In this article, we give the required steps to set up GameMaker on Chromebook devices. Before you begin please ensure you have a GameMaker Account and are connected to the internet.
Please Note: This is a beta application. Betas may contain bugs which could corrupt your projects and may also introduce legitimate project format changes which stop you from opening the project again in other versions. Accordingly, we would strongly suggest that you backup all projects before trying them on a beta.
Installation
Prior to installing GameMaker
ChromeOS requires you to enable a Linux subsystem to be able to run other forms of Linux apps, such as GameMaker and the build tools it depends on. Therefore, we need to enable this first of all.
Go to the bottom right of the desktop and bring up the settings menu (the cog wheel).
On the left panel select the Developers option:
Turn on the Linux Development Environment:
This will start an installation process (It may take a few minutes, depending on internet speeds) and then you should be left looking at a Terminal window and ready to go.
If it did not launch Terminal for you already, then you can now activate Terminal from the ChromeOS launcher whenever you need to:
Enable GPU Support (may be enabled by default in recent versions of ChromeOS)
Navigate to the page chrome://flags/#crostini-gpu-support on the Chromebook and enable the crostini GPU Support flag
Dependencies
Installation of software on a Linux system often requires dependencies. Put simply, these are libraries and other files that are required by the software you'll be installing to work properly. To install the dependencies for GameMaker (listed in our Setting Up for Ubuntu guide) run the following in your terminal:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential openssh-server clang libssl-dev libxrandr-dev libxxf86vm-dev libopenal-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev zlib1g-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev ffmpeg libfuse2 curl nproc -y
$ sudo mkdir /opt/steam-runtime/
$ curl https://repo.steampowered.com/steamrt-images-scout/snapshot$s/latest-steam-client-general-availability/com.valvesoftware.SteamRuntime.Sdk-amd64,i386-scout-sysroot.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzf -C /opt/steam-runtime/
$ wget https://github.com/linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy/releases/download/continuous/linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage
$ sudo install -m 0755 linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/linuxdeploy
$ wget https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage
$ sudo install -m 0755 linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/linuxdeploy
Install GameMaker
Download our latest .deb installer here and save this somewhere on your machine.
Ensure that a Terminal window is open before launching our installer, as this is required for running the Linux environment.
Then run our .deb installer by double-clicking in a file explorer or by running the following commands in the terminal (at the time of writing, the current version is 2023.1100.0.435, so that's what's written below, but your version number will likely be different) :
cd <download_path>
sudo apt install -y ./GameMaker-Beta-2023.1100.0.435.deb
Allow this process to complete, accepting any prompts to install or to access your network, etc.
Running GameMaker
On completing a successful install you can now access GameMaker from the application launcher (the circle in the bottom left of the taskbar)
Submitting Bug Reports
Make sure you check the known issues here as your issue may have already been reported, so you may not need to send us anything!
If your issue isn't already in the GameMaker-Bugs repository, the process for filing bug reports is no different to the regular release: please use the "Create Your Contact Us Package" tool, as shown below.
Once your package is created and saved, use the 'Report a GameMaker Bug' tool, providing as much detail as you can on the issue you've encountered. Once complete, click 'Submit'.
Where can I get support/help?
Anyone seeking coding help and advice can get assistance at any time from the GameMaker Community forums. Please note we do not offer coding/design support on the Helpdesk or bug-reporting facilities - you will be asked to make yourself a GMC thread and ask there.
Of course, whenever you need them you can see our various installation and platform setup guides right here on the Helpdesk.
If you believe you have identified a GameMaker bug (not one in your own code!), then please Report a Bug per the process above.