Game Maker 6.0

Game Maker 6.0 appeared in October 2004. Work began on Game Maker 6 in April of 2004. For 6.0 the whole graphics engine was rewritten, using Direct3D as underlying system. This considerably improved the quality of the graphics and the possibilities. Alpha transparency is now fast and easy, sprites can be color blended and rotated. Also there are advanced graphics functions to draw for example texture-mapped polygons. A font resource was added, allowing for much nicer (and faster) texts and even a set of functions for 3D graphics were included. Also the sound engine was rewritten resulting in better quality sound and more options, like sound effects and 3D sounds. All these changes made the program no longer fully compatible with the previous version. Unfortunately, due to quite a bit of hacking activity Mark Overmars had also rewritten the registration system and added additional encryption.

Incompatibilities
Version 6.0 of Game Maker is a major rewrite. The whole graphics and sound subsystems have been rewritten. This extended the possibilities of the program considerably but at the same time resulted in a large number of incompatibilities. Also the system requirements for version 6.0 are higher than for version 5.3. In particular a reasonable graphics card is required. To signify this version 6.0 uses a new file extension .gm6. This makes it easy to run both version 5.3 and 6.0 simultaneously. Even though version 6.0 can still read games created with version 5 you are strongly encouraged to finish you version 5 games with the old version.

Graphics
The graphics subsystem has been completely rewritten. It now uses Direct3D and requires DirectX version 8.0 or later. The new graphics system is more stable and allows for many new possibilities. In particular it is now possible to fast draw alpha blended (translucent) and color blended sprites. Also sprites can now be drawn rotated or mirrored. There are many new drawing routined for drawing shapes, again with alpha blending and also with texture mapping. Drawing such shapes is much faster than in the previous version.

Game Window
The game window code has been rewritten as well, giving the game designer more control over the window and the views on the room. This allows e.g. for fast scaling of the room and scaled and rotated views.

3D Graphics
A number of functions have been added to draw three-dimensional scenes. Even though Game Maker primarily remains a 2D game design package these 3D function allow for more.

Sound
The sound system has been rewritten as well, considerably extending the possibilities and improving the quality. Midi files now play without problems and you can play multiple midi files simultaneously. You can add sound effects like chorus and reverb and you can use 3D positional sounds.

Fonts
There is a new font resource. Fonts are embedded in the stand-alone executable. There are a number of additional actions and functions to draw text in fonts in many different ways, including alpha and color blending.

HTML help
The help file has been improved considerably, both in style and in contents.

Smaller improvements

 * Separate global mouse event for different buttons.
 * Select/copy/paste/delete multiple actions in object and timeline form.
 * When canceling a new action, it is no longer added to the event.
 * You can now duplicate an event in the object property form.
 * Timing is better and motion is much more smooth.
 * Made it harder to (illegally) decompile executables.
 * You can now set a number of options for the game information window, like caption and position.
 * Rearranged the action libraries making it easier to find actions.
 * Tiles settings are now stored and indicated with the background, not in the room.
 * Data files have been replace by a simpler mechanism to embed files in the stand-alone executable.
 * More control over the way highscore lists are shown.
 * More control over the way game information is shown.

Bug corrections

 * Problems with transparent background have been solved.
 * corrected a crash when giving a negative number as argument to event_perform.
 * corrected bug with path position when saving a game.
 * The game maker window no longer pops to the front when the mouse moves over an action.
 * The games now better handle screen savers, locking the screen, etc. (still some errors can occur).
 * Highscores are now encoded.