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So I made a few gamemaker games about 11 years ago and tried to run the exe file.

When I run the exe file, nothing really happens just an error box pops up saying you can find out more here. And it points to 3 .tmp files located in the Temp folder on my computer.

Anyone know how to get these exe files working again?

Rob
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David B
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  • Have you tried running them in compatibility mode for some ancient Windows version? – Paul Kertscher Jan 14 '17 at 10:31
  • thanks for the response. I followed your advice but it did not work.. I tried Windows 98 - 2003. The games have sat on my portable harddrive but when I last used them 11years ago, they worked. Anything else I can try? – David B Jan 14 '17 at 10:45
  • any other solutions? – David B Jan 16 '17 at 06:30

1 Answers1

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The older versions of game maker games use an old runner that does not work with the newer versions of window (from Vista and up).

Using compatibilty mode does not fix this.

There is however a fix available that replaces the runner in the EXE with an updated one.

The tool was posted by Mark Overmars (the original creator of Game Maker) but the link in his topic is no longer active (the .zip does download but its an HTML page, not the actual tool).

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=299895&p=2116603

It did work for me and using this program I was able to run a lot of older gm4 + games that I have played before on windows XP.

If its a must - you can always try to run it on an XP machine.

TL;DR:

There is a tool to make them work, I will upload it tonight.

EDIT: Turns out YoYoGames has the tool posted themselves; http://help.yoyogames.com/attachments/token/lsj0pmbzqeu64hf/?name=GM_Convert_Game.zip

More information: http://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216753218-Troubleshooting-Legacy-GameMaker

You can extract all the files to a directory, then drag your old .exe file onto the converter exe. It will then create a game_old.exe and game.exe and then you should be able to run the game.exe one.

Rob
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    Dude you are awesome. It worked. Thank you so much. – David B Jan 19 '17 at 13:34
  • OMG! You can't believe how much you helped me 0_0 I was pulling my hairs out over this ancient cringe GM game that I made ages ago (still it was first game so it have some nostalgic value). I was trying to use disassemblers to try to fix the bug that prevented it from launching! But I have 0 experience in assembler debugging so that was pretty fruitless waste of time. And this little program solved everything! I still can't believe it! How I didn't got idea to google this in the first place, NO IDEA! =) – ScienceDiscoverer Feb 09 '21 at 13:56
  • You're welcome :+) Same reason I've been using this tool.. Just dragging in .exe's I made back in 2007 for nostalgia reasons :P Lovely huh? – Rob Feb 11 '21 at 14:59