Thursday, June 1, 2017

Book published! Game Development with Construct 2

I've published another book: Game Development with Construct 2.


The book is currently available at:
https://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Construct-Design-Realization/dp/1484227832/
and
http://www.apress.com/us/book/9781484227831
(The Apress site contains downloadable graphics used to create the games.)

What is this book about? From the introduction:

In this book, you’ll learn how to create video games using the Construct 2 game engine, an ideal program for aspiring game developers who have no prior experience, as well as experienced game developers looking for a tool to rapidly create prototypes of games. The games you will create in this book are inspired by classic arcade games such as Asteroids, Frogger, Breakout, and PacMan, general genres such as car racing or tower defense games, and console games such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

Construct 2 is both user-friendly and powerful. The software has been around for more than five years, has been downloaded more than 3.5 million times, and has an active user community and responsive development team. Games created with Construct 2 can be exported to run on a variety of platforms and operating systems, such as web browsers (HTML5), Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. A free version of Construct 2 is available for download, and is sufficient for all the game projects contained in this book.

Much like the software itself, this book does not assume that you have any prior programming or game development experience. Over the course of the book, you will be guided in creating a series of 12 different video games of increasing complexity that will teach you both the features of the Construct 2 game engine, as well as game development topics and logical programming concepts that can serve you well for software development in general.


Finally, here are some screenshots from the games you can learn to create in this book:


Starfish Collector
(an item-collecting game)
Space Rocks
(inspired by Asteroids)
Cleanup Challenge
(inspired by Frogger)

Plane Dodger
(inspired by Flappy Bird)

Racecar 500
(a top-down racing game)

Rectangle Destroyer
(inspired by Breakout and Arkanoid)

Spell Shooter
(a top-down targeting game)

Airplane Assault
(inspired by the arcade game 1942)

Tower Defenders
(a tower defense style game)

Maze Runman
(inspired by PacMan)

Jumping Jack
(inspired by Super Mario Bros.)

Treasure Quest
(inspired by the Legend of Zelda)