Game Programming for Teens

by Maneesh Sethi

Overview

If you’re interested in jumping into the exciting world of game programming, then you’ve found the perfect book! Game Programming for Teens doesn’t expect you to have any experience with programming. You’ll learn everything you need to know along the way. You’ll use Blitz Basic, an easy-to-learn programming language that the author will teach you. As you work your way through the book, you’ll learn everything you need to know to create a complete game. Graphics, animation, sound and music, and artificial intelligence are all covered. By the end of the book, you will have created your very first computer game! Game programming doesn’t have to be difficult. With a copy of this book and your own curiosity, you’re off to the perfect start.

Features
• This will be the first widely available game programming books for kids
• Easy and fun to read
• Allows the reader to grow on his own, shows step-by-step process of creating a game
• Uses BASIC language--very simple and easy to read


About the Author
Maneesh Sethi is a high school student in California. He has worked with Blitz Basic for the past two years. Maneesh is also the founder of Standard Design, a website design company, and team leader of Cold Vector Games, a game programming team.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598637168
Publisher:	Cengage Learning
Publication date:	01/08/2008
Series:	For Teens Series
Sold by:	CENGAGE LEARNING
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Maneesh Sethi is a student at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. As a high-school student, Sethi founded Standard Design, a web-site design company. He is the author of Game Programming For Teens, first and second editions, and Web Design For Teens. Sethi lectures on game programming topics at conferences across the country and has been a guest on G4TechTV. Visit his web site at www.maneeshsethi.com.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Part One
The Basics of BASIC
Chapter 1 Getting Started
Chapter 2 Getting to Know BASIC
Chapter 3 Loops, Functions, Arrays, and Types
Chapter 4 The Style Factor

Part Two
Getting Graphical
Chapter 5 Beginning Graphics
Chapter 6 Page Flipping and Pixel Plotting
Chapter 7 Basic Image Programming
Chapter 8 Animation
Chapter 9 Collision Detection

Part Three
Completing the Puzzle
Chapter 10 Handling Input
Chapter 11 Sounds and Music
Chapter 12 Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 13 The Final Frontier: Invaderz!!!

Part Four
Appendixes
Appendix A Scan Code Reference
Appendix B Useful Links
Appendix C What's on the CD

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
Forgive us for saying so, but Game Programming for Teens just might be misnamed. Sure, thousands of 13-19-year-olds would love this easy, painless introduction to game programming. (But they’re not the only people who would.)

Sure, thousands of teenagers would love to build real, playable games as they’re learning their first programming language. (But the urge for fun doesn’t disappear when you turn 20. Honest.) We’ll bet plenty of adolescents would love to take a first step towards a career in the game industry. (We suspect lots of other folks would, too.)

Young people (along with their elders) love a great discovery. Like Blitz Basic, a version of the world’s easiest programming language that’s fully optimized for game development, and is used throughout this book.

Oh, and most teenagers prefer to avoid unnecessary complexity and useless jargon. They prefer practice to theory. They like lots of examples and diagrams. (They’re sort of like grown-ups that way.)

You get the point. Game Programming for Teens is a great book for teens -- and other humans.

Maneesh Sethi introduces nearly every facet of game programming -- no experience necessary. That includes graphics, animation, audio, music, even AI. This is only possible because he’s using Blitz Basic, not a complex language like C++, or an environment that requires separate mastery of complicated DirectX or OpenGL graphics programming. (The book comes with the Blitz Basic 2D demo CD-ROM, which lets you do just about everything except compile your program for standalone distribution.)

Sethi begins with the fundamentals of programming -- techniques you’ll need no matter whatever applications you someday want to build. You’ll get comfortable with an Integrated Development Environment, then load a simple prebuilt sample game, and take a high level look at the code that drives it. Here’s your first exposure to crucial ideas like initialization, variables, functions, loops, and frames.

You’ll learn how to retrieve user input; and how to use conditionals to write programs that make decisions. By now, you’ve learned all you need to write your first “game” -- a simple guessing game. Once you’ve read Sethi’s detailed introduction to loops, functions, arrays and types in Chapter 3, you’re ready to write something more meaningful (though you do get a little extra help with the tough parts).

After a quick chapter on programming style, Sethi turns to graphics. You’ll start with simple tasks like controlling height, width, and color depth; choosing colors; changing background colors; loading images; and drawing them on screen. Sethi next introduces simple animation via “page flipping,” which seamlessly ties together multiple frames of your game, just as a movie rapidly displays consecutive images to simulate continuous motion. To use page flipping, you’ll have to master buffers -- which Sethi explains well enough for you to use them in a complete “paint” program.

You’ll find chapters on image programming, collision detection, parallax effects, audio and music, simple artificial intelligence techniques… in short, a taste of nearly every facet of game programming. Teenager or not, you’re well on the way towards becoming an old pro. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

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