Spread

Spread lets you keep game data in an XLSX workbook (e.g. from Excel) while developing, validate that data when GameMaker loads it, and use the result as normal GML structs. Then, when you build your project, you get rid of the XLSX file and use saved JSON files, seamlessly.

This gives game designers a friendly, familiar editing format such as a spreadsheet, that can be changed at will during development, but without making the shipped game parse spreadsheets at runtime.

Full documentation and download is available here (please read the readme's):

• Repo: https://github.com/biyectivo/Spread
• Example project: https://github.com/biyectivo/Spread-Demo  (you'll also need the game data's XLSX file - please read the documentation) 

For Gamemaker LTS 2024+. Uses <a href="https://samuel-venable.itch.io/gamemaker-extension-collection">libxprocess</a> from high on tantor (Samuel Venable) and a custom regex wrapper CLI tool converted to Rust from Python. Windows only for development, although you will be able to run/build games in any platform.