Sprite color replacement is something a lot of people ask for. There is an example on the GMC for doing alpha transitions which are a lot like the gradient wipe transitions I posted in these forums quite a while back. That's posted the Conway's Life topic in these forums. The Wireworld cellular automaton I built with shaders is being used by icuurd12b42 as eye candy in a game he's working on. All of these effects could be accomplished before shaders, but shaders should make them faster and of higher quality. Right now I'm helping Tarik add normal mapping to pre-rendered 3D sprites for dynamic lighting, adding some complex shading to planets, adding some distortion effects to explosions and lasers. There are so many ways shaders can spice up a 2D game.
Game maker studio 2 shaders code#
For now, the native code compiler is only available for Windows desktop games and requires the installation of Visual Studio or free-to-use Visual Studio Express. That's probably an exceptional case, but expect at least modest improvements for all games. YoYo has even gone so far as suggesting some processes running up to 100 times faster. CPU intensive games can expect significant performance improvements. The new compiler should put an end to that. As an interpreted language, GML has earned a reputation for being slow. The second major new addition is a native code compiler. GLSL ES shaders are available for most platforms and Windows users have the option of using more powerful GLSL and HLSL shaders. With the addition of shaders and an improved vertex interface, there is now little that can't be done. Over time these limits have been reduced with simple improvements like better z-buffer control and render-to-texture abilities. GameMaker's primary purpose is for making 2D games but many users have found its basic 3D capabilities tantalizing enough to go to great lengths to get around some of its limitations to create games.
One of the places GameMaker has always lagged behind is in 3D graphics support. The first of these is the addition of GPU shaders.
Game maker studio 2 shaders update#
This is a significant update that adds two huge new features. YoYo Games have recently released GameMaker: Studio v1.1058 which they consider a beta release of v1.2.