Made a very simple but infinitely extendible debug menu for my game that's already helped me squish some tough bugs 😄 I highly recommend adding something like this early when making a game - The time it'll save later is well worth the effort. What sort of debug commands do you add to your games?

https://monkeyboxstudios.itch.io/the-new-owner
The New Owner — Demo

A psychological horror visual novel about a quiet house, an unexpected visitor, and a past that refuses to stay buried.

Doc wanted a quieter life. He got one.

After leaving his old job in the city, Doc moves into a house on a hill and tries to start over. Then Dave arrives with an unusual request: he wants to buy a painting Doc has kept on the wall.

The visit should be simple. It isn’t.

A hidden note, a strange remark about the house, and a set of stairs beneath Doc’s laboratory lead to a place that feels uncomfortably familiar. The deeper Doc and his unexpected companion go, the harder it becomes to believe that his old workplace was only an office.

About the game

The New Owner is a psychological horror visual novel that begins with an awkward, sometimes funny story about starting over. As the characters uncover clues, the tone shifts into mystery and dread.

You play as Doc’s friend and confidant. Your choices shape conversations and how Doc responds to the people and events around him. Some choices seem small when you make them. Their meaning may become clearer later.

The demo follows Doc from his former life in the city to his countryside home, Dave’s unsettling visit, and the discovery waiting beneath the house.

The demo includes

• A story-driven visual novel demo
• Hand-drawn scenes and original music.
• A gradual shift from dark comedy into psychological horror.

i used ai for help with coding

Estimated playtime: about 20–30 minutes.
Language: English.
Controls: Mouse or click to advance dialogue and select choices.
Platform: Play in your browser.

Hi,

I'm working on my first project in GameMaker, but I have some previous programming experience.

I'm working on a shoot em up game, and after adding all the sound effects I noticed that sometimes when I tried to play through what I have so far, the sound effects would start cutting out. I did my research and found that the likely cause was number of sound effects being played exceeding the default number of audio channels, so I increased the number of audio channels but later decided I would find a better solution.

After some tweaking and testing, I am very much at a loss. I first used the audio window in the debug overlay to see all the audio sources being called, and I saw that two specific sound effects that played very frequently were being played, but then the audio channel would stay magenta in the debug menu, leaving it unable to be used and causing more and more channels to be needed until eventually there weren't enough channels and the audio starts cutting out. I tried using audio_is_playing conditions to reduce the amount these sound effects are played, but I still occasionally get the issue of the audio channel staying magenta and not being usable, and once one audio channel gets stuck like that more channels usually do the same. One of these sound effects, the sound for the player shooting, works fine until for whatever reason the audio channel stays magenta and the internal logic considers the audio to still be playing despite it being long past the duration of the sound effect, so with a is_playing condition the sound effect will no longer play. This problem seems to affect most of the sounds in the project, but mainly the sound for player shooting and enemies taking damage because they play the most often. I tried cleaning my project and updating to the newest version of GameMaker in hopes that it might help, but no luck. All my sound files are currently in .ogg format, uncompressed and not streamed for the short sound effects.

I guess I could kind of brute force it with more audio channels, but it just doesn't feel right to do it that way. I'm sure there's some dumb thing I'm missing and I'm going to be looking through the project for any mistake I've made that's causing this, but I thought maybe someone here would have some idea what might be going wrong and how to fix it. Thank you!

I accidentally deleted half the sprites in the game and SAVED what do I do now? I really can't remake all the sprites that would take weeks can somebody help?

Hi everyone I’m new to game development and I’ve been trying to make a Rhythm Game for my school project via game maker. I’ve been trying everything to make an actual chart for my games but it doesn’t really match up to the song. I’m getting pretty upset about it as my group members are depending on me. Can anyone help me out?

Hi!

I'm developing an educational puzzle game aimed at children. The main goal is to teach concepts such as shopping, budget planning, and analyzing shopping lists in an intuitive way.

I had to take a few weeks off from development because of my college exams, and now I'm getting back to the project. I'd like to share how I've structured my system so far and ask for suggestions on the most recommended next steps in terms of architecture and code, since GML is still pretty new to me.

First, I need to explain the idea behind the kits. Basically, they all contain the same products and brands, but the quantities, prices, and discounts vary. The idea is to add replayability by giving children different shopping experiences when they replay the same mission.

For example, Kit 1 would be the balanced option, with reasonable market prices and no discounts. Kit 2 would have higher prices for dairy products but discounts on meat. The other kits would follow the same logic, varying prices and discounts to make each shopping experience a little different.

What I'd like to do is make the game switch to a different kit whenever the game restarts or the child decides to replay the level. For now, I plan to implement four kits, but I'd like to add more in the future.

My question is how to structure this system in a GameMaker script. I need to store the data for each kit and make the game select the appropriate kit whenever a new run starts.

Initially, I thought about choosing a kit randomly, but I'm worried that with only four kits, the child might play with Kit 1, restart the level, and end up getting the same kit again. So, I was wondering if it would be better to implement a system that cycles through the kits or otherwise prevents consecutive repeats.

How would you recommend implementing this system? Would it be better to use random selection with no consecutive repeats or rotate through the kits in order? And how could I organize each kit's data in a script to make it easier to add new kits in the future?

(Sorry for the wall of text! I'm not sure which tutorial would help me with this...)

I’ve been wanting to experiment with a cutscene style similar to mewgenics, but the only sprite animation I could find was frame-by-frame. I’m aware tweening is possible in the program, as i already use it for intractable functions for the player to use.

My question is if I can use out-of-program tweening softwares (eg toonsquid, procreate dreams, etc) to import videos or gifs to save time and sprite space rather than animating in the program itself. Any help is appreciated!!

ROG Xbox Ally controller detected but doesn't work in GameMaker 8 fangames or Super Smash Flash 2

​

I'm having a weird controller issue on my ROG Xbox Ally (RC73YA).

The problems:

it was working for 1 day then it suddenly jsut stopped

\- GameMaker 8 games: The built-in controller is detected, but none of the inputs work. I've experienced this with Sonic Boll 2.1.6,Undertale and Redux

\- Super Smash Flash 2: The controller doesn't appear to be detected at all.

\- The built-in controller works in other games.

\- JoyToKey works as a workaround, but I want the controller to work natively without having to use a remapping program.

What I've tried / noticed:

\- The controller appears in Windows as ROG Xbox Ally Device Gamepad.

\- Driver version shown in Device Manager: 2.0.9999.0.

\- I checked the device's hardware IDs, which include "USB\\VID_0B05&PID_1B4C".

\- The issue seems to affect older GameMaker fangames more than modern games.

\- Updating the MCU firmware to V335 did not resolve the issue.

Does anyone know how to get the built-in controller working natively with older GameMaker 8 games and Super Smash Flash 2 on the ROG Xbox Ally? Could this be an XInput/DirectInput compatibility issue, or is there another way to make these games recognize the controller properly?

I'm specifically looking for a solution that doesn't require JoyToKey if possible. Thanks!

Im making a game thats taking place in a vhs mainly, but theres a crt effect i want for it, its used in hotline miami, both games, if you wanna see wanna see what im talking about. im mainly speaking about the scanlines.