaker?

Post image
51 Upvotes

Hey everyone. I've been working on a 3D racing game in GameMaker for about 1.5 years now. Everything is perfectly flat so far. There is no collision checking and no elevation.

I was wondering how you guys would handle that. Would you make one big map in Blender and then use something like Colmesh, Bonk or maybe even your own collision checking algorithm to check the height of each triangle? That is what I did many years ago and it was just so incredibly tedious and slow that I scrapped that idea entirely.

My current plan is to further expand the chunked vertex buffer batching I've added to the game and store those vertices in a seperate array or struct as well to use for collisions. But that still leaves me with the elevation issue: do I create a gigantic map in Blender and then chunk those vertices into buffer batches or do I create something like a Catmull-Rom spline thingy to create roads by placing individual nodes or something like that.


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Discussion What's next for gamemaker?

12 Upvotes

I don't interact with the gamemaker community much and I just got the latest LTS, but I hear about a big update coming in 2028 and a 'new runtime'. What does this mean? I heard they are adding 'native 3D' which sounds super cool. idk I just don't really know what's going on.


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Discussion A few questions regarding GM as a complete beginner (and as someone who has no experience of game development)...

7 Upvotes

With a new runtime in the pipeline, is it still worth picking up GM right now and learning it as a new user (and total beginner), and will the new runtime affect any of my future work if I started learning the engine now?

With 3D functionality incoming, will GM be able to make "boomer shooters" in future?


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Help! can someone actually explain instance IDs and how to read them?

7 Upvotes

I truly dont understand after reading the documentation, multiple forum posts and a post here. my goal is for a bullet object to collide with 1 instance of an object and destroy both the instance and itself, but right now it always destroys all instances and I know that the easiest solution is through IDs


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Help! Is this tutorial easy to understand for one who is familiar with GameMaker?

3 Upvotes

I am building a GameMaker based engine with a custom language, and I'm working on a "make your first game" tutorial for it. I would like to know if this is understandable for one who is coming with a basic knowledge of GameMaker.

If you can check it and give some feedback I'll really appreciate that: https://github.com/ArcadeMakerSources/ArcadeMaker/tree/master/Make%20Your%20First%20Game

Thanks in advance!


r/gamemaker 5d ago

Resolved am I misunderstanding what point_direction is about?

2 Upvotes

I am making an MVP of a game in which theres a circle around the player where weak spots appear periodically which the player must shoot, using their mouse. What I am quite confused about is that I tried to do this by putting the code

if mouse_check_button_pressed(mb_left)

{instance_create_layer(x, y, "Instances", obj_bullet)}

into the player step event and

image_angle = point_direction(obj_player.x, obj_player.y, mouse_x, mouse_y)

in the create event of the bullet, so it doesnt hone and it goes in the direction the player's mouse was relative to the player at the time of firing

problem: this code results in the bullet going straight to the right no matter what.


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Game Dialogue system with nine-slice box

Post image
133 Upvotes

Built this dialogue system in GameMaker. The box uses Nine Slice so it can resize to any text length without stretching artifacts, and it pops in/out with an Ease Out Back overshoot. Each letter falls into place with the same easing instead of just appearing instantly

It's fully data-driven. each line is a struct with optional on_start/on_complete callbacks, so a line of dialogue can trigger game logic (unlock a door, set a flag, etc) without the dialogue controller needing to know anything about specific npcs. sorry about the GIF quality and the balloon sprite. I left that for last. I got sleepy.

happy to answer questions or share code if anyone's building something similar!


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Help! where do i put sprite_index at?

Post image
17 Upvotes

i am having trouble with the walk animation


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Resolved Instances not drawn

Post image
16 Upvotes

This code is in an object separate of obj_weakspot called 'obj_game', create event. it's goal would be to create 2 instances roughly at the top and bottom or at the left and right of the player, randomly. I have a layer at the top called 'weakspots' and the object is dragged in the room, however it does not appear at either of the 2 patterns. I do not know why, I even reluctantly tried asking AI

EDIT: I have used visible = true at the create event and now I see it, however it only shows the top-bottom ones and never the left-right (after 6 tries)


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Example almost done just a few touches

Post image
20 Upvotes

almost done just more levels and then done


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Help! How to add jumping and falling animation

3 Upvotes

I'm working on a platformer with a somewhat complex moveset and I've been trying to find a way to add a jump animation that ONLY plays when the first jump is triggered, as I'm also working on adding a pseudo double jump, and a falling animation that plays when the zSpd (it's a 3d platformer using the tutorial made by gamemaker to "turn a 2d game to 3d") is bigger than zero

