GM81 Education
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GameMaker Standard 8.1 Education
For our Education licensees we provide GameMaker 8.1 as an MSI that can be deployed to multiple machines and remotely installed using sysadmin tools (like Active Directory). This version does not include the updater and when licensed does not perform any external website interaction (apart from the news), so should play nicely within a school environment.
This article is also kindly translated to "http://science.webhostinggeeks.com/gm81-education" in Serbo-Croatian language by "http://webhostinggeeks.com" WHG Team.
MSI version
We provide an RSS feed http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4win/update_msi.rss from which we publish the download location of the MSI, this MSI is the full version of GameMaker but without a license it will not work at all as an Education license is required to run (see License Stamper on how to apply an educational license for a particular user)
Once you have downloaded the MSI then it can be installed on a machine using the command line below (or you can use standard deployment tools like Active Directory to get this installed on the desired machines within the network) - Do NOT double click the .msi file you have downloaded it must be installed using the command line (Press Start->Accessories then right click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run As Administrator)
msiexec /i GameMaker-8.1.<version-number>.msi TARGETDIR=<directory to install to>
NOTE : The directory to install to should include the GameMaker directory as the MSI is flat (it contains no GameMaker directory) so all the files will install directly to the directory you specify.
This installs a bare bones version of GameMaker without any start menu links you will need to setup any desktop or start menu links yourself.
License Stamper
We can also provide on request (from the helpdesk http://help.yoyogames.com/) an executable that can be used to install an educational license on any machine, this is a simple executable that when run on a machine it will upgrade GameMaker to the Standard version. This should be done once per machine by the administrator, the executable should not be accessible by anyone else.
NOTE : The LicenseStamper needs to be run with administrator privileges to work correctly. (Press Start->Accessories then right click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run As Administrator, then run the licenseStamper executable from the command line)
The LicenseStamper is a .NET application and requires .NET v3.5 to run.
Intended Installation procedure
The intended installation procedure would be to download the MSI and setup the install within your environment, once GameMaker has been installed then use the LicenseStamper (which you receive from the helpdesk) to then license all the machines that you intend to run GameMaker.
Once you have installed then regularly check the RSS feed http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4win/update_msi.rss for new versions (any RSS feed reader should automate this for you) and if you want to update then download and reinstall as you see fit. NOTE : the automatic updater is not present in the education version as it accesses the internet and requires a disk layout that is not appropriate for a schools environment.
FAQ
I get an EInOutError when student accounts try to start GameMaker, but it works when an administrator starts it?
GameMaker needs the student accounts to have some permissions to access shared directories on the local machine these are
- the install location
- the temporary directory (this can be changed by setting the %TEMP% environment variable
- the shared program data directory on Windows 7 this is c:\programdata\GameMaker81 - though this location can vary from system to system.
The only registry location that GameMaker should access are, the student accounts will also need access to them...
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Game Maker
- HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\Game Maker\Version 8.1
Enquiries or Problems
If you have any enquiries then please contact our helpdesk http://help.yoyogames.com
