GameMaker Beta on Arch Linux

2023-11-21

So after GameMaker recently making exports to Destop, Web, and Mobile free, and moving from a subscription model to a perpetual licence recently, I decided to try it out.
After some reading I found out that the beta version supports Ubuntu... and I am on Arch. But that won't stop me.

Installing dependencies

An article I found listed these dependencies for Ubuntu:

build-essential, openssh-server, clang,
libssl-dev, libxrandr-dev, ibxxf86vm-dev,
libopenal-dev, libgl1-mesa-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev,
zlib1g-dev, libcurl4-openssl-dev, ffmpeg, libfuse2, curl

And the Arch equivalent of these are:

base-devel, openssh, clang, openssl,
libxrandr, libxxf86vm, openal, mesa,
zlib, libcurl-compat, ffmpeg, fuse, curl

They can be installed using the following command:

sudo pacman -S base-devel openssh clang openssl libxrandr libxxf86vm openal mesa zlib libcurl-compat ffmpeg fuse curl

The Steam Runntimes

Next you need to get the steam runtimes. You can create the directory for it with this command:

sudo mkdir /opt/steam-runtime/

And you can download it using this command:

curl https://repo.steampowered.com/steamrt-images-scout/snapshots/latest-steam-client-general-availability/com.valvesoftware.SteamRuntime.Sdk-amd64,i386-scout-sysroot.tar.gz | sudo tar -xzf - -C /opt/steam-runtime/

Install Linuxdeploy

You can download it using this command:

wget https://github.com/linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy/releases/download/continuous/linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage

Then you can install it using this command:

sudo install -m 0755 linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/linuxdeploy

Install AppImage build tool

You can download it using this command:

wget https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage

You can install it using this command:

sudo install -m 0755 appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage /usr/local/bin/appimagetool

Installing GameMaker Beta

You will need to download the .deb file from the GameMaker Website. Now you need to download debtap if you haven't. You can do this using this command:

sudo pacman -S debtap

Now you may need to update the debtap database using this command:

sudo debtap -u

You can now create the package file using this command:

debtap <name of file>

(replace <name of file> with the name of the .deb file)
Now that it has created the package file you can use this command:

sudo pacman -U <name of file>

If you don't know the name of the file, it should be in the directory you are in. And you can find all the package files in your directory using this command:

ls *.pkg*

Notes

GameMaker Beta should be located in /opt/GameMaker-Beta and it should have created a desktop file in /usr/share/applications.
If you want the binary to be in your path you either have to add the /opt/GameMaker-Beta directory to your path, or you can create a script to run it:

#!/usr/bin/bash
/opt/GameMaker-Beta/GameMaker