INTRODUCTION TO GAME DESIGNING WITH GAME MAKER
UNIT LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Students will learn introductory vocabulary, concepts, and skills needed to apply the Game Maker game engine software for game builds and class tutorials.
DAILY LEARNING TARGETS, ALONG WITH ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS WILL BE POSTED ON THE COMMON BOARD.
VOCABULARY: Use this link to open the Glossary of Game Designing Terms. As you follow the tutorial for this unit, you will be required to record new words and their meanings on your Tutorial Guide. Knowing these new words and their meanings is necessary to grow your understanding of concepts and skills as a game design student.
CONCEPTS: Use this link to open Concepts Explained. This resource will be useful as a reference to deepen your understanding of concepts. As you learn more skills and concepts, you will be excited when you apply this understanding create awesome new games!
TUTORIAL GUIDE: The tutorial guide for this unit needs to be downloaded and completed as you work through the Introducing Game Maker tutorial. You first need to create a project folder on your desktop named Intro to Game Maker. Use this folder to store your tutorial and game build files. Click on this link Tutorial 1: Introducing Game Maker and download it to this folder. When it opens, it may not look correct. Click the Enable Editing button if it appears. Name it using your initials_introgmt Eg. fk_introgmt . Document your learning on the guide as you are prompted in the tutorial.
OTHER RESOURCES: Part of this unit will include a game build. You will need graphics to build the game. They will be found on your desktop in a folder called Tutorial1 Assets. When you are told to add things like cherries, bananas, sounds, and backgrounds, you will find them in this folder. NOTE: In the tutorial activity, this folder is referred to as Tutorial1.
REQUIREMENTS: (READ ALL REQUIREMENTS BEFORE PROCEEDING)
STEP 1: The first step is to familiarize yourself with the way the tutorials work. You will soon see that understanding how to use text features like boldfacing, underlines, italicized words, and graphic images will help follow the tutorials and know what to do. To learn how tutorials and tutorial guides work, open and thoroughly read the document called Completing Game Design Tutorials.
STEP 2: Spend a few minutes getting familiar with the Glossary of Game Designing and Concepts Explained by opening them from the links in the above section for vocabulary and concepts. At this you point, you don’t have to study the words or concepts too closely. Just make sure that you know how to find and open them so you can use them as needed during the tutorial process.
STEP 3: By now you should have downloaded the tutorial guide and saved it as instructed above in the section called Tutorial Guide. If you have not done this, go ahead and do it now. If you come to a prompt in the tutorial telling you to download it and save, you can ignore it as long downloading is already done.
STEP 4: Now you can start the tutorial. It has three stages, each with written work that should be done on the tutorial guide. The stages each have writing exercises, so keep an eye out for the prompts in the tutorial and use the correct section of the tutorial guide. Be sure to write in the definitions from the Glossary of Game Designing Terms (use the link in the vocabulary section above). Stage 3 includes a game build which requires the use of the Game Maker and Tutorial1 Assets folders. Read everything carefully, and follow the procedure as directed, including the written documentation on the tutorial guide. Launch the document Tutorial 1: Introducing Game Maker and begin. GOOD LUCK!
Click here if you would like an enlarged version of the “Your First Game” tutorial.
ASSESSMENT: This will be graded on a percentage and be weighted as a project.
- 50 percent for documentation of tutorial guide, based on completeness.
- 50 percent for completed working game build.