Scratch 2.0 Game Development Hotshot

About This Book

• Discover how to make the most of the new Scratch 2.0 interface
• Understand how video games work under the hood
• Make your projects come to life, using practical programming principles
• Learn how to plan and build your own interactive projects

Who This Book Is For

If you are a new, or current Scratch user and would like to improve your understanding of the new Scratch 2.0 interface, and learn how to make video games, this book is ideal for you. Each project is explained in-depth from start to finish, so everyone can follow along, even if you don't have much previous experience with the software. If you want to become a video game designer, this book is an easy- to- use and friendly guide about the world of interactive media. It will teach, challenge, and inspire you to create great interactive projects.

What You Will Learn

• Draw and edit game graphics
• Construct scripts from logic blocks
• Utilize operators and conditions to steer game actions
• Use variables and lists to save and reuse dynamic numbers
• Create both mouse and keyboard controls for various purposes
• Implement natural physics effects such as collisions and gravity
• Invent and build power-ups
• Learn how to use some advanced math, for better looking movement patterns
• Make interesting level designs
• Balance the game for an enjoyable experience
• Reuse elements to speed up the building process

In Detail

Playing video games is fun, however, it's even more fun to make your own! Scratch 2.0 makes that challenge a lot easier. Instead of diving into abstract and confusing code, you can build games using easy to understand logic blocks. Within minutes you can have your first game up and running.

Readers can look forward to an easily accessible and fun introduction to programming and interactive media design. Within minutes of starting the program, you will be able to see the first results of your hard work. Visual feedback comes early and often, making high-level, abstract concepts a lot easier to understand.

This book offers readers access to completely interactive projects based on well-known video game genres. You will then learn how to use standard programming principles such as operators, variables, and functions.

From a broader perspective, you will also learn how to plan and develop a game from a general idea to the finished product, creating a fun and user-friendly game. Scratch 2.0 includes many new and exciting features, which makes it possible to create more advanced games. The final results will be close to production level games. This book will not only introduce you to the Scratch 2.0 software, but also teach you about interactive media design.

Sergio van Pul

Sergio van Pul is a game designer and artist interested in making interactive media entertainment. He has built games and interactive applications using Flash ActionScript. He has also worked on web designs and stylesheets, using a basic text/script editor to write raw HTML and CSS, as well as using the Drupal CMS to assemble a website. He is also familiar with visual editing tools such as Photoshop and Premiere. Sergio has worked as a freelance designer and programmer on a variety of projects, many of which involved interaction and education. During this time, he met people from Scratch Web Foundation, a Dutch organization that promotes digital design and programming knowledge in primary education. Sergio started using Scratch to teach children about programming and game design. Occasionally, he also uses Scratch as a quick and easy prototyping tool to test game interaction concepts. He likes experimenting with the program and building tutorials, examples, and complete game projects. Some of his material was printed and tested during workshop sessions for Scratch Web Foundation. This book is his first official publication.