Introducción al desarrollo de juegos: introducción a Gamemaker

Students will learn to use GameMaker, a real game engine used by professionals in the industry! They will be introduced to event-based programming with the drag and drop features of GameMaker. Students will learn many important game development and programming skills, including variables, coordinates, conditionals, and more. These skills will be transferable to other popular programming languages, including Java and C++. Using these new skills, students will create a fully functioning side-scrolling action game that they can take home and let their friends and family play.

Students are required to have basic computer skills, including switching between windows and saving or downloading files. It’s recommended you have some familiarity with programming, such as with our PDL Coding classes. However, no experience is actually necessary! We will introduce complete beginners to coding and GameMaker and give thorough instructions.

In addition to the basics of programming, students in this course will:
  - Use technology to accomplish goals
  - Learn to work in group settings
  - Accomplish goals using programming concepts
  - Problem-solve when bugs arise and learn to handle challenges graciously
  - Practice their math and logic skills
  - Develop an engineering mindset

Learning Goals

Day 1. Introduction and creating the gamespace
Day 2. Events, variables, and character movement
Day 3. Game manager and randomness
Day 4. Conditionals and collision
Day 5. Polishing and extracting your game!

The teacher will wait up to 15 minutes for students to arrive. If students do not show up within that time and haven’t provided advance notice, the session will not be rescheduled.