Game Maker's Apprentice

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.

• Getting Started.- Welcome to Game Maker.- Your First Game: Devilishly Easy.- Action Games.- More Actions: A Galaxy of Possibilities.- Target the Player: It’s Fun Being Squished.- Game Design: Interactive Challenges.- Level Design.- Inheriting Events: Mother of Pearl.- Maze Games: More Cute Things in Peril.- Game Design: Levels and Features.- Multiplayer Games.- Cooperative Games: Flying Planes.- Competitive Games: Playing Fair with Tanks.- Game Design: Balance in Multiplayer Games.- Enemies and Intelligence.- GML: Become a Programmer.- Clever Computers: Playing Tic-Tac-Toe.- Intelligent Behavior: Animating the Dead.- Final Words.

From the reviews: "The desire to create computer games attracts many young people to computing. This book meets the needs of this group of readers and students very well. It is also a fine introduction to the making of computer games for the experienced software developer who always wondered how games were made. ... There are excellent software development lessons that can be learned using this book ... . the book provides a superb introduction to programming as well as to game construction." (Anthony J. Duben, ACM Computing Reviews, Vol. 49 (5), May, 2008)