GMS2 Required SDKs

YoYo QA Dept
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This article details the required versions of the various tools and SDKs that GameMaker Studio 2 requires. 

We do not recommend using third-party tools ahead of what is listed below - Studio won't know how to support them properly and you may give yourself build errors or even IDE instability.

Be aware also that for everything below we only offer support for physical machines running a single OS natively - we do not support any variant of virtual machines, including Parallels or Bootcamp on a Mac, "Hackintosh" PCs, or Windows emulators on a Linux distro, etc.

This FAQ assumes IDE v2.2.4.474 using Runtimes v2.2.4.374. If you're not on this version, we'd strongly recommend you update first and then follow this guide. Be aware we will only offer Helpdesk support if your issue is in this version or a newer beta release - for all older releases, you will be asked to update and confirm your issue still exists before we will investigate.

 

 

 

Using the Windows IDE

  • See general system specifications in the popup on the GMS2 info page
  • Visual Studio 2015 or 2017 is required when building Windows YYC or anything to do with UWP or consoles - see the target's own section below for specifics.
  • Note VS2015/VS2017 requires Win 7 with SP1 or above - it won't install without at least SP1
  • A separate physical Mac is still required for targeting macOS, iOS/iPadOS, and tvOS - see the target's own section below for specifics. We would highly recommend this Mac is connected to the PC using Ethernet, rather than WiFi, as this can result in issues when building large projects for YYC.
  • If you are using Spine images in your game, then GMS2 2.2.2 and above requires your files to be exported with Spine runtime 3.7, and GMS2 2.2.1 and older requires sprites exported with Spine 3.4.02. No other versions are supported (your images may work fine, but we cannot guarantee this).
  • Steamworks SDK 1.42 is required if you're doing Steam builds (please use ONLY this version).

 

Using the Mac IDE

Note: Catalina realistically requires you to use 2.2.4, following Apple's new notarisation/security system being enabled. Whilst 2.2.3 and older will install and might run fine on Catalina, your game builds will not be suitable for distribution and you may have issues installing your runtime files anyway. Accordingly, we will only offer support for 2.2.4 or above on Catalina.

  • See general system specifications in the popup on the GMS2 info page
  • Xcode is required to be installed separately before you can build any "Apple platform"  packages - see the macOS and iOS/iPadOS/tvOS sections below for specifics.
  • In general, we would always recommend using the latest non-Beta Xcode release, as this is the version Apple want you to be using. If this is not supported on your Mac, then we will try to support you as long as we can, but Apple will eventually stop your machine from being able to build App Store apps and there is nothing we can do about this.
  • You will also need an Apple Developer account
  • An Apple Developer account is required before you can use Xcode, and you will need Xcode to build and codesign the application as per Apple's platform requirements - and this developer account will need to be the paid version if you want to give your app to anyone else (only dev testing on your own machine is free these days). If you are a school/business, you only need one account - you don't need one per student/staff member!
  • A separate physical Windows PC is still required for targeting Windows, UWP or any of the consoles - see the target's own section below for specifics. We would always recommend this PC is connected to the Mac using Ethernet, rather than WiFi.
  • If you are using Spine images in your game, then GMS2 2.2.2 and above requires your files to be exported with Spine runtime 3.7, and GMS2 2.2.1 and older requires sprites exported with Spine 3.4.02. No other versions are supported (your images may work fine, but we cannot guarantee this).
  • Steamworks SDK 1.42 is required if you're doing Steam builds (please use ONLY this version).
  • Using GMS2 2.2.1 and above, Mono v5.10.1.57 or newer (we recommend 5.20.1.19) is required to be installed on your Mac, otherwise you won't be able to build any projects - if for any reason this fails to be installed automatically by GMS2 you can download the installer from https://download.mono-project.com/archive/5.20.1/macos-10-universal/MonoFramework-MDK-5.20.1.19.macos10.xamarin.universal.pkg
  • Please don't use macOS/iOS/tvOS/Xcode beta builds as soon as they are released, as beta builds are often subject to large changes and an issue in one version may not be present in the next update - be aware we will only look at Apple's "GM Candidates" and fix issues present in release builds.

 

 

GMS2's Supported Platforms

 

Windows  (setup guide)

  • For building VM you don't need anything extra to be installed.
  • For building YYC you will need Visual Studio 2017 or 2015 (Community Editions are fine). VS2019 is not supported.

For simply playing GMS2 games: XP is not supported at all. Vista and Windows 7 players will need to ensure they have DirectX 11 installed, otherwise the game will not run. Certain functionality in the game, like security when doing HTTP requests or using any third-party extensions, may prevent the use of Vista/Win 7 (or might require you to install the final Win 7 Service Pack), and we are unable to do anything about this. All games are 32bit-only.

 

macOS  (setup guide)

  • All code-signed macOS apps built after July 31st 2019 are now required to be uploaded to Apple and notarised once they have been built, before that app will work on a different machine - even apps published outside the App Store, such as on Steam. This requires the use of Xcode 10 or above (of course, we would recommend you use Xcode 11 anyway).
  • For detailed info on the above, please see our FAQ about this.
  • If you do not codesign your package, Gatekeeper will say it's damaged and tell you to delete it anyway (on Mojave and above), so not applying codesigning is not a realistic method of bypassing the new notarisation requirement.
  • Xcode 11 support requires GMS2 2.2.4+ and macOS Mojave 10.14.4+
  • Xcode 10 support requires GMS2 2.2.0+ and macOS High Sierra 10.13.6+.
  • If you're trying to use an older version of GMS2, Xcode or macOS, you will need to update.

