Commercial game development expert Robert Nystrom presents an array of general solutions to problems encountered in game development. For example, you'll learn how double-buffering enables a player to perceive smooth and realistic motion, and how the service locator pattern can help you provide access to services such as sound without coupling your code to any particular sound driver or sound hardware. Games have much in common with other software, but also a number of unique constraints. Some of the patterns in this book are well-known in other domains of software development. Other of the patterns are unique to gaming. In either case, Robert Nystrom bridges from the ivory tower world of software architecture to the in-the-trenches reality of hardcore game programming. You'll learn the patterns and the general problems that they solve. You'll come away able to apply powerful and reusable architectural solutions that enable you to produce higher quality games with less effort than before. Applies classic design patterns to game programming. Introduces new patterns specific to game programming. Brings abstract software architecture down to Earth with approachable writing and an emphasis on simple code that shows each pattern in practice. What you'll learn Overcome architectural challenges unique to game programming Apply lessons from the larger software world to games. Tie different parts of a game (graphics, sound, AI) into a cohesive whole. Create elegant and maintainable architecture. Achieve good, low-level performance. Gain insight into professional, game development. Who this book is forGame Programming Patterns is aimed at professional game programmers who, while successful in shipping games, are frustrated at how hard it sometimes is to add and modify features when a game is under development. Game Programming Patterns shows how to apply modern software practices to the problem of game development while still maintaining the blazing-fast performance demanded by hard-core gamers. Game Programming Patterns also appeals to those learning about game programming in their spare time. Hobbyists and aspiring professionals alike will find much to learn in this book about pathfinding, collision detection, and other game-programming problem domains.

    Pick up the completely updated "Guinness World Records, Gamer's Edition 2011" and learn all about amazing computer and video-game record breakers from around the world. You'll find out the highest scores, biggest tournaments, largest cash prizes and most successful games ever. It is packed with thousands of high scores and records, a round-up of key events of the video-gaming year - including reviews of new releases, new consoles and the major tournaments - along with detailed game strategies, interviews with professionals, tips and cheats to improve your play, league tables, bizarre facts and incredible video game trivia.

    Evolutionary methods were used to derive new rule sets within a custom game description language, and self-play trials used to estimate each derived game's potential to interest human players. The end result is a number of new and interesting games, one of which has proved popular and gone on to be commercially published.

    From knowing your customer to to launching a successful app, and everything in between, this must-have guide navigates such topics as developing a concept, analyzing the competition, considerations before the launch, marketing, building a community, and maintaining market share... to name a few.Coverage includes: Setting Your Goals, Costs, and ExpectationsResearching the App Store MarketKnowing Your CustomerPlotting the Stages of DevelopmentGuidelines and Expectations for Developing Your AppCreating Free and Freemium AppsCreating Paid and Premium AppsAdopting Apple's ApproachRiding the Social Networking WaveFeedback, Maintaining, and ScalingOpen the vault to App Store success with this indispensable guide

    This book is designed for anyone who wants to create entire 3D worlds in freely available game engines such as Unity 3D, CryEngine, Ogre, Panda3D, Unreal Engine, and Blender Game Engine. It also targets all those who wish to create new levels and assets to sell in game asset stores or use in visualization or animation.

