Topher's GM Synth

August 2024 update: This project was my first experiment with GameMaker synthesizers! I've learned a lot since I made this project, and if you are looking to make your own synthesizer with GML then you can check out SynthEngine, a project I released specifically for that purpose! It is the culmination of everything I've learned since this project originally released.

I wanted to see if it was possible to make a somewhat-usable synthesizer using nothing but GML - no sound assets at all. With the recent addition of audio effects in GameMaker, I figured I'd challenge myself to make something close to a real synthesizer you might find in your DAW of choice. I was able to incorporate custom waveform drawing (limited to 10 "chunks" of the actual data, only because that sounded fun to me), basic attack and decay envelope controls, various effects, and the ability to play audio with your keyboard including octave control.

I don't think that something like this has any useful real-world uses, but it was a fun thing to create. So now that it's complete, I want to share my project with the world as a demo to download and play with. You can also download the complete project source code if you'd like to learn from it. No fancy license, just don't repackage it and sell it or claim you made it or anything like that.

Hopefully my little project is at least entertaining to some. Enjoy!