This book teaches key lessons; including, what you can learn from the history of game play and historical games, necessity of challenge in game play, applying dimensions of conflict, understanding low and high interactivity designs, and more.

    The commercial success of a game is often dependent upon the quality of the AI, yet the engineering of AI is often begun late in the development process and is frequently misunderstood. In this book, Ian Millington brings extensive professional experience to the problem of improving the quality of AI in games. A game developer since 1987, he was founder of Mindlathe Ltd., at the time the largest specialist AI company in gaming. Ian shows how to think about AI as an integral part of game play. He describes numerous examples from real games and explores the underlying ideas through detailed case studies. He goes further to introduce many techniques little used by developers today. The book's CD-ROM contains a library of C++ source code and demonstration programs, and provides access to a website with a complete commercial source code library of AI algorithms and techniques. * A comprehensive, professional tutorial and reference to implement true AI in games.* Walks through the entire development process from beginning to end.* Includes over 100 pseudo code examples of techniques used in commercial games, case studies for all major genres, a CD-ROM and companion website with extensive C++ source code implementations for Windows, and source code libraries for Linux and OS X available through the website.

    With more traditional web servers becoming obsolete, having knowledge on servers that achieve high scalability and optimal resource consumption using Node.js is the key to your app development success. Teaching you the essentials to making event-driven server-side apps, this book demonstrates how you can use less space and take less time for communication between web client and server.Contains numerous hands-on examples Explains implementation of real-time apps including Socket.IO and HTML5, and WebSockets Addresses practical Node.js advantages from specific design choices Demonstrates why knowledge and use of JavaScript is beneficial Includes an interactive online component with sample chapters Explains components of stand out apps including brevity and benchmarks Looking to enhance your abilities even further? Smashing Node.js: JavaScript Everywhere makes developing server-side apps accessible with its focus on JavaScript, open source, and easy-to-use language.

    

    It features a novel way of teaching interactive designers how to create and improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun. As the book shows, designing for fun is all about making interactive products like games highly entertaining, engaging, and addictive. The book's unique approach of providing a highly visual storyboard approach combined with a narrative on the art and practice of designing for fun is sure to be a hit with game and interactive designers.At first glance A Theory of Fun for Game Design is a book that will truly inspire and challenge game designers to think in new ways; however, its universal message will influence designers from all walks of life. This book captures the real essence of what drives us to seek out products and experiences that are truly fun and entertaining. The author masterfully presents his engaging theory by showing readers how many designs are lacking because they are predictable and not engaging enough. He then explains how great designers use different types of elements in new ways to make designs more fun and compelling. Anyone who is interested in design will enjoy how the book works on two levels--as a quick inspiration guide to game design, or as an informative discussion that details the insightful thinking from a great mind in the game industry.

    In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like play, design, and interactivity. They look at games through a series of eighteen game design schemas, or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance.Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

    Written by leading video game expert Scott Rogers, who has designed the hits Pac Man World, Maxim vs. Army of Zin, and SpongeBob Squarepants, this book is full of Rogers's wit and imaginative style that demonstrates everything you need to know about designing great video games.Features an approachable writing style that considers game designers from all levels of expertise and experience Covers the entire video game creation process, including developing marketable ideas, understanding what gamers want, working with player actions, and more Offers techniques for creating non-human characters and using the camera as a character Shares helpful insight on the business of design and how to create design documents So, put your game face on and start creating memorable, creative, and unique video games with this book!

    Based on the ubiquitous Java, it provides an alternative to daunting languages and expensive proprietary software.This book gives graphic designers, artists and illustrators of all stripes a jump start to working with processing by providing detailed information on the basic principles of programming with the language, followed by careful, step-by-step explanations of select advanced techniques.The author teaches computer graphics at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and his book has been developed with a supportive learning experience at its core. From algorithms and data mining to rendering and debugging, it teaches object-oriented programming from the ground up within the fascinating context of interactive visual media.Previously announced as Pixels, Patterns, and Processing

    You’ll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiences—a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players.In clear and approachable prose, design pro Tynan Sylvester also looks at the day-to-day process necessary to keep your project on track, including how to work with a team, and how to avoid creative dead ends. Packed with examples, this book will change your perception of game design.Create game mechanics to trigger a range of emotions and provide a variety of playExplore several options for combining narrative with interactivityBuild interactions that let multiplayer gamers get into each other’s headsMotivate players through rewards that align with the rest of the gameEstablish a metaphor vocabulary to help players learn which design aspects are game mechanicsPlan, test, and analyze your design through iteration rather than deciding everything up frontLearn how your game’s market positioning will affect your design

    With jokes, puns, and a rigorous problem solving based approach. You can download all the code samples used in the book from here: http://www.robmiles.com/s/Yellow-Book...

