GameMaker Books
There are 3 GameMaker books out there:
| Book 1: The GameMaker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners
Book Review: This is a very good book for both beginners and advanced gamemakers. I bought this book about two years ago and read it from start to finish. I like the fact that it has a CD attached to it with all the code example shown in the book.
This book includes the following chapters:
Getting Started
- Welcome to GameMaker
- 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
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| Book 2: Getting Started with GameMaker
Book Review: This book is for beginners to GameMaker. It will show you how to create games step by step. It also explains how to join the GameMaker community and upload your games to yoyogames website.
This book includes the following chapters:
- Introducing GameMaker
- Getting Comforable with GameMaker IDE
- A Big Picture Overview of How Things Work
- Learning How To Create GameMaker Games
- Skybuster – A Breakout Game
- Tank Battle – A Two Player Competitive Game
- Alien Attack – A Cooperative Two Player Game
- Enhancing Your Games Though Programming
- GML Part 1
- GML Part 2
- Arachning Attack!
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| Book 3: Basic Game Design & Creation for Fun & Learning
Book Review: I also bought this book (I love books  ). The examples are a easy to understand and quick to put in play.It also has a good chapter on platform games, so if you are into that then it is a good buy. It also has a CD with all the code examples.
- Software installation
- Game Creation
- Using the Images and Sprite Editor
- Introduction to Object Technology
- Keyboard Control for Object
- Creating Projectiles
- Incorporating Multiple Levels
- Understanding Inheritance
- Using Gravity, PAth, and Variables
- Debugging Common Problems
- Finishing Touches
- Platformn Games
- Tips and Tricks
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Your site rocks
I have the Game Makers apprentice, I’ll have to get those other two!! Thanks.
I have searched and search for a place that has the GML code all spelled out in a book. I purhcased the The GameMaker’s Apprentice and was dissapointed at how basic it is. All that is explained there is quite easy to find on Yoyo’s web site and the tutorials located there. I would suggest this book, however we also need a book with more details of the GML code as well. There is no game I want to make that would only use the precoded controls. I gave up after 2 years of trying to learn how to make games with GM and not figuring out how to create random contents (objects) in a set number of other objects. This would be very basic to programmers yet it’s a headache for non-programers. I’m also baffled that there isn’t more random generating controls but then again, I’m no programmer and I suspect it’s hard to write those controls at it is.
The other 2 game making software I tried are very similiar so stick with GM if you already have it.
Best of luck to all of you.
D
I truly enjoyed your article. It is very educational and useful. I will back to check on upcoming articles
Darcy it is very basic creating randomly placed objects using the drag & drop controls (not GML). The official scrolling shooter tutorial on yoyogames (which should have been the 2nd game you learned to make) shows you how to randomly place planes at the top of the screen.
If that wasn’t detailed enough for you, you could have learned more in the official 3D effects tutorial where they randomly generate more and more trees that fly at you and you have to dodge. I’m sure anyone in the beginner forum would have told you how as well — there are many answered posts in the yoyo forums on this topic.
You looked down at the basics as seeming too easy and beneath you and never bothered learning them. Then you complained that everything else was too hard. You set yourself up to fail.
You should have spent those 2 years starting small and gradually making more and more sophisticated games. You would probably have learned so much about programming by working with the drag and drop controls that you would consider yourself a programmer by now. You would have also learned by now how to use the help file, which contains “the GML code all spelled out.”
Its actually quite easy generating objects randomly. Im working on a topdown shooter where the enemies are generated randomly, use random movement and even fire at random intervals.
Im a noob too, but contact me at our site if u need any help.
First, run through the examples on yoyogames.com. Then head over to the
forums – they’re better than any book.
Good luck
Link to a hardcopy book with gamemaker logic, controls explained?
A couple more Gamemaker Books for the list… (a) The Game Maker’s Companion by Jacob Habgood who also wrote The Game Maker’s Apprentice. Companion concentrates on platform games including recreating the old classic ZOOL. Jacob goes into a lot more depth here than in Apprentice, fine-tuning the way characters jump and move so that they look just right and so that the gameplay feels just right. There’s a lot of stuff here on game design too. Don’t be too hard on Apprentice either. It’s aimed at the beginner and covers a lot of material. I’d rather use a book than try to follow something in a forum while I’m trying to develop a game.
Book (b) is Game Maker (Basic Projects) by David Waller. It’s more basic the Game Maker’s Apprentice but does go over some other things like making your own animated sprites. It’s also primarily written to be used as a textbook by UK students studying computing at school.
I too would like a book which covers GML is more detail, but I think there is a free reference document on GML (nearly 300 pages) by Mark Overmars that can be downloaded from the Yoyo website, but it’s not a tutorial as such. Search for gmaker80.pdf (current version).