Early this summer, I downloaded Game Maker and gave it a go. I had first seen the app several years back, but had dismissed it after checking out many of the games created with it online (though there are a few excellent exceptions!).

Reevaluating Game Maker in light of my recent shift from game technology to game development (see my posts on Flash, et al), what I saw was an excellent, excellent tool. A hugely underapprecaited tool, to say the least.

Last week, I received my copy of the Game Maker’s Apprentice. I haven’t had much time to read it, but over the week I’ve made it through the first few chapters and have nothing but compliments for the authors. The writing is incredibly clear and the instrunction is as smooth as silk to follow. Yeah, of course, they’re making incredibly trivial games. To start with! By the end of the book, the reader will easily have the chops to make something on par with just about anything you’d find in a casual game today, or on the Nintendo or Super Nintendo a decade ago.

Well, I was spurred today to write this because I just read an excellent article by one of the authors of the book on Gamasutra. He discusses Game Maker in the context of education. What struck me was where he talks about game players often are able to comprehend game mechanics and share opinions on them, but until they’ve actually tried making games they are very unsuccessful at suggesting how to improve them (even though they think they have good ideas on how to improve them).

My challenge to myself and to my readers (yes, both of you!): download Game Maker (free) and make a game this weekend. Grab some graphics from an old NES or SNES title, or grab some from Danc, or make your own. Just make something. Clone something. Then tweak it slightly. I guarantee you’ll find the results incredibly satisfying. Kinda like going for a walk on a pleasant day: it clears the cobwebs from the mind.

BTW, I’m very curious to try out Torque Game Builder and see how it compares. Considering the history of Game Maker relative to TGB, I’m not getting my hopes up, but I’m definitely curious…

[Update: here's an IGDA discussion forum thread regarding this article.]

It looks like I’ll be teaching next year at the Austin Community College. As part of their continuing education program they’ve added a Game Development certification. They’re overseen by some pretty respectable industry veterans, including former Ion Storm figurehead Warren Spector and his man-behind-the-man design guru Harvey Smith. I’m flattered to be working in the same program with these gentlemen.

I’ll be teaching an 8-week course on Game Tools Programming. Should be fairly interesting considering my experience with RenderWare, as well as the opposite extreme of my research for no-budget game development. If anyone has any suggestions for a textbook, please pass them along.

Speaking of no-budget game development: rest assured I still plan to revamp this site and feed it with more information. I hope this site can be a learning hub for both the course and several other projects I’m currently involved in (to be discussed at a later date!).