Game Maker - Did you always want to design computer games? But you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how to become a programmer? Then you came to the right place. Game Maker is a program that allows you to make exciting computer games without the need to write a single line of code.

Making games with Game Maker is great fun. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions you can create professional looking games in little time. You can make games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects.

And once you get more experienced there is a built-in programming language that gives you full flexibility. What is best, Game Maker can be used free of charge. And you can use the games you produced in any way you like. You can even sell them!

Game Maker comes with a collection of freeware images and sounds to get you started. Also there are a number of example games.

What's New in This Release:

· 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· The random amounts of size, speed, and direction, added in each step have been replaced by an amount of wiggling, leading to more interesting effects, like blinking stars.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.
· Effects
· New better image editor
· Better motion planning
· 3D Models
· Drawing on surfaces
· 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 while selecting tiles to select multiple or hold to select a multiple of the room grid size.
· 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.


Limitations:

· No Game Maker logo when running a game.
· Rotated, color blended and translucent sprites.
· Additional actions for e.g. CD music, rotated text, and colorized shapes.
· Special sound effects and positional sound.
· A number of advanced drawing functions, e.g. for textured polygons.
· A particle system to create fireworks, flames, rain, and other effects.
· Functions for 3D graphics.
· The possibility of making multiplayer games that can be played over a network.
· Functions to create and modify resources (sprites, backgrounds, etc.) while the game is running.
· A collection of functions to create and use data structures.
· Functions for motion planning.
· The possibility of extending Game Maker using DLLs.