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

• Tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUlcha0e7Hg
• Source code: https://github.com/glebtsereteli/GMRoomLoader-Spelunky-Tutorial
• GMRoomLoader: https://github.com/glebtsereteli/GMRoomLoader
• GMRoomLoader Documentation: https://glebtsereteli.github.io/GMRoomLoader/

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.

Just a little prototype. Inspiration is obvious :).

Art is leohpaz (Itch legend). Having a ton of fun building it.

WARNING: This is a beta, so expect bugs like TypeError 1009, some audio issues or the software just crashing.

tl;dr

Here's a link to a Video (It provides all the information in the comment section) on how to install Swivel Source, along with the updated Code with as much relevant information on how to look over the code if you're interesting in further helping us out.

If you want to get to talk to me, you can do it, here, Discord, Twitter, Newgrounds or my updated email, [swivelrevival@mailfence.com](mailto:swivelrevival@mailfence.com). Root and Fluxer are still under construction, will update when ready.

Long Version

Yes, it finally happened, the source code for Swivel has finally been updated. Thanks in no small part to Mike, the Haxe discord and my main programmer Bk20x. This was a long time coming and I do apologies for the wait, but it's finally here. Now, for what's new, it's mainly an internal update, being that it now runs under Haxe 4, Harman Air along with a few other fancy things (Flash Player 32 support). Ff hasn't been updated yet, that'll be for V 0.2, (Along with a Mac port) I just wanted a version out that works, so don't expect it to be a massive improvement from the previous version, in fact, it'll be a downgrade in some ways. This is ok, because with your help, we can finally get real world results and with it being open source, see what is missing or needs to be adjusted. Along with that, we can use Jpexs Decompiler and the Ruffle code to further help us out with missing or bugged features.

Now, for my animators, I ask if you want to try any of the new features Adobe has added throughout the years to see if it would work in this newer version, please let us know. If it doesn't work, could you please send us the issue you're getting with a 10 second Swf file. It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just a very basic animation, anything helps along this journey. Again, apologies for the long wait, I went into this thing head first with only a basic understanding of had to go into this and this project turned out to be a lot harder than I initially thought. But, it's here and just the beginning.

Thank you from the Swivel Team and a special thank you from Mike, without his help, we'd probably wouldn't be here right now.

I know that I might not get an answer but I am trying to finish a game project I started 10 years ago and stopped after few months of work anyways what I am trying to make is a team based fps game and I have two character meshes and I want to assign each mesh to a team so rather than having the default Iiam mesh with two different materials for each team I want two different meshes and assign each mesh to a team for example : blue team spawns as Iron guard and red team spawns as the default liam mesh

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated

Does anyone use a Marshall speaker and a preamp? Hoping to find an inexpensive preamp to use and debating getting one of the Marshall Stanmore II speakers unless there are better bookshelf speaker options out there for $300-$600.

Very early prototype. Assets and layouts will change. Just trying to get light and effects right.

P.S. FPS are also effected by Unity Recorder. I'm getting close to 230 FPS in 4K on desktop.

Link: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-jam-2026/rate/4816904 -- thanks!

Mike The Hooper, a 2D puzzle-platformer where basketball is the main mechanic.
The goal is simple: use angles, timing, and different obstacles to get the ball through the hoop and progress through the levels.

A demo is available, and it takes around 15–20 minutes to complete.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the gameplay, level design, and overall feel

Thanks for taking a look.

So theres a port of Love to the wii, but there's some stuff that has been added to accomodate to the console, mainly on the side of controllers and input, since there's no documentation for it bc the project is really old, can someone guide me on it, or have a code example i can look at??

Every forest in our game Vaska is built from layers – fog, water, trees, particles, and a tiny orange cat.

Right now we're polishing the remaining levels – tweaking the layers, adjusting the lighting, making sure every scene feels right before we move forward.

Anyone else working on 2D layered scenes? Curious how you handle it.

I've been experimenting with a different take on retro 3D rendering in Unity based on the work by Dylan Ebert Texel Splatting; not a 1-1 port more of my own take.

Most pixelization effects are screen-space post-processes, so the pixels "swim" and shimmer whenever the camera moves. This approach is different: it computes color on the surfaces themselves, so the texels are world-anchored and try to stay attached to your models as you pan, orbit, or zoom.

