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Exclusive: GameMaker Multiplayer Features And Function Names Revealed

Multiplayer functionality in GameMaker: Studio will soon be reality if a recent tweet from Micheal Dailly, head of development at YoYo Games, is anything to go by. The tweet includes a photo that appears to depict six game clients running side-by-side, demonstrating a multiplayer game that does not require the developer to set up a server themselves.

Dailly later commented that the “theory” was to allow for cross-platform multiplayer functionality, potentially enabling mobile gamers to interact with those using a PC. When available, peer-to-peer multiplayer functionality will be demonstrated with an example game to be included in GameMaker, possibly the same one featured in the tweet. The new features will be added to GameMaker: Studio in an update next week, however this will not be version 1.2 as many expected.

Game Maker Blog has been given exclusive early access to GameMaker: Studio’s new multiplayer functionality. The names of the networking components shown below are not final.

Built-in multiplayer functionality has been a long-anticipated addition to the popular GameMaker: Studio IDE. Due to new challenges faced with developing cross-platform games, real-time network communication has not yet been a feature of the software, and the lack of such functionality is often regarded as one of the most significant remaining holes in the GameMaker experience.

In the past, usage of application extensions (DLLs), such as the immensely popular 39dll by Australian developer Luke Graham, have been used to develop GameMaker online games as far back as 2004.

One notable example is Slime Online, released in 2007 by veteran GameMaker user Ingo Liebig (better known as “BlaXun”). The 2D platformer series became iconic within the GameMaker community, however development was ceased in 2012.

What do you think?

8 Comments

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  1. So glad to finally see GM’s long-standing networking gap finally being bridged. Really great to see so much effort being put toward interoperability without headaches.

  2. I’m so sad that no more updates have been released for GM8.1. Lots of bugs in GM8.1 was simply forgotten. Unfortunatly just a few months before the oficial release of GM Studio I bought one copy of GM8.1. I think that YOYO Games should give more support to the other users.

  3. Wow! Looks like Russell really wants to push this feature, really happy he wants to! Because we were begging for this feature!

    We just got the 1.1.838, looking forward to seeing what we can do with this in the week! Can’t wait to see what you do with it too Valhalla!

  4. Hey True Valhalla.
    We spoke to Russell on getting early access to these functions. I believe we get them in the next few weeks.
    It appears this feature has been bumped to v1.2, as confirmed by Russell himself!

    Cannot wait to get my hands on these, allows me to avoid all my problems with 39DLL support and no longer need to use UDP hole punching in connecting clients together!

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