Books and Tools To Get Started in Video Game Programming

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Kodu
In honor of the Global Game Jam 2014, I collected a few tools and resources to help you or your students get started in learning game programming using various technologies.    The Global Game Jam is a world wide hackathon and online festival for game developers and designers.   Check out the hashtag #ggj14 on Twitter and Google+ for updates and check out game inspiration in action.   It’s amazing to see what you can build in one weekend.  🙂
  • Invent with Python by Al Sweigart: The book provides a gentle introduction to programming and using Python for simple 2D games.   The book uses PyGame for the game framework.
  • Designing Games with Kodu Game Lab: Kodu is an amazing visual programming environment for games by Microsoft research.   This guide helps prepare teachers and mentors to teach the game development environment.
  • The Complete Guide to Building HTML5 Games with Canvas and SVG: This blog post provides a nice collection tutorials introducing SVG and Canvas.   Both technologies enable you to create browser based games.
  • Dive into HTML5 : This book provides an introduction to advanced features of the browser like HTML5 and Canvas tag .   Drawing in the browser is very fun.  This book helps those interesting in making HTML5 games.
  • Easy GML by Drew Bach: Game Maker is a great tool to introduce 2D game programming.   This free guide helps introduce the core concepts and the script language. (GML)
  • Unity3dStudent.com : Unity is a big player in the professional game developer market.  It enables you to create cross platform video games.  This site provides free teaching introducing the tools and concepts.
  • OpenGameArt.org : This site provides a collection of open game art, music, and sound that can support your game development.

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