Impostazioni globali del gioco

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Ci sono un certo numero di impostazioni del tuo gioco che puoi cambiare.

Queste cambiano il formato della finestra principale, le impostazioni di alcune opzioni grafiche, hanno a che fare con le impostazioni dell’interazione, il caricamento delle immagini, costanti e informazioni sull’autore del gioco.
Inoltre puoi indicare quali file devono essere inclusi nei giochi eseguibili e come saranno trattati gli errori.

Puoi cambiare le impostazioni con doppio clic su Global Game Settings nell’albero delle risorse a sinistra sullo schermo.
Sono suddivise in un certo numero di schede.

Alcune opzioni sono disponibili solo in modalità avanzata.

Opzioni grafiche

In this tab you can set a number of options that are related to the graphical appearance of your game.
It is normally useful to check out the effects of these options because they can have a significant effect on the way the game looks.
Remember though that different users have different machines.
So better make sure that the settings also work on other peoples machines.

Start in fullscreen mode

When checked the game runs in the full screen; otherwise it runs in a window.

Scaling

Here you can indicate what happens when the window is larger than the room or when the game is run in full-screen mode.
There are three choices.

  1. You can indicate a fixed scaling. The room is drawn scaled with the given amount in the center of the window or the center of the screen. 100 indicates no scaling. You typically use fixed scaling when your sprites and rooms are very small.
  2. The second option is scale the room such that it fills the window or screen but keep the aspect ratio (ratio between width and height) the same.
  3. The third option is to scale such that the window or screen is completely filled. This can lead to distortions in the image (in particular in windowed mode when the user can resize the window).

Interpolate colors between pixels

When checked, colors of pixels in sprites, backgrounds, and tiles that are not aligned with pixels on the screen will be interpolated.
This in particular is the case when they are scaled, rotated, or placed at non-integer positions.
Interpolation makes movement smoother but can also give a blurred effect.
Also for tiles it can lead to cracks between them, if not carefully designed.

Color outside the room region

When the room does not completely fill the window or screen there is some area unused around it.
Here you can specify the color of the area.

Allow the player to resize the game window

When checked in windowed mode the user can change the size of the game window by dragging with the mouse at its corners.

Let the game window always stay on top

When checked in windowed mode the game window always stays on top of other windows.

Don't draw a border in windowed mode

When checked in windowed mode the game window will not have a border or a caption bar.

Don't show the buttons in the window caption

When checked in windowed mode the window caption will not show the buttons to close the window or to minimize or maximize it.

Display the cursor

Indicates whether you want the mouse pointer to be visible.
Turning it off is normally faster and nicer.
You can easily make you own cursor object in Game Maker.

Freeze the game when the form looses focus

When checked, whenever the player brings some other form to the top (e.g. another application) the game freezes until the game window again gets the focus.

Disable screensavers and power saving actions

When checked (default) screensavers or power saving actions (sleep, hibernate) will not activate while the game is running.
This is important as these might destroy certain graphics aspects of the game (like surfaces).

 

Risoluzione dello schermo

In this tab you can set the screen resolution in which your game must run. By default the resolution is not changed. But sometimes you want to run the game in a lower resolutions or you want to set the frequency of the monitor to make sure the timing in the game works correctly. If you want to change the resolution you must first check the box labeled Set the resolution of the screen.

There are three things you can change.

First of all there is the color depth.

This indicates the number of bits used to represent the color for a pixel. Most machines now only allow for 16-bit (High Color) or 32-bit (Full Color) but older machines also allowed for 8-bit and sometimes 24-bit color. Game Maker only works correctly in 16-bit and 32-bit color. 32-bit color gives nicer looking images but will take more memory and processing time. If you want your game to run will on most older machines set the color depth to 16-bit. Otherwise use 32-bit or don’t change it.

Secondly there is the screen resolution, the number of pixels (horizontal and vertical) on the screen.

Changing the resolution is useful when e.g. your rooms are very small. In this case it might help to reduce the resolution of the screen. Realize though that this will also effect other applications running. This can in particular give problems with low resolutions. So in general it is better to only do this when running the game in full screen mode. Game Maker will automatically change the resolution back to the starting situation once the game finishes.

Finally you can change the refresh frequency.

This indicates how many times per second the image on the screen is refreshed. If your room speed is larger than the frequency not all steps are actually visible. It works best if the frequency is a multiple of the room speed. (If you specify a frequency that is too high or not available the frequency is not changed.)

There also is a setting here to Use synchronization to avoid tearing.

