As of the November 2022.11 release of GameMaker, there is a new dialog which you will see immediately after logging-in when updating or installing a version from fresh - the Runtime Modules dialog.
This is an extension of our existing functionality in Preferences to allow you to set which runtime version you want to use in the IDE - now, you're able to control which bits of that runtime are downloaded and installed.
Here, we show example values for the Windows IDE
This can be particularly useful on machines with low disk space or slow internet connections, but also if you know you're not going to be building for a certain target for a while then you can now deselect it and avoid the download.
How Do I Use The New Dialog?
As mentioned, it will always appear when you log in for the first time to a version of GameMaker starting with November 2022 - after that, you won't see it again unless you deselect the "Remember Selections" checkbox and then update to a newer version of GameMaker or you choose to customise your installation later (more on that below).
By default, it will look a lot like the screenshot we added higher up this page - rather than Windows, Mac IDEs will tick macOS and Ubuntu IDEs will tick Ubuntu, but that's it.
You then have two buttons for pre-set selection values, plus the ability to customise the checkboxes yourself.
- Select All, will just download everything and give you the same end result as every older version of GameMaker would have:
- And Required Only, which is "what is the smallest amount I can install for this current machine/operating system?" and so will only give you the relevant VM package for your OS and the Base package.
Again, we show example values for the Windows IDE here
The Remember Selection checkbox means the dialog will not be shown each time you install a different runtime version - GameMaker will instead remember your choices and automatically install just those bits again each time.
What Happens If I Try To Build For A Target I Have Not Installed?
As soon as you select that platform in Target Manager, GameMaker will alert you with a popup like this one:
If you select "no", your Target Manager will be set back to the previous target you had selected.
If you select "yes" the download will begin immediately and so after a short delay, you will then be able to carry on with your project build. You will see the install bar reacts immediately and the Output Window also tells you when the module has installed:
In order to avoid seeing this dialog more than is necessary, we would suggest something like the following, where we are using the Windows IDE and so we have ticked Windows YYC as well as the auto-selected Windows VM, and we have also picked both parts of GX.games so we can still publish our games for free on the GX.games website:
How Can I Change My Remembered Selections Later On?
You can open Preferences > Runtime Feeds and then click the "Modify Current Runtime Modules" button:
This will open the window for choosing which packages you want to install.
Note that you cannot currently uninstall packages individually - you would need to delete the whole runtime folder off disk (using Explorer/Finder when GameMaker is closed at the time) and then re-download just the bits you want.