Sarah Guthals - Building 3D Digital Games

BUILDING 3D DIGITAL GAMES

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Copyright 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Alice 2.x 2008-2017, Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953799

ISBN: 978-1-119-45347-5

ISBN: 978-1-119-45345-1 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-119-45346-8 (ebk)

SO YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR VERY OWN 3D VIDEO GAME? That is an awesome idea!

Making video games is a lot of fun, but it can be a lot of hard work, too. The video games that you play on your computer, game consoles, or even mobile devices were built by large teams of professional engineers over years! For example, the original Legend of Zelda took more than 100 people three years to make! What you will be building here wont be as polished as the games you play right now, but you can think of them as prototype games models that you make to get your idea down and have your friends play. Then, when you have improved your idea and gained more experience, you can make it into a game that people can play around the world!

Alice is computer software that lets you make 3D video games faster and easier than with regular coding. It is a fun tool made by the researchers and engineers at Carnegie Melon University (CMU) in Pennsylvania. The brilliant people at CMU started creating Alice in 1999 and have been improving it for the past 20 years. Alice uses a block-based programming language that makes coding faster. You dont have to worry about making spelling mistakes or forgetting punctuation. Instead, you get to focus on the logic of your video game and making sure that it works.

Alice is software that you download, but you do not have to install it. You just download the file, double-click it, and use it! You might have to install Java to help it, though, because Alice uses Java to make your code run. Make sure you ask an adult for help and permission when you go to download Alice in .

Building 3D Digital Games has four projects that guide you through how to create a storyline for your games and how to build some simple video games. In the process, you learn to use Alice so that you can build your own video games. In this book, you

• Find out how to write code in Alice
• Create a world for your game and add characters to it
• Make your characters move, talk, and perform actions
• Set up a game with players fighting zombies!

If youre reading this as an e-book, you can click or tap web addresses to visit websites mentioned in the book, like this: www.dummies.com .

This book has many steps with screen shots, and the highlighted text draws your attention to what to look for in the figure.

Everybody has to start somewhere, right? I had to start writing this book by assuming that youre comfortable doing these things:

• Typing on a computer and using a mouse. You may know how to use a Windows system or a Mac; either one will do. This book shows examples on a Mac.
• Following instructions. Coding is very precise, which means that you have to do it exactly right. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle when you are making a mobile app. You have to follow instructions carefully, and compare the pictures in the book to what you see on your own screen.

As you read through the projects in this book, youll see a few icons. The icons point out different things:

Watch out! This icon comes with important information that may save you from trouble that professional coders sometimes have.

The Remember icon comes with ideas that you should keep in mind.

The Tip icon marks advice and shortcuts that can make coding easier.