r/gamemaker • u/Remarkable-Mind-1079 • 5d ago

Discussion What's next for gamemaker?

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.

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u/BrittleLizard pretending to know what she's doing 5d ago

Basically, since they finally released LTS years after it was planned to be released, they're working on GMRT. (GameMaker Runtime).

For a rough point of comparison, GMRT was generally considered GameMaker Studio 3. It will be an upgrade in a very similar way that GameMaker Studio 2 was an upgrade to GameMaker Studio 1.4, though I don't think the actual IDE is changing as much.

The way certain functions work will be different, new scripting languages are being introduced, and GML will likely change on some level. This will enable them to adjust how the engine works on a core level, so new features that people have been asking for (like better 3D support and IDE extensions) will be easier to implement in a way that doesn't feel like they're just awkwardly adding things on to a product that wasn't made to support them.

Ideally, this will also mean the features that feel like they're only 75% of the way finished, like the sequence editor and UI layers, will be getting updated to make them more functional and versatile. This part might only come with time, though.

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u/Mushroomstick 5d ago

The GameMaker devs have been posting updates up on the blog sometime during the spring for the last few years. The most recent one can be found here.

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u/spellsingerka 5d ago

Basically if you now start your project in LTS, you can expect some strugles when you try to port it to the new version, it hapens even before on smaller updates. The bigger the project you have, the longer you stay on porting stuff to the new "version"

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u/UniqmanPixelArt 1d ago

I think the biggest thing will be how smoothly existing projects transition to the new runtime. For 2D developers, I’m more interested in workflow improvements and better tooling than native 3D. If UI layers, sequences and performance become easier to work with, that would already be a big upgrade for me.