
Learning Game Development with GameMaker
Description
Turn your game ideas into reality! This book is a hands-on guide to using GameMaker and its scripting language (GML). It is tailored for classroom use, suitable for both educators and students.
We will start with essentials such as installing GameMaker, navigating the IDE, and organizing your projects for success. You will learn of sprites, objects, events, variables, collisions, audio, and GUI design. We will also cover implementing AI, alarms, loops, arrays, and state control to create dynamic gameplay. The book also covers how to publish your game. Each chapter ends with a quiz to reinforce what has been covered.
With clear explanations, hands-on examples, and over 50 mini-game ideas, this book transforms beginners into confident developers. By the end, you'll have the skills to design, prototype, and publish polished games using GameMaker.
You Will
- Create, name, and organize assets such as sprites, sounds, fonts, and rooms
- Gain skills in input handling, state control, movement, and collision detection
- Explore effect layers, camera control, and resource optimization
Who This Book Is For
This book is suitable for teachers and students learning GML in a classroom environment as well as self-study.
More details
Persons
Ben Tyers is an expert GameMaker user, developer, coder, and trainer. He has authored several books on GameMaker for game application developers. He has been using GameMaker for over 20 years, enjoying the changes that have happened during this period. During this time, he has made over 200 mini game projects covering a range of genres, including remakes of retro games he played as a child in the 1980s. He loves finding simple solutions to challenging coding concepts. He is an active member of GameMaker's community, helping new coders with programming issues. Outside of programming, Ben enjoys vintage horror and science fiction films.
Dickson Law is a GameMaker commentator and extension developer with 15 years of community experience. In his spare time, he enjoys writing general-purpose libraries, tools and articles covering basic techniques for GameMaker. As a web and metadata programmer by day, his main areas of interest include user-side workflow automation, server-side scripting, and API integrations. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
Content
Chapter 1: What GameMaker Can Do.- Chapter 2: Installing GameMaker.- Chapter 3: Opening GameMaker for the First Time.- Chapter 4: Quick Example Game.- Chapter 5: Game Resources.- Chapter 6: Organizing Your Project.- Chapter 7: Creating Assets.- Chapter 8: Layers and Placing Assets in Room.- Chapter 9: Rooms and Views.- Chapter 10: Variables.- Chapter 11: Sprites.- Chapter 12: Drawing.- Chapter 13: Object Creation and Movement.- Chapter 14: Events.- Chapter 15: Conditionals.- Chapter 16: Keyboard and Mouse Input.- Chapter 17: Sprite Control.- Chapter 18: Audio Control.- Chapter 19: Randomness.- Chapter 20: Health, Lives & Score.- Chapter 21: Collision Detection & Masks.- Chapter 22: Room Backgrounds.- Chapter 23: Alarms and Timers.- Chapter 24: Effects & Effect Layers.- Chapter 25: Referencing Other Instances.- Chapter 26: Loops.- Chapter 27: Arrays.- Chapter 28: DS Lists & Priority Queues.- Chapter 29: Paths.- Chapter 30: MP Grids.- Chapter 31: Custom Functions.- Chapter 32: State Control with Enums.- Chapter 33: Enemy Control AI.- Chapter 34: GUI.- Chapter 35: Parenting.- Chapter 36: Menus.- Chapter 37: Saving and Loading with INI Files.- Chapter 38: Saving & Loading Text Files.- Chapter 39: Data & Resource Management.- Chapter 40: Publishing Your Game.- Chapter 41: Project Saving, Backup and Source Control.- Chapter 42: Other Useful Tools & Programs.- Chapter 43: 50 Mini Game Projects.- Chapter 44: Reference Material, Worksheets & Charts.