Version 2023.6: Parametric EQ, New Debug Overlay, And More SDF Support

GameMaker 2023.6 brings a new audio effect, an updated debug overlay and expanded SDF support.

Parametric EQ

This release introduces a parametric EQ audio effect. This gives you more control over your audio’s frequencies.

This effect is a combination of multiple other audio effects, which are also new:

1. Peak EQ: Boost certain frequencies, and control how large of an area is affected.

2. High Shelf: Boost frequencies above a certain threshold, and control the steepness of the slope that takes the effect from 0 to 100.

3. Low Shelf: Same as high shelf, but boosts below the given threshold. For example, if you want to boost the bass frequencies, you would use this.

The main EQ effect combines these effects, with the existing High Pass and Low Pass filters to give you complete control over your frequencies.

EQ combines multiple effects to allow frequency control

New Debug Overlay

The show_debug_overlay() function now displays a more detailed debug overlay, with multiple windows:

The graph displays the timings for your game’s frames and various other processes that repeat every frame.

Through the “Debug” menu at the top, you can open the console and the audio debug menu.

More SDF Support

SDF support was introduced in GameMaker 2023.1, which keeps your text crisp as it’s upscaled, however it only supported fonts created at runtime.

Now, you can enable SDF for fonts added in the IDE, using the Inspector (shown on the left) or the Font Editor (shown on the right):

SDF rendering is also supported on HTML5 now.

More GML Updates

2023.6 brings some new GML changes:

• New functions for changing the colour and angle of particle systems

• New functions for creating and extracting ZIP files

• The Nintendo Switch target now supports NPLN for matchmaking

• A new game_change function that allows you to load a different game from the Included Files

• Writing a variable alone in a struct literal will set it equal to an existing variable with the same name (e.g. struct = { a } means if a variable “a” already exists, struct.a will be equal to it)

Misc. Changes

• A new option under “Help” for creating a bug package, which bundles the required system info, UI logs and the project (optional) for submitting an effective bug report

• Feather is now enabled by default, unless you have previously enabled and then disabled it

Read the release notes to see all changes.

Download GameMaker 2023.6 and start creating now.

Happy GameMaking!