    The rapid maturation of PHP has created a skeptical population of users from more traditional enterprise languages who question the readiness and ability of PHP to scale, as well as a large population of PHP developers without formal computer science backgrounds who have learned through the hands-on experimentation while developing small and midsize applications in PHP. While there are many books on learning PHP and developing small applications with it, there is a serious lack of information on scaling PHP for large-scale, business-critical systems. Schlossnagle's Advanced PHP Programming fills that void, demonstrating that PHP is ready for enterprise Web applications by showing the reader how to develop PHP-based applications for maximum performance, stability, and extensibility.

    By following the recommendations of the Association of Computing Machinery's Java Task Force, this first edition text adopts a modern objects-first approach that introduces readers to useful hierarchies from the very beginning.KEY TOPICS: Introduction; Programming by Example; Expressions; Statement Forms; Methods; Objects and Classes; Objects and Memory; Strings and Characters; Object-Oriented Graphics; Event-Driven Programs; Arrays and ArrayLists; Searching and Sorting; Collection Classes; Looking Ahead.MARKET: A modern objects-first approach to the Java programming language that introduces readers to useful class hierarchies from the very beginning.

    This text is split into distinct sections, each concentrating on a core angle of the language. The book also contains sections for Web and application development, the two most popular uses for Python. It is designed to teach a programmer how to use Python by explaining the mechanics of Python. The appendixes offer a quick guide to the main features of the Python language, as well as additional guides to non-essential systems such as the IDLE development environment and general guidelines for migrating from another language.

    This book surveys the most important computer algorithms currently in use and provides a full treatment of data structures and algorithms for sorting, searching, graph processing, and string processing -- including fifty algorithms every programmer should know. In this edition, new Java implementations are written in an accessible modular programming style, where all of the code is exposed to the reader and ready to use.The algorithms in this book represent a body of knowledge developed over the last 50 years that has become indispensable, not just for professional programmers and computer science students but for any student with interests in science, mathematics, and engineering, not to mention students who use computation in the liberal arts.The companion web site, algs4.cs.princeton.edu contains An online synopsis Full Java implementations Test data Exercises and answers Dynamic visualizations Lecture slides Programming assignments with checklists Links to related material The MOOC related to this book is accessible via the "Online Course" link at algs4.cs.princeton.edu. The course offers more than 100 video lecture segments that are integrated with the text, extensive online assessments, and the large-scale discussion forums that have proven so valuable. Offered each fall and spring, this course regularly attracts tens of thousands of registrants.Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne are developing a modern approach to disseminating knowledge that fully embraces technology, enabling people all around the world to discover new ways of learning and teaching. By integrating their textbook, online content, and MOOC, all at the state of the art, they have built a unique resource that greatly expands the breadth and depth of the educational experience.

    This rapid application development framework and its vast ecosystem of tools let you quickly build new sites and applications with clean, readable code. With this practical guide, Matt Stauffer--a leading teacher and developer in the Laravel community--provides the definitive introduction to one of today's most popular web frameworks.The book's high-level overview and concrete examples will help experienced PHP web developers get started with Laravel right away. By the time you reach the last page, you should feel comfortable writing an entire application in Laravel from scratch.Dive into several features of this framework, including:Blade, Laravel's powerful, custom templating toolTools for gathering, validating, normalizing, and filtering user-provided dataLaravel's Eloquent ORM for working with the application's databasesThe Illuminate request object, and its role in the application lifecyclePHPUnit, Mockery, and PHPSpec for testing your PHP codeLaravel's tools for writing JSON and RESTful APIsInterfaces for file system access, sessions, cookies, caches, and searchTools for implementing queues, jobs, events, and WebSocket event publishingLaravel's specialty packages: Scout, Passport, Cashier, Echo, Elixir, Valet, and Socialite