Game Design Books

i'm surprised more people haven't reviewed this book (there's only 1 review at the time i write this). It's a really, really good book, i expected more reviews.

Since what this book is isn't exactly obvious from the description, i figured i should explain it.

Like the first two volumes, this book is a collection of articles, generally 5-10 pages each. The book is roughly 800 pages long, so that's a lot of articles.

Each article is on a different topic and most are written by different people. A handful of authors wrote two articles, but realize that a *lot* of people contributed to this, and each is an expert in different areas, have different writing styles and represent different games.

i believe most of the authors are professional game AI developers who've worked on big name games. There are also articles by professors and game AI hobbyists (who shortly after writing in this series became professionals). Most write in a way you can understand, a few state things very simply, a few others use math and Greek letters and other things that give me headaches. The vast majority of articles are practical articles, not theory, and there's a fair number of examples (with code) given on the included CD.

Because the articles are small, they tend to be focused on a single topic such as navmesh generation, path smoothing or player prediction through n-gram analysis. Since there are so many, the topics cover all sorts of things, from camera movement systems to baseball games to squad FPS tactics to steering race cars to generating random numbers with a normal/Guassian distribution. My favorites are the ones where a developer discusses some bright idea he had for a game and how it backfired on him.

Given the sheer number of articles, it is almost guaranteed that you will find several articles that you don't like, several you don't understand, several you don't care abot and several you can't believe you lived without. If you're like me, you'll find one or two articles that are worth the purchase price of the book all by themselves.

I suppose i should mention that i wrote a couple of articles in this series (though not this volume), so i'm obviously biased, but this really is a very good series. i probably should give it a 5 but i don't like giving 5s and, besides, not every one of the ~100 articles was excellent, just a lot of them.

Now here's the important part: i teach a video game AI class and i don't use this book. Why? Because this is not a text book on how to write AI. It does not cover every topic a beginner needs to know to write a game. It does not build up a single example, walking you step by step through making a game. It most certainly dosn't teach you how to program. In many respects, this is a book written by professionals for professionals. It's a "tips and tricks" book. The assumption is that you know how to program or design a game. You don't have to be a genius to use this book, but it's not a cookbook or Dummies book either.

There are a lot of other books on AI, most of them all-in-one, how to write AI books. Personally, there's only one or two i'd recommend, and none i couldn't live without. But i really don't think i can stress enough just how valuable this particular series is.

Computer gaming continues to grow at a very rapid rate. In fact much of the development of the new higher speed chips and of course the high performance video cards are being driven by the needs of the gaming people.

Computer gaming software also continues to grow, perhaps even faster than gaming itself. Because of the rapid state of software development, no one author could possibly keep up with all of the changes that are taking place.

So in this book Steve Rabin, of Nintendo of America has gotten almost sixty of the most advanced gaming software developers to write articles explaining the state of the art as they are helping to develop it. The writers come from a mix of software companies, universities, independent consultants, and game hardware developers. This is the state of the art in the development of artificial intelligence for games.

What a great idea! These are great for teachers who are teaching lessons about Mexico, or for scrapbooking projects, anything...I've bought one pack and they went really fast, i'm ready to buy a second. Very affordable and worth every penny!!

These are cute, funky and just plain fun. The earthy colors used added to the authenticity of the Mexican motifs. A fun addition to any piece of paper.

I've continued to enjoy books of film and video game conceptual art and, upon finding out that a book of art from Darkwatch had come out, I had to check it out. While I wasn't expecially a fan of the game itself, I loved the concept behind it (cowboys fighting zombies and vampires in a gothic-style version of the old west? Neat!) as well as the look on the game. And The Art of Darkwatch does not disappoint. Taking us from the early days of the game when it was going to be a kooky, light-hearted romp and the characters were styled to match, to the dark and brooding (and downright creepy) version that made it to a PS2 near you, The Art of Darkwatch shows you character designs, designs for equipment, vehicles, monsters and locales in rich detail and vibrant, frightening color. Fans of video games, conceptual art, or horror/fantasy art would do well to pick up this volume.

