While you are editing, you can always preview the current scene in playback mode by simply pressing F6 (the same keyboard shortcut as GameMaker's “run in debug mode”). But you won't be shipping your game in editing mode!

When you are ready to publish your game, you will replace instances of obj_editDialog with obj_showDialog. If you've used GML code to create instances of the obj_editDialog, swap those for obj_showDialog. GameMaker's Find and Replace All feature may be helpful.

As you use the engine, a set of files are produced with all of your content. These files are placed in the working directory of the game that you're editing. This is a GameMaker thing, so see File System for more information. Usually, though, the files are in your %localappdata% folder.

Import all of the files into your game as “included files” before exporting your final game!! Otherwise, the dialog will just live in your computer's appdata folder.

The files to include are listed below. If you changed the filenames in the create_common_data() script, then find whatever you've created.

• _index.txt
• _characters.txt
• _styles.txt
• scenes.txt

All of your game's data is going to live in your computer's appdata folder, due to GameMaker's sandboxing rules. Because of this, I very strongly recommend making a backup copy of the data files after each editing session. Make a shortcut to your computer's appdata folder to help you do this painlessly. Backups are Life! I cannot promise that the engine is absolutely free of flaws, and while I'll feel very badly if a bug causes your game's file to go wrong, it is impossible for me to ensure that it can never happen and it's entirely possible for you to prevent data loss so…please keep backups.