i dont know coding im jus asking here because i feel like theres experts here 😭

hi all! im entirely new to game development, and im trying to figure out which engine would be best to develop something ive had in mind for a while. i play the ttrp dungeons and dragons online, and as a gift to my sister, i want to create her exploration system in a playable way!

this would mean that i need to find a way to make a very simple system where she is able to choose small tokens (like leaf for foraging, building for looting, dagger for bandits, etc) and place them on a grid. it would also be nice if she could have the option to change the bg colour and select from a few different musical tracks. in a dream land, the other players could join (probably through opera, since i think gamemaker and GX have accessibility to each other) and select which rote they want to go from the map my sister made, but im not sure if thats possible.

thanks in advance, and sorry for my lack of technical knowledge in this post -- im very new :(

I'm doing the Car Parking tutorial and I wanted to add a delay and then a start of the level if you hit a car.

Adding a Restart Room block was easy enough, but I fiddled a bit and couldn't make a delay timer.

So.... How do I do that? Thank you in advance :)

Side Note: Adding the Restart Room block seems to cancel the particle emitter right before it in the chain. How do you prevent that?

I was working on my indie game and had this happen... It wasn't intentional, but I do think this would make a great feature or easter egg in certain games.

TL;DR, I accidentally left the player as persistent when transitioning back to the main menu, so they were still able to walk around. Happy creating 😄

I have felt very conflicted about this for the last few months. I've been working on my game off and on since 2020. Slowly at first, then gaining more momentum. I'd guess I'm about 30% done with it. All the assets are and will be hand drawn sprites and manually composed music, but I'm conflicted about using AI to help me with the code.

I always admired the indy solo devs who could create a full game themselves over the course of years or a decade and I wanted to be like that. I still could. But I fear that it will take me another 5 years to finish this project unless I start using AI to help me with the code. I wanted so badly to be a purist and not use AI for anything, but I'm worried that I'm going to be left in the dust that is the progression of the game industry. I dont want to put my game on steam, have to reveal that AI was used somewhere in the process, and have everyone think it's just vibecoded slop.

Does anyone else have a similar situation? What are your thoughts.

(NOTE: My issue is fixed.)

Basically, I need a persistent object from what I will refer to as "Room A" to be layered over another object from "Room B" Nothing is really working.

I am totally new to GameMaker. I want to create a Mother/EarthBound fangame, which means it has to be an RPG, but since I'm just starting out, I want to make something super easy first to practice. What video game genre would you recommend for me to start with?

If you are just getting into game development in Game Maker, a few of these games could inspire you: https://youtu.be/bTIPOkN1ut0?si=oweFVOxP_nozAqXg

Hey! I'm very very new to gamemaker so fair warning on that part.

I know in concept what I need for this enemy AI, I'm just not sure how to put it together.

Generally the enemy needs to be wandering the level until the player is in its line of sight, then the enemy will see if the player is hidden(this is just crouching!). If their not, then the enemy goes to the player.

It should be simple in practice, but again I've never built this aspect of a game before </3

If theres anywhere someone could direct me towards that may have words of wisdom lmk!!

In the particle editor, where the "On Death" section is. Is it possible to use your own particle system instead of the premade GameMaker versions?

I recently got back to programming in GameMaker, which is the engine I've been trying to learn, and I realize I practically don't know anything. I want to ask for help from people who know more than me in this area—how can I learn to program better in GameMaker? I'm going to try to completely stop using AI because I used it a lot and ended up not even understanding what I was doing. So even without money to pay for a course, like the one from None Class, there has to be a way, without relying only on AI, because sometimes I want to make something and I don't have all the knowledge for that specific thing unless I use AI just as a tutor, but I don't think that would really work. So what do I do, guys? How can I learn GameMaker the hard way? By studying every day?

Hey everyone,

A little while ago, I posted my indie game music pack here, but I received quite a bit of criticism for using AI-generated artwork for the cover and YouTube thumbnail.

I used AI for the thumbnail because i lack illustrationskills, and i didn't think of it as a big deal.

I understand the criticism, and looking back, I should have put more thought into that decision. I'm sorry if the artwork disappointed anyone or gave the wrong impression.

I've since redesigned both the cover and the YouTube thumbnail myself using Canva, and I've updated them to reflect the new direction.

Processing img oapn6onwfgxh1...

I still want to share the actual music with you, though! I've made a pack of 10 original retro-inspired game music tracks for indie developers looking for music for their projects.

If you're interested, you can check it out here:

Music pack: https://wnannestad.itch.io/pixelquest

I'm still learning and trying to improve as a creator, so I genuinely appreciate constructive feedback. I hope the new artwork is an improvement, and I'd love to hear what you think of the music itself.

Thanks for giving it a chance!

Right now I'm copying a Youtube tutorial, just trying to copy or tweak something, and learning the rules of coding. I want to make sure I'm building a good foundation before having bad habits to unlearn later. what are some essential habits/shortcuts I can do?

