Available on YoYo Games marketplace.

This extension embeds a fully-fledged Chromium browser into your Gamemaker game.  The browser renders to a surface, allowing full support for animation, layering, and shaders,

For example: apply a glitch shader to the browser:

Or shrink the browser to fit into an in-game device:

The browser is also able to play some Youtube videos with sound (unfortunately due to licensing of codecs, not all videos are playable).  Other capabilities include viewing PDFs.

Windows-only.

Basic usage

Create event:

In a create event, a buffer must be created that is 4 times the width * height. This acts as a pixel buffer for the rendered webpages

buff = buffer_create(width*height*4, buffer_fixed, 1);
chromium_create(width, height, room_speed, buffer_get_address(buff));
chromium_set_url("https://meseta.itch.io/gm-chromium");

The Chromium instance can now be created, passing the buffer address to it, and a URL set.  Only one Chromium instance at a time is supported.

The URL can point to local files in the game's directory using file URI such as file:///local_file.html

Step event:

In a step event, the chromium_step() function must be called to process the page (future versions may remove this in favour of multi-threading).

chromium_step();

Draw event:

In the draw event, the buffer can be sent to the surface (which was previously created).  The shd_bgr_flip shader must be used for correct color display.

buffer_set_surface(buff, surf, 0, 0, 0);
shader_set(shd_bgr_flip);
draw_surface(surf,x,y);
shader_reset()

Cleanup event:

Chromium must be cleaned up or the game may fail to exit cleanly

chromium_cleanup();

Advanced Usage

chromium_create(width, height, fps, buffptr)

Creates the chromium instance.  Provide the width, height, and FPS (i.e. 30 or 60), and the pointer to the pixel buffer.  Only run once.

chromium_create_test(width, height, fps, buffptr) [v1.1]

The same as above, but used for when the game is running inside the IDE. This is lower-performance, but works around the issue where Open File dialogs show up when trying to run the game from within the IDE. This should not be used when exporting to a zip or installer.

chromium_step()

Must be run every game step.  Responsible for allowing the browser to process.

Returns 1 to indicate that the buffer was updated, or 0 to indicate that there was no change.  The return value can be used to determine whether to update the surface.

chromium_cleanup()

Must be run before game exits.  Cleanly shuts down chromium.

chromium_setup_bgtransparent() [v1.3]

Must be run before chromium_create, this will turn on transparent rendering, which is now off by default in v1.3.

chromium_set_url(url)

Sets the URL of the browser.  Can be a local file by using file:/// URI format

chromium_set_string(str, url) [v1.1]

Sets the content of the page.  For example: send HTML directly to the browser.  The url argument is the dummy URL to send the HTML to, this is usually about:blank.  Note: transparent rendering is on.

chromium_get_url()

Returns the current URL of the browser

chromium_execute(js)

Executes arbitrary Javascript on the currently loaded page.

chromium_stop()

Stop loading the current page.

chromium_reload()

Reload the current page

chromium_back()

Navigate back

chromium_forward()

Navigate forward

chromium_resize(width, height)

Resize the browser.  Note: the browser takes one step to resize, do not shrink the buffer too soon or this will cause a buffer overflow.

chromium_get_cursor()

Returns the cursor type (i.e. pointer, hand, i-beam, etc.). See scr_chromium_convert_cursor in the included project for possible values.

chromium_get_isloaded()

Returns 1 if the page has loaded. Returns 0 if the page is loading

chromium_get_can_back()

Returns 1 if it is possible to navigate back

chromium_get_can_forward()

Returns 1 if it is possible to navigate forward

chromium_get_last_http_code()

Returns the last HTTP request code

chromium_get_debug_value(value)

Super sekkrit debug stuff I forgot to remove. Returns...whatever debug value I left in there...

chromium_event_mousemove(x, y)

Tell the browser where the mouse is at.

chromium_event_mousewheel(hscroll, vscroll)

Tell the browser to scroll horizontally and vertically

chromium_event_mousebutton(x, y, button, set)

Send a mousebutton.  button is 0 for left button, 1 for middle button, and 2 for right button.  set is 1 for mouse-down, or 0 for mouse-up.  X and Y coordinates must also be provided.

chromium_event_keyboard(key, mod, set)

Send a keyboard event.  key is the keycode, mod is modifier keys (see scr_chromium_get_modifiers script for more details. set is 1 for key-down, or 0 for key-up.

chromium_event_keychar(keychar)

Sends an ASCII character.  It is normally necessary to send both a chromium_event_keyboard and a chromium_event_keychar for each keydown keystroke.  See included demo project for implementation details.

chromium_request_source() [v1.2beta] EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

Sends a request for the page source.  Once this is sent, GM code should poll chromium_check_source() to see if the source is available; once that function returns true, it can be collected with chromium_get_source()

chromium_check_source() [v1.2beta] EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

Polls to check if source has been fetched. Returns 0 if not, returns 1 if the source is available to be collected using chromium_get_source()

chromium_get_source() [v1.2beta] EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

Once chromium_check_source() has returned 1, chromium_get_source() will return the page source as a string.

chromium_check_transfer() [v1.2beta] EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

In Javascript, run window.transfer(<string>); to transfer a string to gamemaker.   This function can be polled to determine if a transfer is available. This function will return 1 if there is a transfer waiting to be read, or 0 if there is no transfer available.

See Included Files/html/test.html for implementation details

WARNING: this feature only works with browsers created using chromium_create_test().

chromium_get_transfer() [v1.2beta] EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE

Once a transfer is made, and chromium_check_transfer() returns 1, the transfer string can be read with this function.

See Included Files/html/test.html for implementation details

WARNING: this feature only works with browsers created using chromium_create_test().

Known issues:

• Cannot be run from inside Gamemaker. Please export your game as a zip to run it. (For some reason, running this from within GM causes some open dialogs to appear, and the DLL to not work).  Fixed in version 1.1!
• Some videos don't play. This is caused by a lack of H.264 support
• Scrolling sometimes targets the wrong frame
• Chromium appears to have a persistent paint cache, which may get in the way of transparent draws.  Switched off by default in version 1.3!
• EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES are experimental.
• Windows-only

Change log:

Version 1.3 (2018-06-13)

• Transparent rendering is now off by default. This can be turned back on by running chromium_setup_bgtransparent() function before anything else.

Version 1.2beta (2018-05-16)

• Added chromium_request_source(), chromium_check_source(), and chromium_get_source() to view page source
• Added EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES: chromium_check_transfer() and chromium_get_transfer() to return values from Javascript to GM.

Version 1.1 (2018-05-13)

• Added workaround for when game runs in the IDE (see chromium_create_test())
• Added chromium_set_string() for loading HTML directly without having to save to file.
• Fixed empty URL bug in demo project
• Added buffer background reset in demo project
• Added scr_demo_check_if_ide() to demo project