The Game Maker's Companion So here we are, about to embark on another journey into the world of game development. You may have joined us last time in The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Apress, 2006), or perhaps you taught yourself the basics of Game Maker under your own steam. Either way, we invite you to dust off your trusty keyboard and loosen up your mouse-arm as you join us in The Game Maker’s Companion. The path ahead is an exciting one and we have a host of new challenges in store to enhance your skills as a game developer. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to undertake such a journey without making suitable preparations first. Each of you will bring your own unique skills to the journey ahead, but you won’t get very far without some level of background knowledge. Resources Video games are made up of different kinds of digital resources such as animations, sounds, music, and backgrounds. Figure 1–1. Instances and Objects Figure 1–2. Variables Local Instance Variables Figure 1–3.
www.steveswink.com Michael Jungbluth's Blog - Adding Weight to Your Game Design Part 1: Squash & Stretch The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Part 1 - Squash and Stretch : Part 2 - Anticipation : Part 3 - Staging Part 4 - Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose : Part 5 - Follow Through & Overlapping Action Part 6 - Slow In, Slow Out : Part 7 - Arcs : Part 8 - Secondary Action : Part 9 - Timing Part 10 - Exaggeration : Part 11 - Solid Drawing : Part 12 - Appeal Intro Weight is a physical and emotional sensation that people feel everyday. In fact, it needs to be, as many of these principles are sacrificed by the animator for the good of playability. Each part will lay out the 12 principles of animation, and how they are not only used in animation but how they directly relate to game design. It is how both can add an extra sense of weight and purpose to the game and the characters within it. Squash and Stretch Applied to Animation
Chris Hecker's Website The Declaration of Game Designer Independence On a cool, clear Austin weekend, a group of experienced game designers gathered for their yearly retreat. At night they swapped stories of an industry in turmoil. As social games and mobile games rewrite the landscape, power struggles between business and design dominate and designers find themselves being sidelined or abused. So during the day, we asked ourselves some hard questions. To guide game designers and the profession forward we wrote down a Declaration of Game Designer Independence. The following is a code for how great, visionary designers should behave. 1. You can get rid of visuals, music, business or technology and we will still make great games. 2. We are prime movers, not replaceable cogs. 3. Dilettantes need not apply. 4. We fluently speak the languages of game development and business:We speak the language of creative. 5. We tirelessly promote our vision both internally and to the public. 6. We then reinvent them to be better. 7. Design advances through experimentation. 8.
Make Games Note: This tutorial was created in 2007 for my personal website. Some small tweaks have been made since then, but nothing too significant. In this 10-step tutorial, I’ll teach you how to create a “sprite”, which is a stand-alone two-dimensional character or object. The term comes from video games, of course. Creating pixel art is a skill I picked up because I needed graphics for my games. This pixel tutorial was created many years ago to teach people the basic concepts behind pixel art, but I’ve streamlined it a lot since its first incarnation. Keep reading
Lost Garden Game Developing, Programming, Computers, and other Technologies Ribbon Hero turns learning Office into a game This post has two goals. One, I want to share with you something amazing; a thing that according to most views of the tech universe should not exist. Two, I want to talk about a coming revolution in application design. The amazing thingImagine Microsoft Office turned into a video game. One where learning a productivity app is a delight. It sounds a bit unlikely doesn’t it? Well, I’m happy to announce the availability of Ribbon Hero, a new download from Microsoft that turns using Office into a game. Go download it now. The coming revolutionRibbon Hero, in part, was born from a speech I gave back in October 2007 on applying the design lessons of Super Mario Bros. to application design. The foundations of user experience design are incompleteGames offer a very different value proposition than what you get from traditional usability design. This user model is well supported by empirical data. Yet, as applications grow, the “Don’t make me think” philosophy stumbles. Users grow. take careDanc.
Games from Within | Living the indie life Significant Bits Features - Lifting The Designer's Curse [Relic Entertainment studio design director Alexandre Mandryka outlines a framework for looking at how game design is handled, which he argues will both allow the discipline to grow in value and expertise while ensuring it serves the needs of projects.] Over my 10 years in the video game industry as a designer, including three years as studio design director for Ubisoft Montreal, I've had the opportunity to collaborate on numerous projects from different companies and cultures. While visuals and programming are better controlled, difficulty in anticipating, analyzing, and generally understanding the added value resulting from game design persists. While it is essential to game creation, this discipline is not clearly established and expertise is very rarely recognized. This puts designers under so much pressure and gives them so little opportunity for reward and growth that they are trapped in a vicious circle of being at the same time paramount and overlooked.