What is New

Version 6.1A is a mininal update over 6.1, changing action names and a few other small interface aspects.

Version 6.1 of Game Maker is a relative minor upgrade over version 6.0. The following changes have been made:

Incompatibilities

The main incompatibilities occur in the particle system. Some functions have been removed and the size for built-in sprite shapes has a different effect. Also some built-in sprite shapes have changes. See below for more information.

A small incompatibility lies in the way a view follows an instance. As the sprite is no longer taken into account, a slightly larger border might be required.

The files are forward and backward compatible. That is, version 6.1 can read files created with version 6.0 and version 6.0 can read files created with version 6.1. Obviously this only works if none of the new version 6.1 features are used.

Effects

A very simple to use mechanism for effects and explosions has been added. There is just one action that you can use in any event. It will create an effect like an explosion, smoke, fireworks, rain, or snow. There are twelve different types of effects possible in three different sizes and with a color of your choice. You can also generate the effects using a single function call.

Particle system

The particle system has been improved considerable, also leading to some incompatibilities with the past. The main change is that particle systems are now automatically updated and drawn. It is no longer necessary to create an object for this. Previous functions for this are no longer available and must be removed. Also the action for creating a particle type has been changed.

Particle systems now have a depth and a position that indicate at what depth and at what position they must be drawn.
There are now more built-in particle types, including rings, smoke, clouds, and explosions. There are more possibilities for colors, particles can have a (changing) orientation, their aspect ratio can be set and additive blending is possible.
The random amounts of size, speed, and direction, added in each step have been replaced by an amount of wiggling, leading to more interesting effects, like blinking stars.
The possibilities for particle systems using drag-and-drop actions have been increased, allowing for sprite particles and extending the possibilities for colors and alpha settings.
The particle demo has been removed from the distribution but a nice demo with source is available from the website.

Image editor

A number of improvements were made to the image editor. The possibility to create, move, and copy selections was added. Also the mechanism for adding text has been improved, making it possible to move text around. You can more easily draw horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, and squares and circles. Also you can use hold the <Ctrl> key to pick a drawing color from the current image. And there are commands to create an outline of the image and to invert the colors. Also new, better cursor images have been added.

Motion planning

Potential field motion planning functions can now also avoid instances of a particular type. By using parents this can be used for much more flexible motion planning possibilities.

3D graphics models

A new set of functions has been added to create, draw, store, and load 3D models. They are rather limited in possibilities but this can speed up 3D graphics considerably.

Drawing on surfaces

Rather than drawing on the screen, it is now also possible to define surfaces and draw on these. Such surfaces can then be put on the screen or used as textures. Surfaces can be partially transparent with alpha values. They can be saved to a file. They can also be turned into sprites or backgrounds.

Other changes

There are a number of other changes and additions. Here are some of the important ones.

A nicer installer is now used.
An action has been added to wrap an instance around the screen.
An action has been added to create a random instance out of four choices.
A new grid data structure has been added.
The number of alarm events is increased to 12 and the number of user-defined events is increased to 16.
Added functions choose(val1,val2,...) and median(val1,val2,...).
Blocks of actions in the object or timeline form are now indented.
When adding images to sprites there are now more placement options.
Added mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down events.
You can now use hexadecimal number starting with a $, e.g. $0000FF is red.
The synchronization setting in the game options should now work better.
Moments in timelines can now be duplicated.
Added a function screen_wait_vsync() to wait for a vertical refresh of the monitor.
You can now hold <Shift> while selecting tiles to select multiple or hold <Ctrl> to select a multiple of the room grid size.
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Corrected bugs

The following major bugs were corrected.

Collision functions now work correctly with notme set.
When you create rooms during the game the speed is now default set to 30.
Buffer is now cleared to black when a game is started or graphics mode is changed.
Corrected a bug in function d3d_vertex_normal_texture_color().
Corrected a bug when creating a sprite or background from the screen.
Global variables are now correctly shown in debug mode.
Corrected bug when adding moments to an empty timeline during the game.
Corrected a bug in setting the origin in the function replace_sprite().
A view can now also follow an instance that has no sprite.
A number of problems dealing with sounds have been corrected.
Real values in INI files are now correctly read with both , and . as separator.
A number of errors in the help file were corrected.
Jump to a random position action and function no longer sometimes jumps outside the room.
Any key events do now react to keys like ~ . , [ etc.
Solved bug with elliptic shaped particle destroyers and changers.
Corrected a bug that sometimes happenen when dragging actions in an action list.
When merging games the object that a view must follow now remains correct.
Default sound volume is now always maximum.
Changed the way an object is followed by a view (only position, no longer taking sprite into account). This avoids a lot of jitter problems, but might require slightly larger border settings.
A path speed can now indeed be negative.
Solved some errors with the scrollbar in the room editor.
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