Lesson 1
○ Introduction to gamemaker + example gamemaker games
■ Showcasing the capabilities of the engine
■ Shows popular games made in the engine
■ Show some of my game jam games that I made using gamemaker, shows what sort of things you can do with gamemaker in a short time frame
○ Drag and drop programming introduction
○ Creating a player object in gamemaker
○ Actions (jumping, movement)
Lesson 2
○ Introduction to game scope + game mechanics
■ Game scope
- Explain the concept of keeping your game to a certain managable
size and focusing it around a set amount of game mechanics/story
size based on the amount of time they have to develop the game
■ Game Mechanics
- Functions that the game contains that make it playable
○ Creating an npc
○ Collectable objects
○ Enemies
Lesson 3
○ Basic introduction to the layers of game design
■ Layers of Game design
- Sensory (surface)
○ Base level – what the player senses while playing
- Information (skeleton)
○ Facts that the game presents in the sensory layer
- Interaction (structure)
○ Interactions the player can perform given sensory and info
layers
- Frame (scope)
○ Performable actions the player thinks are possible due to
prior experience
- Purpose (strategy)
○ UI
○ Sound effects
○ Objectives players set for themselves
○ Camera movement
Lesson 4
○ Creating an environment
○ Levels
○ Variables
Lesson 5
○ Basic platformer in gamemaker
Final Project (10 lessons) (this is more flexible and more based on the flow of the students project and the direction they want to take it)
- Lesson 1
○ Game design document
■ Elevator Pitch
■ Mood
■ Lore/Background
■ Storyline
■ Floorplans
■ Game Scope
■ Characters
○ Starting programming if the game design document gets finished
- Lesson 2 – 6
○ Starting the project
■ Beginning programming
- Lesson 7 – 8
○ UI
■ Menus
■ Health bar or other in game UI (if needed)
- Lesson 9 – 10
○ Aesthetics and Animations
■ Programming it
■ Getting free assets
■ Implementing created aspects