This Book is an AMAZING Resource for any Artist or Designer looking for that elusive "Concept Art Sketch Look"... their are SO MANY Sketches in the book, of Both Character & More... This Book is Not only a MUST HAVE FOR YOUR reference collection, a smorgasbord for the Visual SENSES !!! definite 5 star *****

I was expecting just that, a coffee table book with minimal insights on the techniques and thoughts behind the images, but not so. This is a decent book for just browsing through gorgeous images from games or the concept art behind them, but for a practising artist, it is probably more interesting to get nuggets of wisdom from the artists responsible. Don't expect any tutorials, wireframes, WIP shots and the like, but none the less there is interesting information in those interviews, which might just teach you a few new tricks or give you a few ideas for your own work. It did me.

As with other reviews here, I purchased this book as a coffee table book, and as inspiration for my own game art. In that respect, this book is great. It contains character and object designs, sketches, screenshots etc, but mostly renders of gorgeous game worlds and settings from a great many games.

Further to this, although lacking in technical information (try 'Japanese game graphics' for a more technical book), the artists and level developers have provided some great information on *why* the specific art direction was chosen, and the ideas and philosophy behind the art, and various associated elements such as mood, lighting and camera.

David McCarthy, Ste Curran an Simon Byron's Art Of Producing Games is a recommended pick for any programmer interested in designing a successful video game. From concepts to sketches and story lines through building workable prototypes, scripts, storyboards and screenplays with video and music, The Art Of Producing Games isn't just the author's experiences alone: it's backed by interviews with well-known industry figures who offer their valuable insights on how games are designed, prototyped, tested and published.

If you want to program a game and have never done so before, then there is a lot more to it than just dashing off kilolines of code. This book makes you appreciate the totality of what is to be done. Interestingly enough, coding might be even be considered as secondary to the design of an interesting and appealing game.

Now before irate programmers start dumping on me, let me point out that game programming has advanced to the point that a lot of software techniques for photorealism, say, are now standard. You have these, and so your competitors. And if you are developing for a given platform, well so too are others. So coding is necessary but not sufficient for a successful game.

Hence the book rightfully stresses the design and storyboarding aspects. Which are actually long established techniques from traditional analog animation (cartoons).

This book has the prettiest designs and will be a nice welcome challenge during the hot summers days when I don't feel like doing much else. I might just try and copy some designs onto t-shirts for my family.

The patterns are so pretty. add color and imagination, my child produced patterns worth hanging in a frame

I stock up on these coloring books as gifts for children my daughter's age (just 6). The books not only have great entertainment value, but I think they are an excellent reading tool. When I was young, we had the old illustrated classic comics which put well-known books into comic book form and helped hook young readers on the real thing. The NanaBanana books serve the same function but go one step better by being great coloring books! My one criticism of the series is that it lacks diversity-all of the human characters in the books are white. It would be great if they could publish some new stories that showed children of different races, so more children could get the same pleasure from the books that my little girl does.

It is not just a coloring book. It is also a story. My 4 year old enjoys reading it as a book and coloring it. It has provided hours of entertainment. The gigantic pages make it easy for us to color together. She is always going back to add to the pages she has already done. The text is simple and she feels proud knowing how to read it. The first coloring book we will not throw away. Wonderful.

In "Collision Detection in Interactive 3D Environments," Gino van den Bergen explores the algorithms necessary to determine whether polygonal intersections occur in a real-time interactive simulation. Published by Morgan Kaufmann for $59.99, the book spans 277 pages through seven chapters and includes a CDROM containing the source code to SOLID 3.5, a collision detection library for interactive 3D computer animation.

After the first chapter's brief introduction and overview, the second chapter details the required concepts of the text. Generally, the collision detection algorithms presented in the book operate convex objects. As such, methods are described to decompose complex shapes into various convex primitives such as spheres, triangles, and boxes. Lastly, some consideration is given to collision response, performance optimizations through frame and geometric coherence, and problems arising from floating point error in calculations. The chapter is heavy in mathematics and notation and makes for a slow and sometimes tedious read.

