How to Fix GameMaker GUI Layer Misaligned With the Application Surface

Health bars and prompts drawn in the Draw GUI event can slide off their targets when the window resizes because the GUI layer kept its old size. Syncing the GUI size to the display keeps overlays aligned.

How to fix it

1. Match the GUI size to the display

Call display_set_gui_size(display_get_gui_width(), display_get_gui_height()) or set it to your design resolution in a controller's Create event, and refresh it whenever the window changes size.

2. Convert mouse coordinates correctly

Use device_mouse_x_to_gui and device_mouse_y_to_gui for clicks on GUI buttons, since raw mouse_x/mouse_y are in room space and will miss the buttons at other resolutions.

3. Recompute on resize

Add a Window Resize handler (or poll the window size) that resets the GUI size and repositions anchored elements, so the overlay stays aligned after the player resizes or goes fullscreen.

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.