Xzip Reference Guide

GameMaker Studio supports the inclusion of external files with game projects... with caveats. By default, any included files will export completely unprotected, while your primary assets are tucked safely away in an archive that's difficult for the average user to access or modify. Why shouldn't external files get the same treatment?

Although GameMaker has built-in support for .zip archives with the zip_unzip command, this command offers no granular access to archive contents and will pause the game until the entire archive is extracted. It also lacks support for any kind of security features. What's more, there's no corresponding zip_zip command to create archives in the first place!

Xzip is an archive format reimagined just for GameMaker Studio 2 to manage external files discretely and securely. Although it utilizes compression, Xzip's focus is not on making big files smaller. Instead, Xzip aims to make using external archives convenient, fast, and powerful using only native GML and smart, simple commands.

In this reference guide, we'll examine each function in detail.