Add moddable graphics to your game with GameMaker 2022.9. Work faster with the Inspector as part of your workflow.
Texture Loading
You can now make “Dynamic Texture Groups”, which are placed outside the game’s package and loaded manually.
This differs from "Default" Texture Groups which are included in the game's package and loaded as soon as your game starts.
A dynamic texture group is loaded from the disk as soon as a sprite is drawn from it. This is known as “implicit” mode.
You can set texture groups to “explicit” mode, so every dynamic group has to be loaded with a function call.
When using "explicit" mode, you can set a “fallback sprite” that appears when you try drawing a texture that hasn’t been loaded.
Texture loading and unloading at runtime
Does this mean your games can now be modded? Yes!
Set a texture group's format to “PNG”, and when exported through a Desktop target, its textures will become PNGs anyone can easily edit.
Read the manual on Texture Groups.
Inspector Integration
The Inspector allows you to edit various kinds of assets in just one panel, like sprites, objects, and even the instances placed within a room.
In 2022.9, an Inspector window is now open by default, appearing on the left of your IDE. You can move and dock it wherever you like.
The default Inspector may not appear for existing projects that have modified layouts, so you can try this in a new project, or reset the layout for your existing project.
The Room Editor doesn't show Room and Layer Properties anymore. These are now edited in the Inspector, by selecting a Room or Layer to edit.
You can even select instances within layers, which you can edit in the Inspector:
You can open additional Inspectors from Windows -> Inspector. Each inspector can be locked, so it continues to show the same thing no matter what you select.
This allows you to have multiple editors open at the same time, each locked to a different asset:
Upcoming Long-Term Support
We’re preparing for a Long-Term Support (LTS) release later this month, which will be based on 2022.9.
Many stability updates and bug fixes were made to 2022.9 in preparation for LTS. We’ll continue to monitor feedback on this release to ensure it is stable for LTS.
Opera GX Target Is Now GX.games
The “Opera GX” target is now called “GX.games”.
This target has always been part of the GX.games publishing ecosystem, which the new name communicates better.
When running your game on GX.games, the constant os_type will now equal os_gxgames. The old constant os_operagx is still functional and would give the same result.
More Additions
- The Windows target now supports multi-touch with up to 10 simultaneous touches. This functionality was previously part of the UWP target, which has been discontinued since 2022.8.
- The motion_add() function now has a GML Visual equivalent: “Add Motion”. This will accelerate your instance in a particular direction, for inertia-based movement.
Read the 2022.9 release notes for detailed information.
Download GameMaker 2022.9 and start creating now.
Happy GameMaking!
