King Razz

I want to know if there are any alternative ways to saving game data -- all I'd really need is a way to save the global variables and such. I was thinking about using *.INI's, but that didn't seem like the best idea considering that anybody can edit the save data if they know enough about how variables work in the first place.

The main reason why I want to do this, is in case I find a game-shattering bug AFTER I release the game. This way people don't have to restart from the beginning again when they download the new version. Any help/suggestions is appreciated. Thanks!

So here's my creation code in the "initiation room" (It sets the global variables and other stuff):

//key sets
  globalvar v_left_key;
  globalvar v_right_key;
  globalvar v_jump_key;

room_goto_next();

Later on in the game when the player chooses a file, the default keys are set to the variables:

v_left_key = keyboard_check(vk_left);
v_right_key = keyboard_check(vk_right);
v_jump_key = keyboard_check(ord('A'));

but for some reason when I try to do something like this in the character code:

if (v_left_key)
{
 *do something*;
}

It won't work. I don't get any errors or anything, but nothing will happen when the key is pressed.

I find this strange because the following code works in the step event of the code (Assuming I don't declare the variables as global):

k_left = keyboard_check(vk_left);
k_right = keyboard_check(vk_right);
k_jump = keyboard_check(ord('A'));

if (k_left)
{
 *do something*;
}

I know for a fact this isn't due to some error in my internal coding, as right now I don't even have a code that declares the global variables when you select a new save file (I haven't even programmed that yet) I just have a secondary initiation room.

So, why isn't this working? It seems it would work, because I can set regular non-global variables to keys and I won't run into any errors, so why can't I get this code to work? It'd make it much easier to let the player choose his own control scheme (This is the main reason why I'm doing this, actually), so I'd appreciate it if anybody could help me out here. Thanks.

This is something that's been bothering me for years using GM: The blurry fullscreen. A lot of people seem to prefer games that use the pixel-perfect fullscreen (Like me.) that resembles a low-res game. Unfortunately, in GM, as far as I know, the only way to do this is by changing the games resolution, which most people don't like.

What I'm curious to know, is Emulating a Fake Resolution in Game Maker even possible? I've tried doing the whole, view port is bigger then view size affect, but I always get the tile error, and the little white line at the bottom of the screen (I haven't tried this with gm7 yet though.) Are there any DLL's that can do this properly, or is there some kind of code that can do this?

Thanks in advance.

I don't quite understand how the snazzy new external file system works. At all.

Could someone please explain it to me? I'm looking for a way to recognize an mp3 file, load it, then play it externally, without having to put it in the game manually. It's filesize is huge, thus why I want it to be loaded during gameplay when I actually need it.

Comments are greatly appreciated.

How would I go about doing this? By "Custom", I mean, fade in, fade out, ect. Any suggestions?