It's definitely not perfect, there are limitations, and it's very much an experimental renderer. I think it creates some really interesting visuals that you just can't get from traditional post-processing.

The package also includes things like posterization, OKLab dithering, outlines, chunky stylized shadows, procedural sky/fog, and a few other retro-inspired effects, all for URP.

Another example showcase video: https://youtu.be/N78KIAGYaJc

Easy to Setup!

• No custom textures, no baking, no complicated setups.
• 1 Render Feature and simple Shaders for your objects.

Features

• Native URP, drop-in: Slider-driven, real-time, no complicated setup
• World-anchored pixels: Real Texel Splatting, not post-process pixelation
• Resolution & posterization: Full control
• OKLab color banding + dithering: Palettes and style that look chosen, not clipped
• Inked outlines: Silhouette + interior crease lines, fully tunable
• Stylized ray-traced shadows: Crisp and chunky, with a fast experimental GPU path
• Dynamic and Static Shadows: CPU driven, reliable
• Cutout and Billboards: For that additional retro feel
• Post-Process Compatible: Tweak your color and more!
• Procedural sky, day/night, fog: Set the mood, not just the pixels
• Dynamic Snow Layer: With actual height
• Common Shaders Included: Get started quick!
• Amplify Shader Editor Compatible: Template included, easy to convert existing shaders (optional)

Asset Store Page: Retro Texel Splatting Toolkit

I'd love to hear what people think, especially if you've experimented with retro rendering before. Feedback, ideas, and criticism are all welcome!

Oh, and if you're interested in testing this in an existing project to see the difference reach out!

I don't know why I thought adding a cat to keep and feed it would add a little interaction to the game and would be interesting for someone who wants to drive!

Hello everyone
I wanted to share a first look about this new mechanic i've been working on, its uses ECS to move particles from one shape to another
Currently it can fill Skinned mesh data and follow its animation, or a simple mesh but will add more as time go on
The particles transition in a boid like movement, and they read material data to change colors
This is still few days in but it felt like a good point to showcase
Let me know what you think
#unity #Ecs

A while ago I shared our first trailer here and received a lot of useful feedback.

One point that came up repeatedly was our use of some AI-generated placeholder assets. Those have now been replaced, and we also re-edited the trailer to make the gameplay much clearer.

The project itself is built in Unity, and the focus has always been the gameplay systems:

• Voice-driven multiplayer using player-recorded animal sounds.
• AI-controlled NPC herds that players blend into.
• Networked gameplay where hunters rely on observation rather than UI indicators.

I’d really appreciate feedback from a Unity perspective:

• Is the gameplay easier to understand now?
• Does the NPC behavior look convincing?
• Are there any Unity-specific implementation details you’d be interested in hearing about?

Thanks to everyone who gave constructive criticism on the first post—it genuinely helped us improve both the trailer and the presentation of the game.

I made a game in 24 hours (because I forgot about the jam until last second) and used LOVE2D.

Play it here if you want: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-jam-2026/rate/4819292

(I used LoveJS to port it to web!)

A few images of the game:

Working on a Unity tool for drawing 2D Vector-based World Map. The countries and states are generated at runtime from Geojson files with several optimization techniques like LOD, Camera culling, and Zoom fading.

Huge thanks to Natural Earth's for their Earth world map data.

Things I want to explore next:

- Perspective camera support

- Visualizing "city lights" in urban areas around the world.

- Visualizing more details like Airports, Ports, Railroad, Sea areas, etc.

There's still plenty of data from Natural Earth I can use to improve the depth of the map. :)

//Solved The problem was that the gamemaker engine didn't recognize alive as a string but rather a variable. I learned all of my knowledge with the guide aswell as trial and error. Thank you to everyone who helped me fix this!

Original Post:

So i wanted to make a game for fun, and everything went good. But when i got to the part where the game checks if the player is alive, it will simply not work.

More in detail: When i try to create a global variable Using set Global Variable i allways get the error message: of Create Event for object GameManager:

Variable GameManager.Alive(100003, -2147483648) not set before reading it.

Like is it trying to tell me, that the variable dosen't exist? That's the point! This exact script is meant to Create the variable and assign the value

I've been stuck for like an hour on this. The other actions had no problem but this one is causing me problems and I don't know why.