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| The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Technology in Action) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jacob Habgood, Mark Overmars
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $18.00
You Save: $21.99 (55%)
New (17) Used (14) from $18.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 8009
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7 x 0.8
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 gamescomplete 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 dont 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 youll glean understanding from their expertise. The book also includes a CD 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: Read 30 more reviews...
An excellent book for children interested in programming March 19, 2007
36 out of 38 found this review helpful
My 12 year old son got interested in how computers work and especially how computer games get written. Being a software developer myself, I however could not explain him well these topics in a language that would be easily understood by a kid. And I am not a game programming expert, so I simply don't know how this stuff is written.
When I first saw this book, I was not sure if it would be suitable for a kid. But I decided to take a risk, since the book had a lot of illustrations and language did not seem to be very technical. I gave it to my son two days ago, and I can see alredy now that this was an excellent gift: he used all weekend on reading chapters from the book, trying making his first games, calling his parents all the time to show us his achievement. He even found a forum for game development, asked questions, received answers and made improvements in his first programs based on discussion results! And by the way - English is a foreign language for him.
I wish all books for beginners was written in a such entertaining way.
A Must Have for Game Developer Wannabe's! April 11, 2007
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
The title should be The Game Maker's Master Teacher! This book is very well written with clear, step by step instructions and visual images for reference. After completing a section, the authors provide a graphic of what your computer screen should look like if you followed directions correctly. My son, 9, and I worked through the first chapter over a 2 day period (about 3 hours total) and created our first game. He was thrilled! He immediately had ideas on how to "tweak" the game to make it even better. The great thing with this book and accompanying software is that you have the freedom to do so! The disc provides many images to use in game development or you can create your own. Each chapter adds new skills and details to make more interesting and complex games. However, even the first game is fun!
I would highly reccommend this book to anyone interested in creating your own video games. It is extremely user friendly and perfect for the beginner. My son is able to read through and understand it on his own, but it's more fun to work on it together. (Also, he was more apt to use the visuals to take him through the process but not read the supporting information along the way!) By the end of the first chapter he understood the process fairly well and was able to remember (more than me!) most of the steps as he started creating his own new game. The only improvement I could see is having a "quick reference" page outlining the major steps. With it's user-friendly format, however, it has been pretty easy to flip back through the chapter for reference.
Game Making Simplicity and Strength at its Best ! July 24, 2006
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
The Game Maker's Apprentice has to be one of my most eagerly awaited Computer Book purchases for quite sometime. The fabulous presentation and great use of terminology, really makes it a joy to read. Each chapter guides you through gently, in order to achieve more confidence into creating your own game or project. Each page is colourful and the beautiful illustrations brings things to life.
The book is accompanied by a great CD with all of the examples, resources and Game Maker itself, which is really easy to get into. Within no time at all, you'll get used to it's interface and workings. The tutorials start you off with the basics and progressively bring you to the wonderfully powerful Game Maker Language (GML). So not only can you create games using a Drag 'n' Drop interface, you can also use a powerful programming language as well. All of this is included in the unregistered version, but by paying an ever so reasonable registration fee, you unlock the full potential of Game Maker.
I used Game Maker to create my first ever PC game, Bugsy. The Game Maker Forum helped me out when I came across a problem or a bug I couldn't resolve. There a lots of games and projects created with this wonderful program. You will also find many other sites across the Internet that provide helpful advice and tutorials. Not forgetting the official Game Maker site run and hosted by Mark Overmars.
The books co-writer, Jacob Habgood, has made a marvellous job along side Mark, to make this a very interesting book indeed.
You might also be interested to know, that another book covering the Game Maker theme, Basic Game Design and Creation by Namu Swamy is available as well. This also brings you to the Game Maker stable to learn some very easy steps into the basics of game design without it appearing too boring or tiresome.
Your gaming ideas and projects start here !
Works Great in my Classes January 9, 2007
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
I use this book as a textbook on Game Maker, which is one of the modules in my Advanced Technology class for Middle School Students. It is absolutely perfect for this age group. The CD provides all the necessary support resources so we don't lose time and interest having to build sprites, objects, and rooms. Before I taught the whole class, I gave the book to one of the brighter students. He was able to build the Evil Clutches game working completely independent of the class, having only the book. This confirmed to me that the book can be used by beginners. The book is so well done that all I have to do is facilitate the class and provide help to students who have questions. It also provides the completed games that I show to those students who need to see the completed product to understand the concepts.
Best Of Its Kind November 27, 2006
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
There is no question this is the best book available to teach a beginner how to write a computer game. There is not even a close second place. Within minutes, a beginner can start working on writing a game, within hours he will have learned enough to write his own great looking game and within days he can create programs that have a polished look and feel.
Congratuations to the author. This book and the included program have hooked my kids and opened up the world of computer programming to them.
If I ran a school, a computer course would be offered using this as its textbook.
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