The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners

Foreword

Way back when Mario was still a mere twinkling in Miyamoto’s eye, I was the proud owner of a state-of-the-art Commodore 64 microcomputer. It came with a game development sys- tem called “The Quill,” which allowed anyone to create their own text-based adventure games. It may have been incredibly crude, but it suddenly put at my fingertips the thrill of entertain- ing my nearest and dearest by devising “interactive challenges” of my own. Unfortunately, I knew little about game design, and rather than easing my players into a new and alien world, I treated them as opponents that had to be defeated before they could reach the end. Their spir- its crushed, they left, never to return…

It took me years of playing a variety of good (and bad) ...