Game Dev

In Agile Game Development, Clinton Keith offered game development team members the first complete blueprint for leveraging the power of Scrum and Agile methods to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; create games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for every development team member. Now, reflecting his unsurpassed experience helping more than 150 game development studios succeed, Keith has thoroughly revamped his classic guide for today’s radically transformed industry. The only Certified Scrum Trainer to help build 20 AAA-level games, Keith is singularly well-placed to help game developers solve the problems they actually face. In this edition, he:

• Addresses the modern challenges of mobile, free-to-play, and Massively Agile games
• Adds a completely new section on large-scale Agile game development, and new chapters on managing the first release, forming and leading Agile teams, game pipelines, and more
• Presents many new date stories about the experiences of actual game development teams, with actionable takeaways
• Illuminates advanced Agile projects through new “Things to Try” sidebars
• Covers Kanban and other Agile methodologies as well as Scrum

Around the world, thousands of professional game developers have already used Agile Game Development to dramatically improve their effectiveness — and enjoy their work more. This 2nd Edition offers today’s professionals even more value — no matter what types of games they’re developing, what development roles they play, or what environments they’re working in.

AI is an integral part of every video game. This book helps professionals keep up with the constantly evolving technological advances in the fast growing game industry and equips students with up-to-date information they need to jumpstart their careers. This revised and updated Third Edition includes new techniques, algorithms, data structures and representations needed to create powerful AI in games.

Key Features

• A comprehensive professional tutorial and reference to implement true AI in games
• Includes new exercises so readers can test their comprehension and understanding of the concepts and practices presented
• Revised and updated to cover new techniques and advances in AI
• Walks the reader through the entire game AI development process

If you already have even basic familiarity with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you’re ready to learn how to build a browser-based game. In Build an HTML5 Game, you’ll use your skills to create a truly cross-platform bubble-shooter game—playable in both desktop and mobile browsers.

As you follow along with this in-depth, hands-on tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Send sprites zooming around the screen with JavaScript animations
• Make things explode with a jQuery plug-in
• Use hitboxes and geometry to detect collisions
• Implement game logic to display levels and respond to player input
• Convey changes in game state with animation and sound
• Add flair to a game interface with CSS transitions and transformations
• Gain pixel-level control over your game display with the HTML canvas

The programming starts right away in Chapter 1—no hemming and hawing, history, or throat clearing. Exercises at the end of each chapter challenge you to dig in to the bubble shooter’s code and modify the game.

Go ahead. Take the plunge. Learn to create a complete HTML5 game right now and then use your newfound skills to build your own mega-popular, addictive game.

Game Art is a collection of breathtaking concept art and behind-the-scenes interviews from videogame developers, including major players like Square Enix, Bioware, and Ubisoft as well as independent but influential studios like Tale of Tales and Compulsion Games. Immerse yourself in fantastic artwork and explore the creative thinking behind over 40 console, mobile, and PC games.

A lone independent developer on a tiny budget can create an experience as powerful and compelling as a triple-A blockbuster built by a team of 1,000. But like all works of art, every game begins with a spark of inspiration and a passion to create.

Let Game Art take you on a visual journey through these beautiful worlds, as told by the minds that brought them to life.

Art from:

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters • Alice: Madness Returns • American McGee’s Alice • Atelier Escha & Logy • Atelier Meruru • Atelier Rorona • Atelier Shallie • Atelier Totori • Bientôt l’été • Bladestorm: Nightmare • Child of Light • Contrast • D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die • Dead or Alive 5 • Deception IV • Dragon Age: Inquisition • Dynasty Warriors • escapeVektor • Fairy Fencer F • Fatal Frame II • Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn • flowmo • Gamebook Adventures • The Graveyard • Hyperdimension Neptunia • KILLER IS DEAD • LOLLIPOP CHAINSAW • Luxuria Superbia • Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox • Monster Monpiece • NaissanceE • Never Alone • Ninja Gaiden 3 • The Path • Samurai Warriors • Shadows of the DAMNED • Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God • Spirit Hunters Inc • Sunset • Tengami

Interviews with:

Peter Budziszewski and Tamara Schembri • Amy Fredeen and Alan Gershenfeld • Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn • Yosuke Hayashi • Keisuke Kikuchi • Makoto Kitano • Mike Laidlaw • American McGee • Naoko Mizuno and Tsunako • Alex Norton • Yoshito Okamura • Jean-François Poirier • Guillaume Provost • Neil Rennison • Jennifer Schneidereit • Mavros Sedeño • SUDA51 • Hidetaka Suehiro • Akihiro Suzuki and Hisashi Koinuma • Nic Watt • Naoki Yoshida

This book offers a play-focused, process-oriented approach for designing games people will love to play. Drawing on a combined 35 years of design and teaching experience, Colleen Macklin and John Sharp link the concepts and elements of play to the practical tasks of game design. Using full-color examples, they reveal how real game designers think and work, and illuminate the amazing expressive potential of great game design.

