Game Design Books

If you want painless method for learning OOP AS this is the book for you. The only omission I have found is that the author does not delve deeper into the logic of programming in the OOP, especially where it is very necessary in order to understand a topic or a solution.

This book was done well for *not* programmers. I'm a relatively seasoned (6+ yrs) Java & C programmer--I found it incredibly slow.
Bhangal spends a ton of time convincing the reader that things such as "event handling" and "classes" are good. Anyone who has written a GUI for the Mac, Windows, X or Java will find a majority of the content incredibly tedious.
The last chapter on "Advanced Actionscript" starts to touch on the areas I find most valuable--specifically scope, sub-classing, the differences between AS 1.0 & 2.0. But that was really it.
Again, for non-programmers or designers (for whom I'm assuming this was designed) I think this might be a great book. Bhangal goes to great lengths to explain the "why's" of programming concepts. For programmers, I'd suggest Macromedia Press's "Flash MX Professionsl 2004 Application Development" by Jeanette Stallons.

Mr. Bhangal's wonderful teaching style and excellent writing make this a truly easy and painless experience.

Explained in plain english how to actually *do something* with action script.

Great examples and analogies really drive the concepts home. I think its a big help that Mr. Bhangal is a designer and can speak to a person on a visual level.

And, I had a question, e-mailed Mr. Bhangal, and he got right back to me.

I am currently reading Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004 and am also very impressed. The Friends of Ed is a great tool for designers looking to learn multimedia and web software.

Overall I found this book helpful in taking me to the next level of ActionScript. The main project of the book from beginning to end is the building of a website called Futuremedia. This web page makes use of many cool tricks the author takes you through step-by-step with pretty good explanations. To teach the reader how to implement these techniques, several smaller coding projects are used to introduce programming concepts that will be later used in the more complex Futuremedia project. Each chapter has several of these smaller examples which is very fortunate. About halfway through the book, due probably to some sloppy editing, the Futuremedia project gets derailed by missing steps and references to earlier explanations which never made it into the text. Being that I didn't find the Futuremedia project all that interesting, I eventually abandoned working on the book's main project and concentrated on the smaller projects contained in each chapter. These are all complete.
The author's writing style is easy to follow and he tries to explain concepts so non-programmers can grasp them, which is the main reason I stuck with it to the last chapter.
If you are looking to move from the simple coding of buttons, movie clips and basic timeline animation, this book still has some good information to offer.

I am sorry , reading the reviews I thought this would be great , so I bought it.I must say editing is horrible , no online help(wrote 5 mails not even 1 answer),lot of mistake in book.The code style changes often so the beginner is bit lost.Then Bhangal suddenly introduces heavy coding without explaining much often (Math.random()*5) +3 or Math.round()...he didn't explain the parameters of random no. selection in AS.
only thing I can say you need to do this book more than once to get hang of AS if u r really a total beginner like me.
If looking a fast way don't get into it if u r a total beginner

Seems like every idea in it is ripped off from other books. Don't buy it. It's a waste of money.

This book provides a good start for someone who has yet to dive into the highly competitive world of entertainment design and software. It does seem to lean more towards 3D games and reflect on personal experiences; but over all is a good guide to game development. Experienced developers and designers will most likely have devised their own systems that work best for them, not to mention would already know about 75% of the material listed within.

Once again, I would only really recommend this book to a beginner in game development. Experienced users may find some good information, but most likely can spend a lot less money finding it out on one of the hundreds of game development websites out there.

Eric Bethke gives us the actual battle-tested techniques his team uses to develop games. Most of his wisdom I completely agree with, and he makes some points that had not occurred to me that I will have to think long and hard about. His central, recurring "less is more" thesis is persuasively argued. He has confirmed my suspicion that we may have to rethink our plan for the current game we're working on. I recommend everybody in game development read this book and take it either as a springboard for developing their own methodology or as a sounding board on the quality of their methodology, if one is already in place.

So why only four stars? I have the feeling that Erik isn't being completely honest with us. On my team chaos is the norm even though we scored an AA on Erik's "Game Project Survival Test." Erik makes his team sound like a smoothly running factory, and I have trouble believing it's due to those extra ten points his team is getting on the test. Give it up, Erik: either admit that business is chaos and let us reconcile ourselves to that cold truth, or tell us the deep dark secrets that makes your team work so well.

Also, stuff is missing here: how do you hire great talent? How do you prevent your team from breaking the build on a regular basis without slowing them to a crawl? (That's the question that has been keeping me up nights.) How can you be productive if you're waiting until alpha to fix all your bugs? I bet Erik has some insight into these questions, but he didn't get it on the page.