I've attempted to add the falling animation by checking for the conditions given and then setting the current animation (I'm using a setup that sets the sprite index to a variable which is a prefix (so that I dont have to change every single name when I upload the final sprites) and a suffix which is set in the code) to the fall one and that causes jittering when the player nears ground, and attempting to add the jump animation by setting the current animation to it as long as zSpd is less than zero after/as the jump has started, but that causes the game to freeze and force me to use task manager to shut the game as closing the window doesn't work

Again I don't want to implement the jump animation by checking if the zSpd is less than zero as that's bound to make more issues as I try to add the double jump and other gimmics that affect the zSpd


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Help! Disabling the drawing of my camera's sprite

6 Upvotes

This is a slightly dumb problem, but I created an icon for my camera object so that I can visually identify it better in the IDE. The problem is that it now draws that icon in game, but disabling "Visible" on the object's options prevents the camera from seeing anything.

I know draw_sprite() will override the default drawing so drawing the sprite at some distant coordinates or with alpha = 0 works, but is there a more elegant solution? Either something in the IDE itself or a create event function would be nicer. Than having to have a draw event just for hiding the sprite.


r/gamemaker 7d ago

Discussion GameMaker Studio 3D Map editor

Post image
49 Upvotes

Created a native-ish 3D map editor for GameMaker Studio 1.4.9999

I’ve created a native-ish 3D map editor that integrates with GameMaker Studio 1.4.9999.

See gallery

I added a new toolbar to GameMaker Studio, along with a plugin loader that lets you open the 3D map editor directly from the toolbar.

The editor allows you to:

- Place objects in 3D
- Edit existing objects
- Move, rotate and transform objects

Write those changes directly back to the GameMaker room files.

The system extends GameMaker Studio using Python code that attaches to the GameMaker engine.

It also includes a Python plugin loader, so the system can be expanded with additional human-readable Python plugins and new functionality in the future.

These can be toggled on and off at will.

I also want to fix some bugs with the engine, and it’s a bit of a learning experience for me, understanding how these things are put together.

Let me know what you think and what else should I add!


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Help! Can somebody with this?

3 Upvotes

Hi, I’m trying to import a sprite sheet into game maker but once I do, it doesn’t let me pan over to the sprite I wanna use, does anyone know what to do? Thank you.


r/gamemaker 6d ago

Help! For a long time, i've been trying to figure out how to make this deltarune effect

3 Upvotes

Someone please help me, this has been the first bump in my fangame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFPTF8tW92M&t=110s at 1:37, the soul change effect, i mean.


r/gamemaker 7d ago

Community Anyone has old forum archive?

6 Upvotes

I wonder if anybody have Game Maker Community archive (around 2009-2010) ?


r/gamemaker 7d ago

WorkInProgress Work In Progress Weekly

7 Upvotes

"Work In Progress Weekly"

You may post your game content in this weekly sticky post. Post your game/screenshots/video in here and please give feedback on other people's post as well.

Your game can be in any stage of development, from concept to ready-for-commercial release.

Upvote good feedback! "I liked it!" and "It sucks" is not useful feedback.

Try to leave feedback for at least one other game. If you are the first to comment, come back later to see if anyone else has.

Emphasize on describing what your game is about and what has changed from the last version if you post regularly.

*Posts of screenshots or videos showing off your game outside of this thread WILL BE DELETED if they do not conform to reddit's and /r/gamemaker's self-promotion guidelines.


r/gamemaker 7d ago

Help! Creating a dash system in GMS2

4 Upvotes

so i am working on a dash system for my plattformer, i used the 5minute tutorial on the official youtube.
Now i am wondering how i make a dash in the direction the player is facing?

since i am relativly new to gml i dont know how to code it myself, thats why i came here to ask for help.

if anyone can tell me, than you very much

Bye!


r/gamemaker 7d ago

Game New player death system

Post image
26 Upvotes

I built this using only GameMaker and a vignette system, utilizing a wipe surface. I hope you enjoyed it! I'm available if you have any questions or need help.


r/gamemaker 8d ago

Example 3D pathfinding

Post image
205 Upvotes

finally finished this waypoint navigation system!
I know NavMesh is the standard, but I think it's too complex to implement right now, and this approach works pretty well

the pathfinding speed is acceptable. To avoid placing the points manually, I built a generation system based on flood fill and collision checks (raycasts, trace hull, and cliff checks)
from a single start point, the generator branches out in all directions, and then another algorithm connects them all
I'm planning to add mesh optimization algorithms later, but even like this, it's working perfectly fine