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The Game Maker's Companion (Technology in Action) 1st ed. Edition

by Jacob Habgood (Author), Nana Nielsen (Author), Martin Rijks (Author)

4.2 65 ratings

Part of: Technology in Action (34 books)

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The Game Maker's Companion is the long-awaited sequel to The Game Maker's Apprentice. This book picks up where the last book left off, advancing your game development journey with some seriously impressive gaming projects. This time you'll learn how to make professional-quality platform games with solid collision detection and slick control mechanisms and you'll get acquainted with a long-lost icon of platform gaming history on the way.

You'll go on to discover techniques to add depth and believability to the characters and stories in your games, including The Monomyth, cut scene storyboarding, and character archetypes. This culminates in the creation of an original atmospheric platform-adventure which will take your GML programming skills to new heights. There's even a handy reference section at the back of the book which will be invaluable for adding common features to your own games.

With contributions from four games industry professionals and a highly respected member of the Game Maker community, The Game Maker's Companion is another labor of love that will give you even more hours of enjoyment than the original. If you already own Game Maker, then you really must own this book as well.

About the Author

Jacob's career in the games industry spans fourteen years, but he has been programming games as an amateur and professional now for a quarter of a century. During this time he has worked on over a dozen published games for all the major console platforms, including as the lead programmer of the cult British game, Hogs of War. He has programmed, designed and project-managed titles for publishers like Gremlin, Infogrames, Atari, Disney and Konami and he truly knows the meaning of the word "crunch".
Somehow he also found time to study a Ph.D. in the psychology of learning and has a passion for most things that connect video games and learning (including a whole lot of research involving zombies: zombiedivision.co.uk). This passion also extends to teaching game development, which he practices in his position as Senior Lecturer in Game Development at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK.

ISBN-10

1430228261
ISBN-13

978-1430228264
Edition

1st ed.
Publisher

Apress
Publication date

October 19, 2010
Part of series

Technology in Action
Language

English
Dimensions

7 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
Print length

440 pages
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Apress; 1st ed. edition (October 19, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1430228261
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1430228264
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.51 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,538,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #366 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #1,077 in Game Programming
- #1,993 in Software Development (Books)

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4.2 65 ratings

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Nana Nielsen
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Nana Nielsen grew up in Denmark under the watchful eyes of two computer programmers. Being fed J.R.R. Tolkien and text adventures on the Commodore 64 from a very early age, she developed a keen interest in both stories and games, and how the two intermingle. Since then she has earned a degree in Interactive Multimedia and worked in the games industry for more than a decade and helped complete a dozen titles in different genres, including the platformer Crash Bandicoot: Twinsanity, the RPG Sudeki, the adventure series Broken Sword, and the popular series of Doctor Who -- The Adventure Games.
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Jacob Habgood
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Jacob is a Senior Lecturer in Game Development at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, and has spent all of his professional and academic life developing videogames. He started writing games on the ZX Spectrum at the age of 10 and had his first shareware game published on the Commodore Amiga at the age of 18. He took a degree in Computer Science and then went to work for the classic British game developer/publisher Gremlin Interactive at the beginning of the PlayStation era. He worked for Gremlin and then Infogrames/Atari for seven years leading programming teams on titles like "Hogs of War" and "MicroMachines" for the PlayStation, Xbox and GameCube. Then in 2003 he was offered a scholarship to undertake research in the field of games and learning at The Learning Sciences Research Institute (Nottingham, UK). Here, he spent three years working with children making and playing educational videogames, before returning to the games industry to work for Sumo-Digital in 2006. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 2007 for his thesis entitled "The Effective Integration of Digital Games and Learning Content". He worked at Sumo for three years as their Head of Serious Games before leaving to take up his current position at Sheffield Hallam.
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Tom Dison

A good book for those who want to take the next step

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2010

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Game Maker 8 makes it easy to create simple games. The problem is when you want to go deeper, perhaps even write some real code! This is where many young developers lose interest. This book shows you how to take the next step. However, it's not just about learning new features, or even just learning to write GML scripts. This book aims to teach you how to start thinking like a real developer - how to structure, organize and plan your game. The budding developer is introduced to properly naming variables, using constants (no magic numbers!), and especially how to create an object hierarchy to represent the various states of the actors in your game. At times it can be slow going, but with persistence and patience, the person who completes this book will learn more than just Game Maker, but also take a big step towards being a true developer, being able to structure code and resources in way that suits larger endeavors. There were a few mistakes here and there in the book, but takes these as challenges, not obstacles. As a professional developer (Java, C++, .NET, SQL), I can heartily affirm the goal of this book. It can make the difference between a hacker who scrabbles together something, and a long-term developer who is capable of working with others on larger projects.

Oh, and the samples projects are fun! They give immediate feedback to your learning that is both pleasing to the eye and fun. One word of caution, though. You should either read the first book in the series ( The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Book & CD) ), or have a significant experience with creating games in Game Maker. As an alternative to Game Maker experience, it would also suffice to have significant experience in other programming tools. I would at the minimum recommend going through the various tutorials available with Game Maker before attempting this book.

Additionally, I would also recommend that you obtain a Pro license to Game Maker 8 if you are going to work through this book. There is a version of Game Maker 8 on the included CD, and the activation in done through the program itself. It is very inexpensive, and well worth the cost.

One caveat: I first obtained this book online via O'Relly's Safari online books. This book is of no practical use without the examples on the CD. I was not able to find a site to download the examples, even at the publisher's site. In my case, I bought a copy of the book for my son, so I copied the examples off of the CD. Perhaps there is a way to get the examples if you buy a digital copy, but I would check this out first. I would highly recommend the author/publisher provide a way for digital users, such as Safari users, to download the examples. I have filed a "bug" report about this at the Apress site.