Focusing on practical details, this book guides you from idea to prototype to playtest and fully realized design. You’ll walk through conceiving and creating a game’s inner workings, including its core actions, themes, and especially its play experience. Step by step, you’ll assemble every component of your “videogame,” creating practically every kind of play: from cooperative to competitive, from chance-based to role-playing, and everything in between.

Macklin and Sharp believe that games are for everyone, and game design is an exciting art form with a nearly unlimited array of styles, forms, and messages. Cutting across traditional platform and genre boundaries, they help you find inspiration wherever it exists.

Games, Design and Play is for all game design students, and for beginning-to-intermediate-level game professionals, especially independent game designers. Bridging the gaps between imagination and production, it will help you craft outstanding designs for incredible play experiences!

Coverage includes:

• Understanding core elements of play design: actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, and players
• Mastering “tools” such as constraint, interaction, goals, challenges, strategy, chance, decision, storytelling, and context
• Comparing types of play and player experiences
• Considering the demands videogames make on players
• Establishing a game’s design values
• Creating design documents, schematics, and tracking spreadsheets
• Collaborating in teams on a shared design vision
• Brainstorming and conceptualizing designs
• Using prototypes to realize and playtest designs
• Improving designs by making the most of playtesting feedback
• Knowing when a design is ready for production
• Learning the rules so you can break them!

Who said dragon slaying was easy? Leading a guild in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft is more difficult than most players think. Your members look to you to solve problems, plan raids and battles, and lead them to riches and renown.

In The Guild Leader's Handbook, you'll learn how to create, build, and maintain a successful guild. Author Scott F. Andrews, a longtime guild leader and guild advice columnist for WoW.com, will show you how to guide your guild to glory. Whether you're trying to confront a monstrous threat, conquer your rivals, or simply reign supreme as the wealthiest traders in the galaxy, The Guild Leader's Handbook offers invaluable guidance to help you achieve your goals.

You'll learn how to:

• Plan successful raids, player vs. player battles, roleplaying sessions, and contests
• Deal with problem players and keep a lid on guild-fracturing drama
• Solve loot issues and choose the best loot system for your guild
• Boost your guild's morale, reputation, and server presence
• Promote and motivate an effective officer corps

Whether you're an established guild leader in need of sage advice or a dedicated player seeking to form your own community, The Guild Leader's Handbook is an essential guide to managing a guild successfully in any MMO game.

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python will teach you how to make computer games using the popular Python programming language—even if you’ve never programmed before!

Begin by building classic games like Hangman, Guess the Number, and Tic-Tac-Toe, and then work your way up to more advanced games, like a text-based treasure hunting game and an animated collision-dodging game with sound effects. Along the way, you’ll learn key programming and math concepts that will help you take your game programming to the next level.

Learn how to:

• Combine loops, variables, and flow control statements into real working programs
• Choose the right data structures for the job, such as lists, dictionaries, and tuples
• Add graphics and animation to your games with the pygame module
• Handle keyboard and mouse input
• Program simple artificial intelligence so you can play against the computer
• Use cryptography to convert text messages into secret code
• Debug your programs and find common errors

As you work through each game, you’ll build a solid foundation in Python and an understanding of computer science fundamentals.

What new game will you create with the power of Python?

The projects in this book are compatible with Python 3.

If you want to design and build cutting-edge video games but aren't sure where to start, then the SECOND EDITION of the acclaimed Level Up! is for you! Written by leading video game expert Scott Rogers, who has designed the hits Pac Man World, Maximo and SpongeBob Squarepants, this updated edition provides clear and well-thought out examples that forgo theoretical gobbledygook with charmingly illustrated concepts and solutions based on years of professional experience.

Level Up! 2nd Edition has been NEWLY EXPANDED to teach you how to develop marketable ideas, learn what perils and pitfalls await during a game's pre-production, production and post-production stages, and provide even more creative ideas to serve as fuel for your own projects including:

• Developing your game design from the spark of inspiration all the way to production
• Learning how to design the most exciting levels, the most precise controls, and the fiercest foes that will keep your players challenged
• Creating games for mobile and console systems - including detailed rules for touch and motion controls
• Monetizing your game from the design up
• Writing effective and professional design documents with the help of brand new examples

Level Up! 2nd Edition is includes all-new content, an introduction by David "God of War" Jaffe and even a brand-new chili recipe -making it an even more indispensable guide for video game designers both "in the field" and the classroom.

