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The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Technology in Action) |  | Authors: Jacob Habgood, Mark Overmars
Creator: Phil Wilson
Publisher: Apress
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $22.38
as of 11/25/2009 06:18 CST details
You Save: $17.61 (44%)
New (34) Used (21) from $17.58
Seller: new_books_today
Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 8862
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1590596153
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81526
EAN: 9781590596159
ASIN: 1590596153
Publication Date: June 26, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Game Makers Apprentice shows you how to create nine exciting games using the wildly popular Game Maker game creation tool. This book covers a range of genres, including action, adventure, and puzzle games complete with professional quality sound effects and visuals. It discusses game design theory and features practical examples of how this can be applied to making games that are more fun to play. Game Maker allows games to be created using a simple drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to have any prior coding experience. It includes an optional programming language for adding advanced features to your games, when you feel ready to do so. You can obtain more information by visiting book.gamemaker.nl. The authors include the creator of the Game Maker tool and a former professional game programmer, so you'll glean understanding from their expertise. The book also includes a DVD containing Game Maker software and all of the game projects that are created in the bookplus a host of professional-quality graphics and sound effects that you can use in your own games.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 49
 Excellent November 20, 2009
Educating Mommy
My son is 11 and very interested in computer programming and making games. He is working on making a game for his little brothers to play for Christmas. He loves this program, and he was programming and creating fun games on the very first day. It appears as if you need the full version of the Gamemaker software to really do original things in creating your own games, but it teaches the basics and it is a lot of fun. I hope to find something just as good to help him learn other types of programming language and ability to work with different programs, but this is a great start.
 Good Start November 19, 2009
J. Hart (Okinawa, Japan)
My 11 yr old likes it. Has step by step instructions. We started working together at the beginning of the lessons. Now he just goes through the lessons by himself and shows me the results. I bought this book to gauge his interest in becoming 'game-maker'. He seems to still want to stick with it. So far, so good.
 The Disc Was Broke .. October 13, 2009
Gary Tim Otterbeck (AZ.)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Disc Was Broke And Could Not Get Any One To Respond.
When We Went To Where Is My Stuff It Was Not There Like
I Never Bought it.We Did Buy A New One It Was A Gift For My Son .
The New One Has Not Arrived But I Will Let You Know..
Great book. The kids love it! October 1, 2009
A.n. (Kansas)
Great book and service. I ordered the book for a student who wants to learn how to make video games and couldn't do it from scratch. The book is very helpful and written so he could understand and apply it.
5 Stars Is Not Enough!!!! June 11, 2009
Bruce Kirkpatrick (the worktable on my boat)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have been an educator and professional software developer for over 20 years now and can say that this is the most well crafted instructional book of any kind that I have ever read.
Taking a reader from zero to being able to create interesting games while understanding the logic, design considerations, and even programming syntax needed in one 300 page book with an easy to master learning rate/curve is an amazing feat. The authors deserve congratulations and they certainly have mine.
The book starts with very basic logical programming constructs and builds an initial simple tutorial from these. Through each subsequent tutorial project in the book, additional concepts are introduced while previous concepts are reinforced. The tutorials are carefully crafted such that new material is presented in very step by step detail while previously introduced concepts are referred to in an increasingly shorthand way. This is a great teaching technique and one that doesn't happen without great effort.
Along the way, most modern programming concepts and are introduced and explored in an amazingly non-frightening manner. In occasional chapters through the book the authors take a break from the GUI coding and talk about game design in more general terms and through examples from the tutorials and modified versions of the tutorials showing how game design and game player experience can be improved.
The final chapters of the book deal with coding games and game features in the programming language that is "behind" the Game Maker graphic user interface. While some have complained that this language is not C++, it is certainly close enough in design and syntax that any concept learned here will be readily transferable to another more common language.
The book ends with a discussion of other low and no cost tools that can be used to create graphics and sound files for games or any other software environment, and a discussion of the game design community available at the YOYO Games website.
I can also attest to the fact that all example projects in the book work as advertised. That in itself is an amazing feat.
Bruce Kirkpatrick
MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA, MCT, OCP, iNet+, Network+, Security +, A+ ... and so on
Showing reviews 1-5 of 49
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