Still, don't let my nitpicking stop you from reading this book. I'm going to try to make everyone on my team read it. And I'll be eagerly awaiting a sequel.

I recently started a game development enterprise program at my school (Michigan Tech) and we had no clue where to start. This book is great if you feel like I did. I felt there was no way we were going to be able to pull this off in a resonable time. This book gives us the guidance we need. Although we may not take all the suggestions in the book, it still is great and helps you produce a great game. It includes detail on the many preproduction documents, outsourcing, and even a chapter on how to start a company. Well done, just what I had expected from the Wordware Game Developer's Library.

I found the book to have lots of good advice and insight. However, the information in it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The company he was running has all bit folded. So I wouldn't suggest using this book as a "how-to" handbook.

This e-book offers a step by step instruction on How To Add Games To Your Site.
My interest in this material was fostered by the usefullness of this tool, as a marketing feature on my web site.
Barbara Feldman explains it all in easy to use format, and explicit directions to boot.
The call to Parents to help their kids build games, and their educational value, in doing so, was an unexpected creative bonus.
Thank you for the opportunity to say how pleased I am with this product.
Sincerely,

Sara Ann Doro

Easy to follow and complete instructions for adding interactivity to a web site. I keep this book on my desk and reference it frequently. I have also used the book as a resource in web design classes with youth and they enjoy the results they can achieve with these instructions.

Most webmasters look for tools to get visitors to stay on their website longer - that's called the sticky factor and Barbara Feldman's e-book will help. I found 'How to Add Games to Your Site' absolutely worth the cost. Even a non-programmer like me was able to put it to use and at the same time had fun doing it! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Barbara J. Feldman's guide to adding games to websites is in teacher's terms a "Task-Analysis" of the step-by step procedures to enhance any website with fun and educational games. Her precise style and clarity in expressing technical terms will guide even the beginner "webster" to gaming success at the website of one's choice.

I was expecting to get a tutorial on how to make simple games for my website. I at least expected to get source codes for some games if I wasn't going to be taught how to write any of my own. Almost the entire book was links to other people applet/game websites and instructions how to add them to your site. This would be fine, but almost all of them were not free. A complete and total waste of my money!

For many years I have furnished doll houses, early on as a child, then came my daughters, and am now in the grandaughters phase of my life. The project directions were very easy to follow (you could tell the authors are hands-on) and my grandaughters loved working alongside me with the fabrics etc.to furnish the various small rooms of their dollhouses. I found many of the projects they had no problem in completing themselves while others they only needed a little assistance. I feel furnishing dollhouses is a wonderful on-going project for generation after generation, and this book is one to refer to with confidence that the projects will turn out nice and they don't get discouraged by the friendly writing of the directions. I have purchased one for each of my grandaughters for Christmas, as it makes a great birthday or Christmas gift.

The authors have created some delightful furnishings, and I would recommend the book to those who are only just starting out in the World of Dollhouses. If you're putting a play house together for children, this book is a good starting point. However, if you a serious miniaturist, and have a more discerning eye for scale, you should probably look elsewhere. I would more highly recommend Nick and Esther Forder's "Dollhouse Decor: Creating Soft Furnishings in 1/12 Scale".

I know it's hard to write a book, so I feel badly about dissing this one. However, it is not good. The projects shown are, almost without exception, out of scale and "clunky" looking, rather like a very young Brownie troop's efforts. I was very unhappy when I received it and found nothing in it of value. I suspect I am not alone in my estimation as copies of this book began appearing on Thrift Shop shelves soon after its release. Sorry guys, it's just no good.

For many years I have furnished doll houses, early on as a child, then came my daughters, and am now in the grandaughters phase of my life. The project directions were very easy to follow (you could tell the authors are hands-on) and my grandaughters loved working alongside me with the fabrics etc.to furnish the various small rooms of their dollhouses. I found many of the projects they had no problem in completing themselves while others they only needed a little assistance. I feel furnishing dollhouses is a wonderful on-going project for generation after generation, and this book is one to refer to with confidence that the projects will turn out nice and they don't get discouraged by the friendly writing of the directions. It makes a great birthday or Christmas gift.

Fabulous book! The illustrations are great; directions are easy to follow. Very motivating, new and fresh ideas. Authors are interior decorators and it shows. I wish I could make my own home as attractive as the examples in this book. Highly recommended,you'd love it. From Paris!

Easy to read and understand. Just what I was looking for.

I use to take lots of photos and like to edit them.
So, lear to edit was my objective last months.
And this book help me to do this in a very easy way.
With lots os images and tips, and with a superior text, it was a pleasure to learn using it!