Btw thank you all for giving me your advice

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a small indie game music pack called "Pixel Quest - Retro Game Music Pack", featuring 10 original tracks inspired by classic retro/16-bit games.

The pack includes music for different situations, such as:

• Main menu
• Exploration and adventure
• Forests and dungeons
• Regular battles and boss fights
• Chase / danger
• Shops and safe areas
• Victory and game over

The tracks are around 1–1.5 minutes long and are designed to fit different moments in a game.

I'm a small creator trying to get my work out there, so I'd really appreciate it if any indie developers here gave it a listen. I'd also love feedback on the music and whether you think it would fit your projects.

You can check it out here: https://wnannestad.itch.io/pixelquest

Thanks for checking it out!

Sorry if dumb

Hey everyone,

I am trying to draw part a sprite at a different depth than another sprite within the same draw event.

I am doing this because I want to have a second object on top of the first sprite, while the other sprite is drawn on top of the second object in order to cut off part of it.

What I found was gpu_set_depth, however this doesn't work when I am using depth in all of my other objects as it appears to take precedence over gpu_set_depth.

Does anyone know a way to do this? Changing all of the objects to use gpu_set_depth is not an option as that breaks other code. Having it be two objects is also not ideal, as the object should be able to move and there will be multiple of the same instances.

Because I don't know how to explain well, here is a picture of what I want to achieve:

Hi everyone, I created different sprites for both Players and Objects. Sometimes this sprites are always left with a gap, no matter how much I change the size they always seem to eather collide with one another or have a small gap between each other. The Player is also colliding with what seems to be an invisible wall.

Is this a problem of the size of the Sprite or is it a collition error? If so, how do I make a 32X32 sprite fit in a 32X32 Room without either colliding or being seperated?

To save any readers time, I've dabbled with GameMaker all the way back in 2015. And I know how to navigate the UI and all that jazz. The thing is I've always been passionate about creating games, designed sprites, made images, designed a game idea for a buddy.

I just want to know is there any GOOD source to learn their coding language and how to actually understand what's being taught? I always go on YouTube and look up videos regarding the topic, but most people only make tutorials on how to make a specific game and won't really tell you what code you write actually does.

I'm sure this is a common question on this subreddit, but any replies are greatly appreciated!

Sorry if this is common knowledge, I couldn't find anything that could explain it well. Basically I have multiple playable characters and I want it to be so that when you click a button the viewport changes to follow the new character instead of the first one.

Just a tip for those who are newer to gml. Middle mouse (scroll wheel) clicking on any native gml term or function will open the gml manual directly to the page for that term.

It's super useful when learning gml. I've watched minimal tutorials, and learned most of what I know just by using the manual and the middle click functionality.

So I've been doing a lot of experimentation with discovering how to implement GM plugins recently, and that experimentation ended up leading to:

Sundial

Your game, mood-ified!

Get Sundial (30% off for the launch sale!)
Get Sundial Visual Editor

Sundial is a sweet day/night cycle colour grader for your game, letting you to craft vibrant moods that change over the course of your day, and you can get it entirely setup from within the GM IDE.

Watch Sundial in action

Literally one line of code to get Sundial running in your game:

SundialStart();

And when you want it to stop, simply:

SundialStop();

And of course, as I said at the start, I've been messing around with plugins and this led to the Sundial Visual Editor. You can try it out (for free) and see how Sundial would change the visuals of your game by following the Plugin Installation Guide

And then learn how it works with the Sundial Visual Editor walkthrough

Almost everything can be done with no code in the Sundial Visual Editor:

Watch Sundial Visual Editor in GM

This means, no faffing around with trying to setup RGB values through code, no booting of your game to test out how it looks, none of that. Just pure visual goodness, perfect for beginners or artists who hate messing around with code.

Of course, everything you can do in the Visual Editor you can do through code as well. And Sundial has a few little hidden secrets lurking in its liminal backrooms.

You can set an indoor/outdoor mask with a separate colour grading for indoors (as well as how much outdoor colour grading should effect indoor colour grading), have trigger functions run when times of the day swap over (turn off streetlights when night falls, for instance), check how much sunlight is left, and more.

So give it a shot and lemme know what you think.

Get Sundial

There's a 30% launch sale!

If you already own the Full Suite Pass, then you now own Sundial! Just download it from the Sundial product page, your 100% discount should already be applied.

If you don't, maybe consider getting it, as the one time purchase gives you access to all my current and future libraries! Each new library increases the cost of the Full Suite Pass, so getting in sooner rather than later is the best bet!

Get the Full Suite Pass here.

According to this official blog post and this forum post the GMRT will be made free for commercial projects on non-console platforms. Looks like we'll be getting source code access as well.

Is it still possible to download the Gamemaker manual to mobile? I was following this thread: https://forum.gamemaker.io/index.php?threads/where-can-i-get-the-gm-s-manual-in-pdf.7808/, but it's outdated, as the downloaded manual is no longer a chm file.