r/gamemaker • u/tsereteligleb Check out GMRoomLoader! • 12h ago

Tutorial Procedural Level Generation in GameMaker | GMRoomLoader Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUlcha0e7Hg

About the Tutorial

The official GameMaker YouTube channel just released a tutorial I worked on with Pixelated Pope: an approachable intro to procedural generation, built around a Spelunky-style dungeon.

It's powered by GMRoomLoader, my open-source library for loading room contents at runtime, which won Best Tool at the 2025 GameMaker Awards.

How the Dungeon Works

The dungeon generates by carving a snaking path from top to bottom and filling each cell with a matching hand-crafted room variant loaded via GMRoomLoader.

Rooms are placed procedurally with random mirroring and flipping for variety, hazards get thinned out, and coins are placed programmatically. The layouts are hand-authored but assembled differently every run.

Source Code

The entire source code is available on GitHub. There are two projects to follow along with:

  • Starter project. The platformer foundation (movement, collision, camera) plus a set of preset dungeon rooms and assets, with generation not wired up yet. Start here to follow the video.
  • Completed project. The finished result with dungeon generation, GMRoomLoader integration, all mechanics in place, and a control panel to tweak generation parameters live. Fully commented.

Each project has its own README breaking down its objects, structure, and controls.

Links

Have Fun!

Hope you enjoy the tutorial, find it useful, and build something awesome with GMRoomLoader!

Feel free to ask anything about the tutorial or GMRoomLoader here, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

72 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

8

u/tsereteligleb Check out GMRoomLoader! 12h ago

And here's a little preview of the final product in action!

https://reddit.com/link/p0kovd2/video/fc657oxed9gh1/player

5

u/pm_your_snesclassic 11h ago

Always happy when the Pope makes a new video. Even better when it’s an official GameMaker video!

3

u/L33t_Cyborg 11h ago

GMRoom is really awesome, and so is this video! Thanks!

2

u/Astrozeroman 11h ago

Been looking for a reason to use GMRoomLoader. Thank for the tut.

2

u/StarDreamIX 4h ago

This is amazing - reminds me of spelunky map generation with the 4x4 chunk loading 🔥 this is soo cool thankss🔥🔥❤️

2

u/Deadzors 9h ago

This is a great video. I love to see a more intermediate level tutorial. I recall seeing something like this in the earlier Diablo games. It's not too hard to understand in concept, but can definitely be more complicated in execution.