The Game Maker's Companion

ISBN-13: 9781430228264 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 440 str.

Jacob Habgood

Opis

When I created the first version of Game Maker in 1999, I naturally had no idea that it would achieve its current status of the most-used game-creation package in the world. The program was still rather limited. You could only create very simple games with it and the package was downloaded only a few hundred times per month. A lot has changed over the past ten years. New versions of Game Maker were released that made it possible to create sophisticated stand-alone games. The number of downloads rose to over 150,000 per month, and the company YoYo Games was formed that now develops and distributes the program. The site of YoYo Games (www.yoyogames.com) has already collected close to 100,000 games made with Game Maker and this number is rapidly increasing. But one thing has not changed. Most of the games created with Game Maker are still very simple and do not use many of the advanced features that the program offers. They also often lack sophistication in their gameplay. One of the reasons for this is that there was no text book for the more advanced Game Maker users. That is, until this book came along. A book dedicated to those that have already created their first games and want to learn more.

Spis treści

1. Greetings, Game Maker
2. Platform Beginnings: An Idea with Legs
3. Zool: Taking It to the Nth Dimension
4. Empowerment: Sliding Ninjas
5. Krool's Forces: Sweetening the Challenge
6. Fighting Talk: The Empower Strikes Back
7. Game Design: “Shadows on Deck”
8. Storytelling in Theory
9. Storytelling Applied
10. Of Mice and Pen: Pirate Art
11. GML: From Ninja to Pirate
12. Rogues' Rendezvous: Vertically Sliced
13. The Story Begins
14. Feature Reference
15. Rogues' Rendezvous: Dialogue

O autorze

Jacob Habgood worked in the U.K. games industry for seven years, writing console games for Gremlin Interactive and Infogrames/Atari. During this time, he contributed to a wide range of titles and lead the programming teams on MicroMachines (PS2, X-Box and Game Cube) and Hogs of War (PlayStation). Jacob is now a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, researching the educational potential of computer games. As part of this research, Jacob runs clubs and workshops teaching children and teenagers how to make their own computer games, providing free activities and resources through his website: www.gamelearning.net.