GMPhysX - Adding PhysX to GameMaker

[bytecauldron]

Hi guys! I hope it's ok I can share something I've been working on over the last year. I'm planning on a public alpha in about a month, and it's the first asset I've ever built. I'm still learning the PhysX API, but I feel comfortable enough to start reaching out to show people.

For those that don't know, GameMaker is primarily a 2D engine. Any time anyone asks about 3D in GameMaker, the general consensus is to go to Godot or Unity, unless you really want to make games in GameMaker. This is due to a few reasons. Slow interpreted language, limited shader options, vertex submission functions that require wasteful batch breaking, etc.
For me, one of the bigger concerns was just having a solid physics engine. GameMaker luckily enough has a method to contact DLL's outside of the runtime. I ended up building a middleware that bridges GameMaker to the PhysX DLL through a series of shared buffers.

I just wanted to say thank you for making PhysX super approachable. I've been having so much fun.

2025-11-08.17-49-53.mp4

2025-10-05.20-07-43.mp4

2025-10-29.12-19-13.mp4

(This one has instance shading from a previous build, still have to add that back in, but it's a proof of concept to show that GM rendering is the biggest bottleneck here, not PhysX itself):

2025-02-24_17-48-35.mp4

[vreutskyy]

@bytecauldron Great work! Keep it up!