Now that you have completed this book, you have a strong foundation upon which to continue developing your game development and programming knowledge and skills. Don’t think of this book as the end of your lessons but as the beginning. To join the ranks of advanced game developers, you need to continue learning, experimenting, and creating games. There is plenty more to learn and experience—much more than could ever be covered in a single book.
As you learn more and begin to tackle larger and more challenging projects, you will find that it helps to assemble a collection of source code and example projects that you can use as the basis for creating new games, borrowing source code, and modeling new processes on existing ones, so that you don’t spent a lot of time re-inventing the wheel. If you have been faithfully following along and creating your own copy of every game project presented in this book, then you already have the beginnings of such a collection. I strongly encourage you to continue to add to this collection. Over time, you will come to view it as an indispensible part of your personal developer’s toolbox.
The best way to use this book to learn how to develop computer games with Game Maker is to set aside the time required to re-create from scratch each of the sample games that have been presented in this book.
Table A.1. Source Code Available on the Companion Website
Chapter | Overview |
|---|---|
Bouncing Ball—A program that demonstrates how to bounce a ball around a room. | |
Super Pong—A game based on the original Atari Pong game. | |
Skybuster—A game inspired by Atari’s Breakout game. | |
Tank Battle—A two-player game in which players fight it out using tanks. | |
Alien Attack—A two-player cooperative game in which players defend the world from alien attack. | |
Arachnid Attack!—A game inspired by Space Invaders. |
Table A.1. provides a brief summary of all the game projects that you will find on the companion website.
You will also find additional resources in Appendix B, “What’s Next?”. And Appendix C is a glossary of terms used throughout the book and in Game Maker programming.