6 people found this helpful

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Jet Taylor

Get Game Maker's Apprentice before this

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

I really enjoy this book and find that it completes the learning experience for Game Maker programming. However, this should be the third book that you get, not the first. Getting Started with Game Maker is a better introduction to the program and provides you with a solid foundation on which to build. The next book you should get is The Game Maker's Apprentice. It begins with programming simpler games and providing you with excellent examples of different types of games that you can make. After this, you can truly benefit from The Game Maker's Companion. These games are more complicated and introduce concepts that are not in the other books. For me this is the logical progression and can truly turn you into an expert in Game Maker.

4 people found this helpful

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Marijan Jurcic

In depth and thorough

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

I only had the book for a few weeks and just finished the first game, but from that experience and reading a little further on, it is obvious that the book is well organized and covers a lot of topics and techniques. Although the first game is pretty simple, it covers very pertinent topics that can ruin a game, if you are not aware of the pitfalls, like object missing each other with collision detection, or an the proper way to get an object to walk on a surface. The major part of the book is a role playing game, and while I have not gotten to it yet, it seems it moves away from the drag-and-drop method of coding, to directly programming with GML (GameMaker Language), which is exactly what I was looking for. I am preparing to use the game engine in my high school computer classes.

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Oscar

Good contents but it is not easy to download the software.

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

Contents are good. Previous version came with CD for programming software. Now book shows the link to install it. It does not work on my son's PC. It went very strange and CPU heated up significantly. I immediately uninstall the software.

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Roland R. Kratzner

Praise to the GameMaker game Maker team!!!

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

It more than met my expectations. It clarified many of my questions. I can't say enough praise for the people at GameMaker. They have done a great service for nonGeeks not proficient in computer coding and opened the world of game making to us also. We are now only limited by our imagination.If we can imagine it, we can make it. As a retired schoolteacher of Reading recovering from a stroke, I am currently developing games for use in helping students with reading problems to improve their reading skills. , .Game Maker had provided me with hours of fun and enjoyment and a way to feel of some potential value to others.The series of Game Maker books were invaluable in meeting that goal..

3 people found this helpful

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driskell

Great book!

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2010

Verified Purchase

This book is all that I wanted, after owning the previous book (Apprentice). It continues with the more advanced features of Game Maker precisely where the other book left off. There is very little rehashing of the material from the previous book and it moves (inevitably) into much more detailed use of GML game maker language. This was expected. It is noticeably thicker than the previous (almost but not quite twice as thick) and contains a reference section at the back of the book in an almost toolbox-like utility for incorporation into your own games. If you bought the first one (and liked it all), don't think, just buy the second. You wont regret it.

15 people found this helpful

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S. Viaene

Much needed extension

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2012

Verified Purchase

I am already learning so much beyond the previous book. My one disappointment is that the focus is on the Pro Version of the software, and I am using the Lite version, so needing to do some research to make even the first game work. There is an attempt to explain both Pro and Lite, but parts of the text seem to be missing so the explanations are incomplete. I am relying on things I learned either on my own or from outside sources regarding earlier versions of GM.

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Meatloaf

Programming made easy, and professionally.

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2011

Verified Purchase

If you are wanting to learn to program without punching in complicated formulas this is a must read. The game maker's apprentice, will teach you the basics, but the game maker's companion will teach you to make even more professional games. Worth every cent. Just make sure your copy has a disc. Cause the disc allows you to make games using a graphical user interface.

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Johnny

Learning game design!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

I learned so much about many diffrent things, and it was really cool when I discovered about new things I have never heard about. Not just about game design but also about other games they mention in the book. The book covers diffrent tricks on how to do more advanced programming, and I have really used this book when I make my own games. I have used Game Maker for a really long time but it isn't until now that I really wanted to do something with my games, thanks to this book I have been inspired to do great things with Game Maker. You can play my games at jonnil.weebly.com

-Jonathan Nilsson

Usuario

Imprescindible segunda parte

Reviewed in Spain on June 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

El contenido de este libro, aunque centrado exclusivamente en la creación de juegos tipo "plataforma", resulta de gran utilidad para alcanzar un entendimiento completo del desarrollo de juegos en general y de Game Maker en particular. A través de tres ejemplos (el primero meramente introductorio) exhaustivos se nos muestran técnicas y procesos para la realización de juegos de nivel profesional.

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doum95

Secrets des jeux de plates-formes avec Game Maker

Reviewed in France on December 20, 2010

Verified Purchase

Ce livre en anglais est la suite de The game maker's apprentice.
Il faut connaître les bases de GM 8 (il y a un tuto en français sur le site du zero) ou avoir une expérience de ce genre de logiciels (ex The Game Factory).
3 projets de jeux de plates-formes en 2D : un petit jeu, un jeu identique a Zool et un jeu plus stylisé. Les 2 premiers sont faisables avec la version lite de GM 8 et sans code GML. Le 3eme nécessite de coder en GML
On vous montre comment faire un niveau, ensuite à vous de faire les suivants.
Plein d'astuces pour faire un bon jeu (design, histoire et programme).
Les exemples ne sont pas des jeux pouet pouet, cf Zool sur Amiga.
Livre détaillé et bien expliqué par des pros.
CD ROM avec sources, GM 8 lite.
Excellent. 10/10

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craig

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2016

Verified Purchase

basic but good for complete beginners

Robert Diltz

Very good tutorials and easily understood writing style.

Reviewed in Canada on April 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

Well written. Maybe a little advanced for the young programmer.

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