For simply playing GMS2 games: OS X 10.9 or later is required for AppStore games and OS X 10.7 or later is required for non-AppStore games. All games are 64bit-only.

 

Ubuntu  (setup guide)

  • As of GMS2 2.2.1, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64bit is the only distro we support. Other distros may be used when building projects inside GMS2, but we do not offer support for these and you will need to set up your environment yourself.
  • GMS2 2.2.3 and above require the "nproc" package to be installed on the Ubuntu machine when building packages. This is installed by default in Ubuntu, but might not be there if you have customised your install (or may not be installed by default in other distros), so be aware you might need to install this other package.

For simply playing GMS2 games: Ubuntu 16 or later is required. Other distros can generally run the game packages GMS2 generates with no issues, but we only state support for Ubuntu, so if you have issues playing games on these other platforms you will need to investigate this yourself. All games are 64bit-only.

 

HTML5

There are no additional tools required to build HTML5 projects, and the module supports a wide range of current browsers: Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers, such as Vivaldi), Safari, Firefox, and Edge.

Please note that old IE 11 is not fully supported, as it does not support WebGL. Some older mobile device browsers may have the same issue. You can run games in these browsers if WebGL is disabled in Game Options within your project.

If using macOS Catalina for HTML5 testing, you will need to be using 2.2.4.464 or newer, as Catalina won't open the old 32bit web server UI application. 2.2.4.464 fixes this by making the server a 64bit console application. (The old UI web server works fine in Mojave.)

 

Android/Amazon  (setup guide)

  • Install Android Studio 3.5 and configure it as per the setup guide linked-to just above this line.
  • The old "SDK Manager" method of installing your Android SDK on Windows is no longer supported in GMS2 2.2.4+, as Google won't allow AndroidX to be downloaded via SDK manager. You will need to change to Android Studio.
  • We recommend Android API 29 / NDK 20 for all projects. API 29 is only supported in 2.2.4+.
  • For your JDK location, use the location of the OpenJDK 8 install which is included by default in your Android Studio installation. Gradle does not support any version of JDK 9 or newer, so stick with this Android Studio version.
  • Games can be built using 64bit and/or 32bit as you require - you select the architectures you want when building the project.
  • Minimum SDK version is 16 for API 28+ and anything built for Android YYC. (You can use 14 when using Build Tools 26 or 27, and using 25 or older you can leave this at 9 - but be aware Google Play will not accept this apk as it requires you to use API 26 or above.)
  • Please note, some third-party extensions may require you to raise the minimum SDK version to their requirements, as will enabling "Run Lint code analysis". Review your compiler log for the exact version, if your project fails to build.

Recommended Preferences Settings:

(The value shown here for Android SDK Location is customisable in Android Studio's "SDK Manager" section - we recommend using a short path, rather than several folders deep inside Program Files, which is what Android Studio will use by default.)

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Recommended Game Options settings:

(Regardless of what's shown above, make sure your testing device's actual architecture is ticked...)

Please note that if you have enabled "Run Lint code analysis" lower down on that Game Options page, you may find that in order to make projects build you will need to adjust the above values - always refer to your own Lint report for the specifics (the location of this report file is written in your compiler log).

Also, be aware by default Gradle will assume/require an internet connection and will perform an update check and download any required components you do not have installed at the start of each GMS2 project build. We would recommend you leave this enabled, but if required you can disable this within Android Studio (of course, if you start seeing projects fail to build, before you contact us you should perform an update of Gradle and download any missing components manually and confirm if this fixed your issue): https://developer.android.com/studio/intro/studio-config#offline

For simply playing GMS2 games: GMS2 itself supports a wide range of Android OS versions, but Google Play does not (and Amazon requires fairly recent APIs also). You may find that you can build and test using old devices and old API versions, but you would not be able to publish these on some stores, and there is nothing we can do about this. 64/32bit device support depends on what the game developer chose when they built the version you're trying to play.

 

iOS/iPadOS/tvOS  (iOS/iPadOS setup guide) (tvOS setup guide)

Our docs and the GMS2 IDE do not refer to the recently-announced iPadOS as there currently is no fundamental change compared to regular iOS and GMS2 iOS packages work perfectly fine on iPadOS. We will obviously monitor this going forward and react if Apple make a breaking change, but for now just bear in mind if you have "iOS" you have "iPadOS" also.

Due to how our licensing server works, tvOS will actually show up in Target Manager for all IDEs 2.1.5 and above, but it is only 2.2.3+ which will work.

  • Requires Xcode 11 to build all projects, which requires macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or newer
  • Please note that whilst Xcode 11 will still build projects targeting iOS 9 or older, Apple doesn't support anything older than iOS 10, these devices often can't access the AppStore so there's no real commercial need to do work to support them, and in order to submit to the AppStore you need to support all the newer iOS versions... So please don't test using only old devices!

For simply playing GMS2 games: iOS 10.0 or above, tvOS 12.0 or above, iPadOS 13.0 or above. All games are 64bit-only.

 

UWP  (PC setup guide) (Xbox One setup guide)

Whilst GMS2 includes support for Windows 10 Mobile packages, Microsoft themselves don't support these phones now, so we cannot guarantee how long they will still allow store apps, etc.

  • Requires either Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2017 (Community Editions are fine to use).
  • VS2019 is not supported.
  • Windows 10 SDK 10.0.14393.0 is the SDK we suggest using, but newer versions may be required by some functionality/extensions in your project

For simply playing GMS2 games: Windows 10 or the current Xbox One firmware is required. All games are 64bit-only.

 

Consoles

Please note you will only have access to the following links if you have the console modules in GMS2. If you require the console modules (and can prove you're a licensed console developer!), please contact the Helpdesk.

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