GameMaker update for 4 March 2024

IDE v2024.2.0.132 Runtime v2024.2.0.163

You can see all the changes and fixes by checking the milestone page for this release, but in summary 2024.2 brings a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements already (especially in-game, but also a number of stability and project-loading fixes in the IDE).

In terms of new features and notable changes, you will find:

• Projects are now saved/loaded in a new format and there have been multiple changes to sort entries in a predictable manner and avoid source control conflicts
• Sequences now have audio effect tracks, so you can manipulate the audio in your Sequences over time
• The code editor and compiler will now better catch functions which have not had all required arguments provided
• #macro definitions now support inheritance (as was always implied by the IDE using a tree for the configs editor)
• Tilemaps are now compressed in your rooms
• Static functions now have non-anonymous names to help with debugging issues
• The in-game debug UI dialogs have had a number of fixes/additions and there have been various fixes to the Debugger inside the IDE
• There is a new gml_pragma() option "optimise" for HTML5 games to turn on/off further JS optimisations
• A new Gaussian Blur filter has been added for you to use in your games

And also:

• Fixed that borderless games would still resize themselves when using async dialogs, despite not being exclusive fullscreen
• Fixed issues with building Extensions on case-sensitive operating systems
• And there have been a number of tweaks and improvements for the in-IDE bug reporting tool so it's even smoother and easier to send us a report when issues do occur

Be aware that due to the changes in project format, 2024 IDEs will no longer allow you to set 2023-and-older runtimes as active and they will not appear in the table in Preferences > Runtime Feeds. Projects created/edited in 2024 IDEs can generally be used in older IDEs, so that's not a problem, but if you need to use older runtimes to create or build your projects, then you need to use the matching older IDE also.

For more on what's new in this February 2024 release, see the release blog post.