Awesome

gameframe

Quick links: documentation · itch.io · GM Marketplace
Versions: GameMaker: Studio 1.4, GMS2.2, GMS2.3/GM2022+
Platforms: Windows, Windows (YYC)

This extension gives GameMaker games a custom window caption+border that act like a native one.

That includes the minimize/maximize buttons, moving/resizing the window, common (and less common) keyboard and mouse shortcuts, and even the window shadow and rounded borders on Windows 11.

Having a custom border+caption subsequently allows for a few things:

Toggling window border on demand
Supporting exclusive fullscreen, borderless fullscreen, and windowed modes.
(which more and more players expect from you as time goes on)
Not freezing the application while the user is dragging the window around.
(essential for competitive online games)
Customizing the title bar and/or border.
(now that it's game code that's drawing them)

What's interesting here

A lot of this extension is pretty normal code, really - buttons, callbacks, variables for customization. Not complex, but there's a bunch of it.

Default icons and animations are stylized to look akin to Windows 10, which also took a little while. And apparently UI scale doesn't just scale component sizes by X%? That's fun.

On other hand, a native window shadow on a borderless window turned out to be a surprisingly high-effort feature consisting of multiple poorly documented WinAPI tricks.

Building

See BUILD.md

Awesome

gameframe

What's interesting here

Building

Meta