Distributing your game

With the information in the preceding chapters you can create your games. When your game is finished you obviously want other people to play it. You can of course give them the .gm81 file that you created and let them use GameMaker to play it but this is normally not what you want. First of all, you don't want others to be able to change the game, and secondly you also want people to play the game even if they do not have GameMaker. So you would like to create a stand-alone executable of your game.

Creating stand-alone executables is very easy in GameMaker. In the File menu you select the item Create Executable. You will be asked for the name of the executable that should contain the game. Indicate a name, press OK and you have your stand-alone game that you can give to anyone you like. You can change the icon for the stand-alone game in the Global Game Settings. See Part 3 for details.

Once you have created a stand-alone executable in the way described above you can give this file to other people or place it on your website to download. You are free to distribute the games you create with GameMaker in any way you like. You can even sell them. This of course assumes that the sprites, images, and sounds you use can be distributed or sold as well. See the enclosed license agreement for more information.

It is normally useful to zip your executable, together with some readme information. In Windows XP and later this can be done directly through the right mouse button menu, and there are many free zip utilities available on the web. Alternatively you can create an installer for your game. Again, a large number of free installation creation programs are available on the web.

If you want your game to be played by many more people we recommend you to upload it to the YoYo Games website and press on the Share button at the top.