| When | Thursday 4:30-5:30 |
| Teacher Name | PeterSchmidtNielsen |
| Target Age Range | 12 - 18 |
| General Grade Level | Lower High School, Upper High School, College |
| Ability Level | Advanced Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced |
| Skill Requirements/Prerequisites | Basic or even no understanding of programming, and not necessarily even game programming. A working windows computer. |
| Book Title | |
| ISBN | |
| Family Provided Materials | Windows laptops for class. |
| Instructor Provided Materials | |
| Study Group Style | Seminar |
| Description | There are a lot of false dichotomies in programming, such as the idea that a programming language is either powerful, or easy to use. This is to some extent true. But every so often you get a tool that is both, and Gamemaker is just such a tool. Gamemaker is a semi-free GUI game design tool that has a very powerful "drag-and-drop" programming interface, and a yet more powerful language built in. We will be going over the basics of game design and game programming with Gamemaker. By the end, each student will have several Gamemaker games he/she can compile into Windows executables, and the skills to make many more. Near the end I hope to cover some of the hidden workings of Gamemaker and other game programming languages , including things like double buffered graphics. Note: Gamemaker is not quite free. The basic or "Lite" version is free, but the full version is $20. I am so used to having the full version, that if a student has the "Lite" version, I may forget what he/she can't do with it, and entire class sessions that use features not in the "Lite" version may be irrelevant. Therefore, all students are required to get full version. |