Using the GUI layer in full screen mode with views

When resizing the display, in order to keep the aspect ratio of the game screen (or application surface) intact, GameMaker will employ a letterbox to fill the rest of the screen. These black bars may be appropriate for your particular game, but in general they are not ideal; the black bars represent potentially wasted space. The letterbox is likely to be present when keeping the game's aspect ratio, unless the dimensions of the screen happen to match that of the room you created. For this reason, it is a good idea to employ views and allow GameMaker to change the size of these views depending on the display being used. Let's take a look at incorporating views for use in full screen mode in GameMaker.

Getting ready

Once again, we'll use the same game project we've been working with in this chapter. However, in order to ensure that every line of code ends up where it belongs, it will be easier to follow along from start to finish. Before we...