Chapter 1, Game Plan – Creating Basic Gameplay, shows you how to create the basic elements of a game.

Chapter 2, It's Under Control – Exploring Various Control Schemes, helps you figure out how to implement user controls for a variety of devices.

Chapter 3, Let's Move It – Advanced Movement and Layout, teaches you more advanced ways to move players and non-player characters alike.

Chapter 4, Let's Get Physical – Using GameMaker's Physics System, introduces you to the physics system and demonstrates how GameMaker handles gravity, friction, and so on. You will also learn how to implement this system to make more realistic games.

Chapter 5, Now Hear This! – Music and Sound Effects, helps you pick up the ins and outs of GameMaker's audio system.

Chapter 6, It's All GUI! – Creating Graphical User Interface and Menus, discusses the most important element of the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

Chapter 7, Saving the Day – Saving Game Data, discusses how GameMaker handles how to save data as well as its various uses.

Chapter 8, Light 'em up! – Enhancing Your Game with Lighting Techniques, helps you understand how GameMaker's surfaces can add lighting effects to your game.

Chapter 9, Particle Man, Particle Man – Adding Polish to Your Game with Visual Effects and Particles, shows you how GameMaker handles particles and how you can draw players in with simple effects.

Chapter 10, Hello, World – Creating New Dimensions of Play Through Networking, teaches you how to create multiplayer games with GameMaker's networking capabilities.

For this book, you will require the following software:

For a detailed platform-specific list of requirements, refer to http://www.yoyogames.com/studio/system-requirements.

This book is intended for GameMaker: Studio enthusiasts who are looking to add more substance and improve their content. If you know your way around the program and have some basic GML skills but want to take them further, then this book is for you.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create a sprite and name it spr_enemy_patrol."

A block of code is set as follows:

x1: -16
y1: -24
x2: 16
y2: -34
back color: black
bar color: green to red

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click Add Event, then Other, and select Animation End."

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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