GameMaker Studio 2 update released to bring forth the Ubuntu Linux editor Beta

Back in early August we wrote about how YoYo Games were introducing the GameMaker Studio 2 editor for Linux, well as of the latest official update the Beta is actually out.

Okay, so it was "out" before but tucked away in a forum post. As of version 2.3.4.580, it's officially noted in the changelog. Interestingly though, YoYo Games have always gone pretty hard on the "we only support Ubuntu" for their exported games and it seemed that would stick for the editor. In the release notes though, it states "that this is the only Linux distro we offer official support for in this Beta" which alludes to it possibly opening up to more. Either way, it's a big step for game development on Linux to see it more official now.

This new build is also the release that now uses more cross-platform tech as a whole. The IDE (the editor) now uses the SDL2 tech for all input and audio output. On top of that, the IDE now renders everything using FNA3D as well. Using both will enable them to do much better cross-platform stuff going forwards, and keeps things the same across Linux, macOS and Windows.

Hopefully at some point they will fix up their dependencies to not require some specific libs from Ubuntu for exported games. You've possibly come across an error in the past with GMS2 games that throw up an error similar to "version `CURL_OPENSSL_3' not found". Thankfully, one developer wrote a guide for other developers shipping GMS2 games that will work across all distributions and somewhat recently Valve updated the Steam Linux Runtime to work around it too (see my bug report for one particular title).