A couple of brief updates regarding Game Maker books that are currently being written.
Jacob Habgood’s Game Maker’s Companion [Amazon: $26.39 US|£23.62 UK], follow up to his successful Game Maker’s Apprentice book co-authored with Mark Overmars, is now scheduled to be released next month. Release was originally planed for April 2010 but that deadline has obviously been and gone with Habgood’s new position as a senior game design lecturer getting in the way. Martin Rijks, better known as former Game Maker Community administrator Smarty, is also involved in the project and we can expect to see some more stunning artwork from Kevin Crossley.
The contents of the book are best described by Jacob himself:
“The book itself focuses on the development of platform games. There are only three example games this time, but their scope is much larger than in the first book and it generally takes several chapters to make each one. One of these games features a character called Zool, which might ring some bells with older readers. Below is some footage of the game actually running in Game Maker: Interestingly this entire version of Zool is created using the Lite version of Game Maker 8 using 95% drag and drop programming. Nonetheless the last (and biggest) example game in the book is made entirely with GML, and brings in storytelling elements (more on that at a later date – as its still being finished off now).”
-Jacob Habgood
The other Game Maker book news I have to report is not as positive.
Birmingham based Packt Publishing were planning to publish a Game Maker cookbook authored by a contributor at the YoYo Games forum. Some of you may know that I have been involved in this project for around two and a half months as a technical reviewer. The book would have featured several ‘recipes’ explaining how to implement particular effects and features into Game Maker games.
Sadly I have now been told that the author is busy with other commitments and the project has been cancelled. I am disappointed both because I quite enjoyed working on the project and also because it promised to be different to the typical beginners guide style introduction. If anyone else is looking to publish a book about game development with Game Maker and is looking for a technical reviewer…
Pre-order The Game Makers Companion on Amazon.com
Pre-order The Game Makers Companion on Amazon.co.uk
It seems a shame for that much work to go to waste. Maybe they could polish it a little and sell it as a PDF.
As for the Game Maker’s Companion definitely a pre-order for me – I’m planning a platforming game at the moment, and the previous book was excellent.
Sondar.
Not sure a PDF release is realistic. I have only seen drafts of 4 of the chapters and I can’t find the figure off-hand but believe there were planned to be something in the region of 10-15. It is a shame though – but many Game Maker related things (and others!) end prematurely due to lack of commitment (sounds like I am bitter at a relationship. No chance)!.