Welcome to Lesson 1

In today's lesson we will learn how to:

  • Use the Game Maker Software
  • Create Sprites for our game
  • Add sounds to our game
  • Add objects to our game

First up let's look at what we're making save this file or go to the shared area and find the game.

Game Maker Software: Game Maker software is a free software package used to make games. If you search for yoyo games in Google you can download the software and make some games at home. You'll be the best game maker in this class if you do this! The software has a User Interface also known as a UI. A User Interface is the part of the software that we use to design our game. When we make stuff for our game the UI talks to the computer so that all the parts that we add into our game can be gathered together to make the final game. You can find out more about Game Maker by looking at the Game Make help file using the Help >> Contents menus in Game Maker.

What are sprites? Sprites are images that we can use in our game to characters that move or stay still. A sprite is only the image it doesn't have any control. To add control to our game we need to create objects.

What are objects? We create objects in a game so that we can control game characters. Objects are things that work in a game - they do stuff. A sprite is only an image of a game charcter but making an object gives a game characater a brain and we can use Game Maker to tell the object's brain what to do.

Click here to see the introduction presentation for this lesson * Please have a look at this during your lunch time club.