What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introduction to GameMaker: Studio, introduces you to the GameMaker interface and the basic concepts related to getting started with GameMaker.

Chapter 2, Your First Game – Escape the Dungeon, gets you oriented with GameMaker and uses the drag and drop approach to create your first game, a maze/adventure game.

Chapter 3, Introducing the GameMaker Language, introduces the GameMaker Language conceptually and then goes through a step-by-step recreation of the Escape the Dungeon game written entirely with code.

Chapter 4, Fun with Infinity and Gravity – An Endless Platformer, guides you through the creation of an endless platform game. Through the process, you will work with gravity, speed, random spawning, and further explore collision events.

Chapter 5, Saving and Loading Data, expands the functionality of your game by programming GameMaker to save and load data. The chapter will cover saving and loading high score data as well as a custom player keyboard binding configuration.

Chapter 6, A Multiplayer Sidescrolling Platformer, expands upon the platform game by adding multiplayer, animation, and Xbox Controller support. You will learn about client/server networking to drastically expand upon the possibilities of what can be accomplished with GameMaker.

Chapter 7, Programming a Scrolling Shooter, covers scrolling shooters, such as Xevious, which represent a classic genre in gaming. This chapter will guide you through the process of coding your own shooter, including a scrolling background and random obstacles to avoid and enemies to shoot down!

Chapter 8, Introducing the GameMaker: Studio Physics Engine, introduces the built-in GameMaker physics engine, which allows you to create physics-based games. In this chapter, you will program two small game environments based on the physics engine.

Chapter 9, Wrapping Up, addresses error checking and debugging. You will learn about the built-in GameMaker debugging features and strategies to troubleshoot your code and fix errors.