Chapter three introduces algorithms for various types of primitive collisions through four broad categories: spheres, axis-aligned boxes, separating axes, and polygons. Each category contains an algorithm for various primitive combinations. For example, under the sphere category the routines presented are sphere to sphere, ray to sphere, and line segment to sphere. The each algorithm is well described mathematically then some pseudo-code is provided to illustrate the implementation. Performance is considered when selecting an algorithm and in its implementation. However, each category's primitive combination type presents just one algorithm. While other sources for algorithms are well-cited throughout the book, it would have been beneficial to compare multiple collision algorithms based on various scenarios to explore the topic completely. The SOLID library uses the routines chosen and presented in the text.

In chapter four, convex objects are considered. Van den Bergen considers both single-shot and incremental algorithms designed to perform several types of proximity queries on polytopes. In particular, each algorithm's computational complexity is provided and references are given for additional detail. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to discussion of the Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi (GJK) algorithm which is used to determine distance and collision of general convex objects. The GJK algorithm is an iterative distance routine but can also be applied to general convex objects. Additionally, the GJK algorithm can exploit frame coherence to improve its performance roughly equivalent with other incremental methods.

Chapter five discusses data structures that reduce the scope of collision calculations during run-time. Through a combination of spatial partitioning, model partitioning, and frame coherence (an assumption that motion is generally smooth and changes per frame are small in a given scene), optimizations can be made to reduce overall computational time in calculating pair-wise collisions between the various types of polyhedra. Each section presents several partitioning methods and provides a case study regarding their performance with a test bed of complex objects to help highlight the performance differences.

Chapter six discusses SOLID, a Software Library for Interference Detection, which is included on the CDROM. Under development for the past seven years, the chapter provides the goals, an overview, design decisions, and restrictions of the library. In fact, the material presented in the preceding chapters is implemented as the SOLID library. The source code to SOLID is provided on the CDROM helps solidify the algorithms and discussion presented in the text. Finally, the last chapter describes the current limitations of collision detection and considers future research areas where further improvement might occur.

Overall, the book does an excellent job presenting the challenges and necessary considerations when designing a collision detection system but not in a manner that is approachable by everyone. Developers capable of appreciating the mathematics and theory will benefit from van den Bergen's description of his insights and experience which ultimately culminate in the design and construction of SOLID.

This is a wonderful book. i admire the effort of compiling vast amount of resources into this book. if you are doing 3D programming, you must have this book.

I have read two of Simon Danaher's full color books. His writing style combines perfectly with the full color 3D illustrations in a way that makes the book a pleasure to read, even more than once. It is an excellent reference and contains many tips on the ways a variety of effects and results can be obtained. The book frequently references popular tools such as Vue, Bryce and Cinema4D, and comes with a CD filled with examples that compliment the book.

This book is filled with tips. Nothing really new that you can't find through a lot of searching and tutorials on the web, but it is a nice reference book to have on hand.

This book is structured very much like a research paper with a review of alternative biological tree modelling methods before presenting the image based algorithm of their own.

The quality of the images they present are unquestionably impressive. They also readily admit the technique is not based on any botanical understanding of tree growth processes.

If you are looking for a book about solutions to the problem of procedurally modelling botanical trees then this book is exactly what you would wish for. If you do not wish to pursue the ideas the authors themselves present there are other techniques that are worthy of attention.

Remember when fractals were firstly applied in computer graphics? To randomly generate realistic looking landscapes and clouds. A lot has happened since, in our understanding of the possible uses. This text is an example. It deals with the generation of realistic [or even totally imaginary] plants. Of course, not all the methods here involve fractals. But those were the ones that caught my eye, and seemed to make the most realistic images.

Amongst related methods to fractals covered here is that of iterated function systems. This has been heavily espoused elsewhere by Michael Barnsley, in his book of that name. In that book, IFS were used more for backgrounds and abstract images. Deussen takes the IFS and shows how it, on top of fractals, can give rise to beautiful and strange plants.

Quite aside from the maths of the book, you can readily appreciate it for the wonderful esthetic imagery.