WPI Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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Interactive Media and Game Development

Frontiers
Summer 2006

Combine technology with art to create an interactive experience. Take on the role of programmer or artist, and work on a team to bring a game to life. Draw your environment, model your characters, record your dialogue, mix your sound effects, and tell your story. Break down your idea into simple rules, write your algorithm, use powerful scripting languages, and publish your game on the Web.

Index

Course Information

Professor: Mark Claypool
Email: claypool at cs.wpi.edu

Professor: Dean O'Donnell
Email: dodo at wpi.edu

Teaching Assistant: Eric Sutman
Email: esutman at wpi.edu

Slides

Any slides used in-class lectures will be available shortly after they are presented, depending upon how things go.

Introduction pdf ppt
Game Design pdf ppt
2D Tiles and Sprites pdf ppt gm6 chapter
Code Samples pdf ppt code
Project pdf ppt
Debugging pdf ppt

Samples

In this section are any samples discussed in class, links to other sites or any other demonstration-type class materials. Samples will be updated soon after the discussion in class begins.

So You Want to Be a Pixel Artist?, by Tsugumo. This is a series of tutorials that covers how to draw 2d tiles and sprites using examples. (It seems hard to actually get at on the net now-a-days, but so I download a compressed version I found.)

Game Maker:

Basic tutorial on programming. Includes samples at the bottom of some basic functionality that may be of use.

Simon Donkers has some useful samples, tutorials and articles that might be useful for some games.

In case this inspires you on what (or what not) to do, here are some Game Maker games produced by WPI students:

Possible sources for content you can use in your games:

  • Game Maker resource packs. Sources of art from Game Maker, itself. You might check out the "Tools" section for some free tools that might be useful.
  • Ari Feldman's SpriteLib. Here you can download the free SpriteLib GPL written by Ari Feldman with many sprites that have potential.
  • Molotov.Nu. A page with many different sprite resources, e.g. the famous tile sets by Hermann Hillmann.
  • Reiner's Tilesets. A site with a huge number of attractive tilesets and animated characters. And they are free.
  • Sprites Inc.. A site with a huge collection of Megaman sprites.
  • Midi World Many different midi files can be found here.
  • FlashKit sound effects. A site with a huge number of sound effects. Meant for Flash but also useful for Game Maker.
  • Video Game Music Archive. Contains midi files of lots of game music.
  • GameDev.net. Many sprites available (and other stuff if you look around).
  • Free Game Arts. Promotes the use and development of free and "open source" game resources.

    Hotlinks

    Working in groups. For some groups, it comes as naturally as a putting on socks before putting on your shoes. For others, it takes work. You might read (and re-read periodically) the below links (go over these as a group!):

    When working in a group, you really should consider pair programming, especially when using Game Maker. Read the article:

    Miscellaneous links on game development and design:

    A list (certainly, not comprehensive) of some of the tools available to help build games:

    Some game-related industry conventions:

    Some game-related research conferences:

    [Return to the WPI Homepage] [Return to Mark Claypool's Homepage]

    Mark Claypool (claypool at cs.wpi.edu)