This requires some explanation. A display is redrawn a number of times per second, depending on the refresh frequency. If a room is drawn halfway such a refresh, the top of the display will still show the old image while the bottom part shows the new image. This is called tearing. To avoid this you can check this option. In this case the new room image is only copied to the screen when the refresh is not inside the window avoiding the tearing most of the time. The disadvantage is that we normally have to wait till the next refresh. This means that the maximal number of frames is bounded by the frequency of the monitor and, when the processing is not fast enough, the framerate immediately drops to half that number. Also there can be a conflict between the internal timing of the game and the synchronization. If you want to do this best set the monitor frequency to e.g. 60 and also make the room speed either 30 or 60.

 

Altre opzioni

Here you can set a number of additional options. First of all you can set some default keys:

Let <Esc> end the game

When checked, pressing the escape key will end the game. More advanced games normally don’t want this to happen because they might want to do some processing (like saving) before ending the game. In this case, uncheck this box and provide your own actions for the escape key.

Treat the close button as <Esc> key

When checked the close button of the window will generate an escape key event. When not checked the close button events are called instead.

Let <F1> show the game information

When checked pressing the F1 key will display the game information.

Let <F4> switch between screen modes

When checked the F4 key will switch between fullscreen and windowed mode.

Let <F5> save the game and <F6> load a game

When checked the player can use F5 to store the current game situation and F6 to load the last saved game. (Note that only the basic game data is stored. Once you use advanced features like particles or data structures those settings are not saved and you might have to create a save mechanism yourself.

Let <F9> take a screenshot of a game

When checked the player can use F9 to create a screenshot of the game. This screenshot will be place in the file screenshotXXX.bmp in the folder where the game is running, where XXX is the number of the screenshot. When creating multiple screenshot the number is automatically increased.

Also you can set the priority of the game process.
This priority indicates how much processor time is allotted to the game. In normal mode the operating system tries to give processor time to each process that needs it in some reasonable way. The higher you put the priority the more time is allotted to the game, making it run more smoothly and faster. But other processes get less time (also Windows processes so even the mouse might not move anymore). Use this with care.

Finally, you can set the version information of the game.

This information is shown in the helptip that pops up when the user rests his mouse on the game executable. It is also shown when the users clicks with the right mouse button on the program and chooses properties and then version. If you distribute your game you best fill in this information.
You should give your game a version number that consists of four parts:

  • the major version
  • the minor version
  • the release number
  • the build number.

Also you should provide

  • the name of the company (you)
  • the name of the product
  • the copyright information
  • a very brief description.

All these fields should be at most 64 characters long.

 

Opzioni di caricamento

Here you can indicate what should happen when loading a game. First of all you can specify your own loading image. Secondly, you can indicate whether to display a loading progress bar at the bottom of the image. You have three options here. Either no loading bar is displayed, or the default bar is displayed or you can specify two images: the background of the loading bar and the foreground. You can indicate whether the front loading bar must be scaled (default) or clipped while it becomes longer. In the second case, make sure enough the image is large enough to fill the bar. (Note that both images must be specified in this case, not just one.)
It is possible to indicate that the loading image must be transparent. In this case the left bottom pixel of the background image is used as transparent color. Also the alpha translucency can be indicated. A value of 0 means fully translucent. A value of 255 means fully opaque. (Both only work under Windows 2000, XP, or later.)

Secondly, you can indicate here the icon that should be used for stand-alone games. You can only use 32×32 icons. If you try to select another type of icon you will get a warning.

Finally you can change the unique game id. This id is used for storing the highscore list and save game files. If you release a new version of your game and don’t want to take over the old highscore list, you should change this number.

Opzioni sugli errori

Here you can set a number of options that relate to the way errors are reported.

Display error messages

When checked, error messages are shown to the player. In the final version of the game you might want to uncheck this option.

Write error messages to file game_errors.log

When checked all error messages are written to a file called game_errors.log in the game folder.

Abort on all error messages

Normally, certain errors are fatal while others can be ignored. When checking this option all errors are considered fatal and lead to aborting the game. In the final version of the game you distribute you might want to check this option.

Treat uninitialized variables as 0

One common error is to use a variable before a value is assigned to it. Sometimes this is difficult to avoid. When checking this option such uninitialized variables no longer report an error but are treated as value 0. Be careful though. It might mean that you don’t spot typing mistakes anymore.

 

Informazioni sul gioco

Qui puoi indicare l’autore del gioco, la versione del gioco, e alcune informazioni sul gioco.
Inoltre è memorizzata la data dell’ultima modifica. Questa è utile se stai lavorando con altre persone sullo stesso gioco o se realizzi una nuova versione.

Le informazioni non sono accessibili quando il gioco è in esecuzione.