Grab your copy of Level Up! 2nd Edition and let's make a game!

Download the Chapter Resources Here

Hand anyone a pencil and paper and they can start drawing, but it's just as easy to draw digitally using a keyboard and mouse. With Make Your Own Pixel Art, pixel artist Jennifer Dawe and game designer Matthew Humphries walk you step-by-step through the available tools, pixel art techniques, the importance of shapes, colors, shading, and how to turn your art into animation. By the end of the book, you'll be creating art far beyond what's possible on paper!

Make Your Own Pixel Art will teach you how to:

• Create pixel art using the most popular art software and the common tools they provide
• Draw with pixels, including coverage of sculpting, shading, texture, and color use
• The basics of motion and how to animate your pixel art creations
• Best practices for saving, sharing, sketching, and adding emotion to your art

With a dash of creativity and the help of Make Your Own Pixel Art, your digital drawings can be brought to life, shared with the world, and form a basis for a career in art, design, or the video games industry.

Launch into coding with Mission Python, a space-themed guide to building a complete computer game in Python. You'll learn programming fundamentals like loops, strings, and lists as you build Escape!, an exciting game with a map to explore, items to collect, and tricky logic puzzles to solve. As you work through the book, you'll build exercises and mini-projects, like making a spacewalk simulator and creating an astronaut's safety checklist that will put your new Python skills to the test.

You'll learn how to use Pygame Zero, a free resource that lets you add graphics and sound effects to your creations, and you'll get useful game-making tips, such as how to design fun puzzles and intriguing maps. Before you know it, you'll have a working, awesome game to stump your friends with (and some nifty coding skills, too!). You can follow this book using a Raspberry Pi or a Microsoft Windows PC, and the 3D graphics and sound effects you need are provided as a download.

Check out the Escape game you'll build in Mission Python!

Game designers today are expected to have an arsenal of multi-disciplinary skills at their disposal in the fields of art and design, computer programming, psychology, economics, composition, education, mythology–and the list goes on. How do you distill a vast universe down to a few salient points?

Players Making Decisions brings together the wide range of topics that are most often taught in modern game design courses and focuses on the core concepts that will be useful for students for years to come. A common theme to many of these concepts is the art and craft of creating games in which players are engaged by making meaningful decisions. It is the decision to move right or left, to pass versus shoot, or to develop one's own strategy that makes the game enjoyable to the player. As a game designer, you are never entirely certain of who your audience will be, but you can enter their world and offer a state of focus and concentration on a task that is intrinsically rewarding.

This detailed and easy-to-follow guide to game design is for both digital and analog game designers alike and some of its features include:

• A clear introduction to the discipline of game design, how game development teams work, and the game development process
• Full details on prototyping and playtesting, from paper prototypes to intellectual property protection issues
• A detailed discussion of cognitive biases and human decision making as it pertains to games
• Thorough coverage of key game elements, with practical discussions of game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics
• Practical coverage of using simulation tools to decode the magic of game balance

The Art of Game Design guides you through the design process step-by-step, helping you to develop new and innovative games that will be played again and again. It explains the fundamental principles of game design and demonstrates how tactics used in classic board, card and athletic games also work in top-quality video games.

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible, and award-winning author Jesse Schell presents over 100 sets of questions to ask yourself as you build, play and change your game until you finalise your design.

This latest third edition includes examples from new VR and AR platforms as well as from modern games such as Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us, Free to Play games, hybrid games, transformational games, and more.

Whatever your role in video game development an understanding of the principles of game design will make you better at what you do. For over 10 years this book has provided inspiration and guidance to budding and experienced game designers - helping to make better games faster.

This hands-on beginners guide gets you building games fast, all with the awesome Unity engine! You’ll speed past the basics and use your existing coding skills to create 2D, 3D, and AR/VR games.

In Unity in Action, Third Edition, you will learn how to:

• Create characters that run, jump, and bump into things
• Build 3D first-person shooters and third-person action games
• Construct 2D card games and side-scrolling platformers
• Script enemies with AI
• Improve game graphics by importing models and images
• Design an intuitive user interface for your games
• Play music and spatially-aware sound effects
• Connect your games to the internet for online play
• Deploy your games to desktop, mobile, and the web

Thousands of new game developers have chosen Joe Hocking’s

Unity in Action as their first step toward Unity mastery. Starting with the initial groundwork of a new game development project, you’ll quickly start writing custom code instead of clicking together premade scripts. This fully updated third edition comes packed with fully refreshed graphics, Unity’s latest features, and coverage of augmented and virtual reality toolkits. You'll master the Unity toolset from the ground up, learning the skills to go from application coder to game developer.