Designing Games with Game Maker - YoYo Games

With the information in the preceding chapters you can create your games. When your game
is finished you obviously want other people to play it. You can of course give them the .gmk
file that you created and let them use Game Maker to play it but this is normally not what you
want. First of all, you don't want others to be able to change the game, and secondly you also
want people to play the game even if they do not have Game Maker. So you would like to
create a stand-alone executable of your game.
Creating stand-alone executables is very easy in Game Maker. In the File menu you select the
item Create Executable. You will be asked for the name of the executable that should
contain the game. Indicate a name, press OK and you have your stand-alone game that you
can give to anyone you like. You can change the icon for the stand-alone game in the Global
Game Settings.
Once you have created a stand-alone executable in the way described above you can give this
file to other people or place it on your website to download. You are free to distribute the
games you create with Game Maker in any way you like. You can even sell them. This of
course assumes that the sprites, images, and sounds you use can be distributed or sold as
well. See the enclosed license agreement for more information.
It is normally useful to zip your executable, together with some readme information. In
Windows XP this can be done directly through the right mouse button menu, and there are
many free zip utilities available on the web. Alternatively you can create an installer for your
game. Again, a large number of free installation creation programs are available on the web.
Advanced use
This section of the help file gives you information about the more advanced aspects of Game
Maker.
Advanced mode
Up to now we have considered the simple features of Game Maker. But there are a lot more
possibilities. To be able to use these you must run Game Maker in advanced mode. This is
easy to change. In the File menu, click on the menu item Advanced mode. (To fully see the
effects you should restart Game Maker or at least save your game and load it anew.)