Notes about this preview edition

1. Update: August 2022
2. Preview gifts
3. Part zero: A history of video games

About the cover

Brief contents

1. A history of video games

Introduction to Part zero

1. About the series
2. Intended audience
3. Titles in the series
4. About the book
5. History of video games
6. Why video games?
7. Prior knowledge
8. Book web site and link codes

Hello, world! Introducing MakeCode Arcade

1. Learning objectives
2. About Microsoft MakeCode
3. View a MakeCode Arcade project
4. Start MakeCode Arcade
5. Your first MakeCode Arcade project
6. Working with projects
7. Working with hardware
8. Sharing your projects
9. History of MakeCode Arcade

Hello, it’s me! (Or is it I?)—Sprites and your hero character

1. Learning objectives
2. Additional controls in the MakeCode editor
3. Working with tutorials
4. Moving around
5. Using the image editor
6. Screen coordinates
7. Placing your character
8. Animating your character
9. Create a flip book
10. Installing extensions
11. Creating a walking animation
12. Creating a spinning wheel
13. More complex animations
14. A brief history of animated films and video games
15. Making a background
16. Animated backgrounds
17. Artwork and prototypes
18. Additional practice with the image editor
19. Exercises
20. Answers to review questions

Which way did it go? Decisions, conditionals, and basic game physics

1. Learning objectives
2. Software development life cycle
3. Planning a project
4. Princess Pizza
5. Documentation in Blocks programs
6. Bouncing Burger
7. Event-driven programming
8. Sprite types
9. Pong
10. History of Video Tennis Games Part I: Magnavox Odyssey
11. Pong simplified
12. Velocity
13. Adding sound effects
14. Determining the game’s end
15. The on game update block
16. Boolean expressions
17. Correcting an error
18. Acceleration
19. Decision structures
20. Additional tutorials
21. Answers to exercises

What’s the score? Variables and data types

1. Learning objectives
2. Which button?
3. History of Video Tennis Part II: Pong
4. Pong part 2: Complete one-player game
5. Pong part 3: Complete two-player game
6. Introduction to variables
7. Creating variables
8. Naming conventions
9. Variable scope
10. Data types in Blocks
11. Guess My Number
12. Acey Deucey
13. Answers to exercises

Zap! Debugging part 1

1. Why is it called debugging?

I’ve made some enemies—Introduction to object-oriented programming

1. Game Design Concepts tutorials
2. Tutorials
3. Visual effects

Debugging part 2

Over … and over … and over again—Loops

1. Exercises

Who’s above me? Who’s next to me? Arrays and lists

Better than right-click-duplicate—Functions

1. Naming convention
2. Local variables revisited

Fun name :-) - Strings

1. Writing text on the screen

Fun name :-) - Tile maps and platformers

1. Game Design Concepts tutorials
2. Tile maps
3. Platformers
4. Mazes?

What’s your name again? Persisting data

1. Session object

Stranger, danger! Security and privacy

It’s alive! Artificial intelligence

Fun name :-) - Searching and sorting

Where to now?

1. Additional books in the series
2. Learn other languages and programming environments
3. Other games to try to build in MakeCode Arcade
4. Other programming books
5. More on the history of video games

Appendix - A Blocks style guide

1. Project description
2. Variable and function naming
3. Function description

Appendix - Common game structures

1. Shoe of cards
2. Dice

Appendix - Stopwatch in Blocks

1. Part I: Basic stopwatch
2. Finished code
3. Developing the project plan
4. Building the project
5. Next steps
6. Part II: Advanced stopwatch
7. Finished code
8. Adding to the project plan
9. Incorporate changes into code
10. Next steps

Appendix - Common game mechanics

1. Shuffling

Appendix - Advanced graphics

1. Parallax (sprites with depth)

Appendix - Multiplayer games

Appendix - Vector math

1. Revisiting velocity
2. Velocity vectors
3. Angles
4. Review of right triangles
5. Trigonomotric functions and right triangles
6. Practice with velocity vectors
7. Representing π
8. Sprite travelling in a random direction
9. Another challenge
10. Final challenge

Appendix - A template for Blocks games

1. Splash screen
2. Attract mode
3. Button handlers

Appendix - Additional Blocks games (showcase)

1. Additional clones

Credits and licenses

1. Part zero mark II: Time to type!

About the cover

Brief contents

Introduction to Part zero mark II

1. About the series
2. Intended audience
3. Titles in the series
4. About the book
5. Prior knowledge
6. Book web site and link codes

Hello, World! I’m typing! Introducing JavaScript

1. Transitioning from Blocks to JavaScript
2. Style guide

To grandmother’s house—Revisiting topics from a JavaScript perspective

1. SDLC and documentation
2. Sprites
3. Variables and scope
4. Functions

Return of the Jedi—Object-oriented programming basics

‘Round and ‘round we go—Loops and arrays

Hold this, will ya? Working with GitHub

1. Introduction to agile methods
2. Publishing with GitHub

Our first game

Our second game

Our third game

Fun title :-) - Advanced graphics and physics

1. Parallax (Revisit of Part zero appendix)
2. Drawing directly to the screen
3. Simulating three dimensions

Fun title :-) - Searching and sorting

Fun title :-) - Introduction to data structures and algorithms

Where to now?

1. Additional books in the series
2. Learn other languages and programming environments
3. Other games to try to build in MakeCode Arcade
4. Other programming books
5. More on the history of video games

Appendix - A TypeScript style guide

Appendix - Common game structures

1. Shoe of cards
2. Dice

Appendix - Stopwatch in TypeScript

1. Introduction
2. Finished code
3. Working with the Text Sprite in TypeScript
4. Object-oriented design
5. Creating the Stopwatch class
6. Adding functionality to the Stopwatch class
7. Extras

Appendix - Common game mechanics

1. Shuffling

Appendix - Lambda and anonymous functions

Appendix - Filtering and iterating with method calls

Appendix - A template for JavaScript Games

Appendix - Additional JavaScript games (showcase)

Credits and licenses

Bonus chapter: Can I be a computer scientist?

1. Can I be a computer scientist?
2. Do I need to be good at math?
3. I really like computers, but I don’t really like programming. Are there other things that I can do?

Glossary

Timeline of video games

Acknowledgements

About the author

Colophon

Link codes

Bibliography