Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The main toolbar
The main toolbar is where you can find the creation buttons for every essential resource as
well as saving and exporting settings. Everything on the toolbar can also be accessed from
the drop-down menus; however, the toolbar creates a fast and easy way of accessing these
functions in as little time as possible. Hovering your mouse over any of the icons on the
main toolbar will show basic information stating what the button does.
In the first section of the toolbar, you have your project functions, including the new pro-
ject, the load project, and the save project. We will be covering the sections based on the
separation lines shown in between the icons.
The second section only has one button. This button exports your project to the designated
target module. To change the target module, you can use the "Target" drop-down menu
found to the right of all the icons on the main toolbar.
The third section holds your testing functions. This includes playing a test build in both
normal and debug mode, stopping the web server, and clearing the cache. Debug mode al-
lows you to get detailed information on the game as it runs, for example, seeing where re-
sources are being used and tracking variables. The web server is GameMaker's micro web
server. This runs when testing on the HTML5 module or when testing on a mobile device
over Wi-Fi. The cache is where GameMaker stores resource information, making compil-
ing faster after the first time around. If you ever see strange graphical issues, it is advised to
clear the cache and re-compile as this may be obsolete data that is being loaded.
The fourth section allows you to access the global game settings and also manage exten-
sions. The GameMaker Global Game Settings are the main settings for any GameMaker
made game. They hold all essential data for every export type. Extensions are user-made
extensions that can add extra functionality to GameMaker and your games, in turn. These
are used for advertising APIs for mobile or HTML5-based games.
