How to Fix a GameMaker Android Build Failing on SDK or NDK Paths

Your GameMaker game runs on Windows but the Android export fails in the Gradle step because a toolchain path is wrong or a version is unsupported. Configuring the correct SDK/NDK/JDK fixes it.

How to fix it

1. Install the expected toolchain versions

Check the GameMaker release notes for the supported Android SDK, NDK, and JDK versions and install exactly those. A newer NDK or JDK than GameMaker targets commonly breaks the Gradle build.

2. Set the paths in Preferences

Under Preferences > Platform Settings > Android, point the SDK, NDK, and JDK locations at the installed directories. A blank or wrong path here is the usual cause of an immediate build failure.

3. Accept SDK licenses

Run sdkmanager --licenses and accept them so Gradle can use the build tools. Unaccepted licenses cause the build to abort even when the paths are correct.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every GameMaker error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.