    Dive straight into game development with no previous Unity or iOS experience Work through the entire lifecycle of developing games for iOS Add multiplayer, input controls, debugging, in app and micro payments to your game Implement the different business models that will enable you to make money on iOS games In Detail Would you like to create money making games for iOS? If so, Unity iOS Game Development Beginners Guideis for you. It will guide you through the entire creative process of designing a game through to making money from it. This book will teach you the secrets of building and monetizing games for the iOS platform using the latest version of Unity. The book is linear and progressive so every chapter builds upon the knowledge of the last. You will learn Unity and the iOS basics necessary to get started. You will design a game for the iOS. You will build that game feature by feature. Finally you will publish your game and add the features that will enable your game to generate revenue. You have never built anything using Unity or iOS so we will begin with the basics. We will then move onto the basic features of a game: scenes, AI, characters, accelerometer, and input methods. Once you have mastered this we will begin the creation of our game - a 3rd person perspective dungeon crawler game inspired by the arcade game called Gauntlet. You will bring AAA quality to the game by adding co-op multiplayer so that your friends can join in and participate in the game. You will also add occlusion culling and beastmap lighting. Next you will integrate the game with some 3rd party services for advertisements, micro transactions, and in app purchasing. You will also integrate with Game Center. Finally you will publish your game for the entire world to see. What you will learn from this book Create an AppStore account. Core Unity from the iOS developer's perspective. Scripting using C. Handling common iOS senso

    It has tools, techniques, and philosophies to aid any student, new producer, or game professional. The many thoughts and ideas in this book will give the reader a number of different vantage points on video game production, in order to address each reader's unique needs. It allows for flexibility in the reader's game development life cycle while still laying out proper guidelines for management.

    Author Mike Selinker (Betrayal at House on the Hill) has invited some of the world's most talented and experienced game designers to share their secrets on game conception, design, development, and presentation. In these pages, you'll learn about storyboarding, balancing, prototyping, and playtesting from the best in the business.

    Addressing questions of how we interpret, mediate and use media texts, particularly in the face of claims about the power of new media to continuously shift the parameters of lived experience, gaming is employed as a 'tool' through which we can understand the gendered and socio-culturally constructed phenomenon of our everyday engagement with media. The book is particularly concerned with issues of agency and power, identifying strong correlations between perceptions of gaming and actual gaming practices, as well as the reinforcement, through gaming, of established (gendered, sexed, and classed) power relationships within households. As such, it reveals the manner in which existing relations re-emerge through engagement with new technology. Offering an empirically grounded understanding of what goes on when we mediate technology and media in our everyday lives Ethnographies of the Videogame is more than a timely intervention into game studies. It provides pertinent and reflexive commentary on the relationship between text and audience, highlighting the relationships of gender and power in gaming practice. As such, it will appeal to scholars interested in media and new media, gender and class, and the sociology of leisure.

    Games have been developed for teaching, recruiting and to collect data to improve search engines. This book examines the fundamentals of designing any game with a serious purpose and provides a way of thinking on how to design one successfully.The reader will be introduced to a design philosophy called Triadic Game Design.; a theory that all games involve three worlds: the worlds of Reality, Meaning, and Play. Each world is affiliated with aspects. A balance needs to be found within and between the three worlds. Such a balance is difficult to achieve, during the design many tensions will arise, forcing designers to make trade-offs. To deal with these tensions and to ensure that the right decisions are made to create a harmonic game, a frame of reference is needed. This is what "Triadic Game Design" offers.

    It is fair to say, however, that the majority of research to date has focused most specifically on either the video games themselves, or the direct engagement of gamers with a specific piece of game technology.In contrast, Video Gamers is the first book to explicitly and comprehensively address how digital games are engaged with and experienced in the everyday lives, social networks and consumer patterns of those who play them. In doing so, the book provides a key introduction to the study of gamers and the games they play, whilst also reflecting on the current debates and literatures surrounding gaming practices.

    You''ll get detailed descriptions of all major types of interactive stories, case studies of popular games (including Bioshock, Fallout 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Heavy Rain, and Metal Gear Solid), and how players interact with them, and an in-depth analysis of the results of a national survey on player storytelling preferences in games. You''ll get the expert advice you need to generate compelling and original game concepts and narratives.With Interactive Storytelling for Video Games, you''ll:

    Gaming and Cognition: Theories And Practice From The Learning Sciences applies the principles of research in the study of human cognition to video games, providing a critical examination of the rigor and design of the experiments in the study of cognition and gaming. Combining many aspects of the learning sciences such as psychology, instructional design, and education into one coherent whole, this book presents historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives.