GameMaker 2023.2 brings a brand new Particle editor, audio looping and lets you start GameMaker without logging in.
Audio Loop Points
Previously, you could only loop a whole audio track, not sections within it.
Now, you can tell GameMaker where the loop section of a track begins and ends. GameMaker will loop your track within these bounds.
Call audio_sound_loop_start() to set the starting point of your loop section, and audio_sound_loop_end() to set the ending.
Then play your sound with audio_play_sound() and set the loop argument to true. If the sound’s already playing, call audio_sound_loop() to enable/disable looping.
Particle Editor
Say bye to having to code particles (you still can though – I won’t judge).
GameMaker now has a Particle editor, where you can easily make visual effects:
This is a new asset – a “Particle System”. You create the asset, and its editor opens up, where you can add Particle emitters.
You can make emitter presets to re-use them in different systems. GameMaker also comes with some built-in presets:
Watch our official stream on the Particle Editor:
No Login At Start-Up
You’re no longer required to log in to start GameMaker.
When you install and open GameMaker, you will be taken straight to the start screen, without any log-in prompts. You can make your game and test-run it without having to log in.
You will need to log in before you can make executables. Logged-in users may still see the login screen on start-up if their session expired.
There’s a new menu in the top-right corner of GameMaker, where you can choose to log in, log out, and update your licence details after making a purchase.
Your preferences, templates, recent projects and devices are tied to the logged in account, so if you log out, these settings will go back to their defaults until you log in again.
More Additions
There’s a new option that creates an executable and then launches it:
You can now use extensions to inject HTML code into your built game’s index.html file:
New formats for surfaces were added. By default, a surface has 4 channels (RGBA) supporting 8 bits each (0-255).
You can now choose to create surfaces with fewer channels (e.g. only R, or only RG) and with higher precision (16-bit floats, 32-bit floats).
The json_stringify() function was updated with a “pretty-print” argument. Set it to true, and your generated JSON will be formatted for easy readability.
Below you can see the same struct without and with pretty-print:
Download GameMaker 2023.2 and start creating now.
Happy GameMaking!
