AssParser for GameMaker

AssParser is a free extension that adds subtitle support to video playback in GameMaker using Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) files.

For creating and modifying .ass files, I recommend Aegisub. It's free, open source, and you can use it to convert nearly any subtitle file into an .ass file.

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Not what you're looking for?

This extension is specific to video playback, not audio. If you're looking for subtitles that pair well with in-game audio, check out Subtitle Workshop by Mytholite.

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How does it work?

It's extremely simple:

and then draw the current subtitle however you want using


This way, you have full control over how your subtitles are drawn!

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Anything else?

The second argument in video_open_ext is optional. If you don't provide an .ass file, AssParser will automatically look for an .ass file with the same name as the video file.

Lastly, you can retrieve more than just text from .ass files. A typical .ass file will store lots of information per line of dialogue:

And we can access any of this info using

This is important because it lets us access the "Name" key. Suppose you want each character in your video to be subtitled in a unique font color. You might consider doing something like this:

and as long as each line of dialogue has a "Name" associated with it (in Aegisub, this is called an "Actor"), each line will be drawn in the appropriate color!

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Why not just edit subtitles into the video itself?

I wrote this extension because one of my projects includes several high-definition cutscenes, and we're planning to subtitle them in multiple languages.

These video files take up a lot of storage space, so having separate video files for every single supported language would be ridiculous. Using subtitle files lets us minimize the amount of unnecessary storage space the game takes up, and it opens up a lot of possibilities with regards to accessibility.

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Example project:

Included with the extension is an example project with an example video:

Me at the zoo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2005 by Jawed Karim at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

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Code library vs. extension

AssParser only uses GML, so you may prefer to download it as a script asset instead of a GameMaker extension. This makes it easier to debug and modify the code for your own use.

If you download the code library version, remember to call the init function before using any other AssParser functionality:

Source code for the code library version: https://github.com/DecadeDecaf/AssParser/tree/library
Source code for the extension version: https://github.com/DecadeDecaf/AssParser/tree/extension