Gamemaker: Make Exciting Computer Games Your Friends Will Want to Play

Learn how to design, program, edit, and create your own computer games, even if you have no knowledge of games design, graphics, or of creating sound effects. Then learn how to upload it to an online games store for it to be played by gamers worldwide.

This course is led by a programmer and teacher who has decades of experience in teaching games design, and of delivering programming, computing, and technical skills to young learners. I am a teacher of computer science in the UK and a teacher trainer for computer science teachers. I am not only a teacher, I have been the owner of my own very successful software company since 1985.

In this course you will learn the basics of creating players, enemies, levels, traps, secret doors and adding sound. Then we move on to adding your own features and gameplay.  This course will lead you from being an absolute beginner, to being a games designer able to make games your family and friends will want to play.

I choose the first game we write, I show each step of the process, and then wait for you to follow it in your game before I move on. If anything doesn't work in your game, and you can't fix it, then I can take a look and find the fault for you should need me to. Nobody gets left behind on this course and all students gain the confidence to add to or improve their game between sessions.

No graphics or drawing ability is needed. I supply the graphics needed for the course, and show you how to easily create your own using the built in graphics editor.  You will also learn where to go to online to get free graphics and sounds that make your games look, and sound, more professional. I even show you online programs to automatically create your own custom sound effects.

We start with simple drag and drop actions, its so easy anyone can do it. Later on you will gradually learn to write some code but its no more that a few lines where needed, and anything complicated is kept to a minimum. The main focus of this course is on learning games design, and of the games design environment. 

You will need a copy of Gamemaker Studio (which can be downloaded free of charge), the only other thing you need is a desire to create games.

Session Breakdown:
The sessions are based on the following, with some additional features added from suggestions made by individual students. This makes the class more dynamic and interactive (rather than just one sided tuition where you have to follow exactly what I do with no deviation).

Session 1: Introduction to the Gamemaker Interface and games design programming. Programming character movement. Editing and using graphics. Playing and testing your game. Character Collisions.

Session 2: Collecting items. Enhanced movement. Adding sound, special effects, and new features to your game. 

Session 3: Programming Enemies, and adding extra levels to your game. Moving between levels, testing games. 

Session 4: Adding extra features (some suggested by students) such as cheats, hidden doors, extra firing effects. Improving enemy logic. 

Session 5: Polishing your game, adding custom features , Publishing and selling your game. Where to go from here. Using your skills to move on to professional programming languages. Using exciting new features in the free version of Gamemaker to allow your game to get out to a wide audience at no cost.

Please remember, the above is only a subset of the skills and features we cover, because although I have a specific game which takes the five sessions to complete, I take in to account students ideas and add many of those features as we go along, I answer questions and show how students ideas can be easily be implemented in their games.