Ubuntu Game Options

This section outlines the different options available to you that control how your Ubuntu (Linux) game projects will be compiled. The different sections are:

 

General

Ubuntu General OptionsThis tab is where you set the name of your game as it is to be displayed while running, and can also supply a contact email and a description (short and long), as well as a URL for the homepage of the game or the developer.

Here you also have the option is for enabling Steam in your game. If you enable this option, make sure you have the Steamworks SDK installed (see here), and that you have added the Steam app ID into the General Options for the game.

Finally you have the option to Disable file system sandbox. Checking this will disable the GameMaker sandboxing for saving and loading files, permitting your games to access files from anywhere on the system running the game. This option is unchecked by default, as we recommend that you maintain the GameMaker sandbox for files on all systems and when checked, some save/load areas may still not be available depending on the OS-level permissions. For more information on the sandbox, please see the pages on the GameMaker File System.

 

Graphics

Ubuntu Graphics OptionsThe graphics options are those that you should configure to determine how your game will use the graphics card of your target Ubuntu machine. The following options are included for you to modify:

 

Finally there is the option to set the size of the texture page. The default (and most compatible) size is 2048x2048, but you can choose from anywhere between 256x256 up to 8192x8192. There is also a button marked Preview which will generate the texture pages for this platform and then open a window so that you can see how they look. This can be very useful if you wish to see how the texture pages are structured and to prevent having texture pages larger (or smaller) than necessary. For more information on texture pages, please see here.

NOTE: Be aware that the larger the size of the texture page, the less compatible your game will be on PC's with lower specifications.

 

 

Images

Ubuntu Images OptionsHere you can add a Splash Screen for your game, and set the game Icon that will be used. The icon must be a 64x64 pixel image in the .png format, and the splash screen should be at least the same size as the first room in your game (or it's view port) and be .png format too. The splash screen will be shown while the game loads, and can be enabled or disabled by checking the Use Splash Screen option (which is off by default).

It is worth noting that GameMaker has a Project Image Generator tool which can be used to automatically create all the images required for all the different target platforms your game is being compiled to. If you use this tool, you should revise the images created to ensure that they are what you require.