How to Fix GameMaker Text Overflowing Buttons After Translation

A button that fits English text perfectly can have its German translation run off both sides. Word-wrapping with draw_text_ext and measuring text before drawing keeps every language inside the box.

How to fix it

1. Wrap with draw_text_ext

Replace draw_text with draw_text_ext(x, y, str, line_sep, max_width) so long strings wrap onto multiple lines inside the button rather than running off the edges.

2. Measure before drawing

Use string_width(str) and string_height(str) to check whether the translated text fits, and grow the box or pick a smaller font when it does not.

3. Auto-shrink the font

When wrapping still overflows the available height, step the font scale down with draw_text_transformed until the measured size fits, so cramped languages stay readable without manual per-string tuning.

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.