It was hard to use and understand.

I really like the "Teach Yourself Visually" computer books. I have a collection which includes a selection of all the popular "For Dummies" and similar computer guides, and the "Teach Yourself Visually" is by far the easiest for me to understand. The digital photography programs are very hard for me to learn, and this book helped a lot.

This book containes lots of pretty pictures but not a lot of helpful information on the "how to" details for someone new to the process.

Purchased this book for my son who is interested in learning game programming. The book had a cd which was suppose to be all inclusive, but we ran into problems. Could not find examples it talked about in Chapter 4. Think there are items missing that we should have. The book does not spell out if you have to go to the website and download the development kit.

My son is not to happy with the book. I have a degree in computer science and I'm not happy with the book either. It's simple, if the book says go and get this file from this directory then it should be there.

This is an outstanding overview of Garage Games' Torque Game Engine. Any aspiring game maker needs to have a copy of this book for reference. Torque allows rapid proto-typing of game ideas, supplying all the foundation for rendering, animation, sound, networking, scripting, all for both the PC and Macintosh. My own teenagers (pictured on the cover, CD, and page 31 :-) use a $25 copy of Milkshape 3D, and put their own models, sometimes with their own rigged, animated skeletons, right into a $100 copy of Torque, and play their own games.

After you've hooked your wannabe game makers with Torque for Teens, send them over to the perfect followup book:

3D Game Programming All in One, Second Edition

Torque has quickly become the number one game development and design harness for nearly all high school and college level game theory, development, application, and graphic design classes.

I am a professor who teaches game design and I can't tell you how great this book is. If your a teen or new to Torque this book will clarify some of the mystery surrounding the Torque engine. It's clean and well thought out.

I highly recommend it over the other Torque books (If your a beginner).

This book does what it does very well.....

While the book is good for very early beginners to the Torque Game Engine, I think it does not delve deep enough into the engine itself and I believe other things should have been covered to make it more interesting not only to teens, but to everyone.

Basically the entire book, (besides a few chapters), is the same exact tutorial you can download for FREE from Garage Games, just with some nicer game assets.

It's a good book for those who have already tried the tutorial from Garage Games and want to try to do a little more without buying the engine. This is the most up to date book when it comes to learning about the Torque Game Engine.

I purchased this book with the hopes and intentions of using it as a home-school resource for our programming course. It is not bad in a general way, and was very good as a friendly introductory to Torque and as a business totorial for young entrepreneurs. It covers a business model and organization of your resources such as what jobs need to be defined within your dev-team etc. It covers (at great length - a bit too much actually) several games out there that are either built with Torque or by the makers of Torque - and how they were generally designed (as examples). There are even a few resources that were interesting to play with.

Unfortunately, that was about all it did. It seems to fail to really delve into the "guts" as I had hoped, and to illuminate the "exciting" world of 3D game creation from a Teenage Game Developer Newbie standpoint - particularly the easily distracted from "business model" speeches type (i.e. MOST kids). I guess I was wanting something that read like a friend showing you "cool stuff" and leading you into a place where suddenly the kids would look up and say "DAD! Check this out - I just realized what I did! This is way COOL!"

Three of my kids read the book now, all three were not engaged very long - all seemed to loose interest at the business model part and did not regain it at the examples section as I had hoped.

The other Torque books I have so far (Finney's, most notably) are very good and very deep - but not "friendly" enough to engage my teenagers in an enjoyable and fascinating way (well, except for one, but he is a bit "different" and also the yougest) - hence the "fun" becomes "school-WORK". I will try the one from Maurina next and hope for it to be the answer I am looking for.

Barbara Brackman has gathered quilt block designs in a concise useable format for both scholars and the casual quilter. The organization of the book is easy to use and follow. However, I would like to see the designs colored using the colors of the era.

I purchased this book and it is one of the best buys I have ever made. When I did the math, each quilt block design cost me .0036 cents in USD. This may not be the book for a beginner but for those of us looking for inspiration, this is a must have book. With color designs, the possibilies are endless of what a person can imagine creating.

This is exactly what I was looking for! It's not a How-To book - it's just the blocks. The author summed it up perfectly, "As I became more proficient at quilting, I realized I didn't need the entire pattern, just a sketch of it." I was doing the same thing Maggie Malone was doing, collecting and filing patterns, and now she has put together this terrific book of just that - the patterns. Each pattern falls into a grid (3x3, 6x6, etc), and with drafting experiencing, can determine how to cut the pieces/templates. So this book is not for the novice, but with experience of making quilts from instruction books, you'll get the hang of how to make your blocks from just the patterns, too!

This hardbacked volume contains a huge collection of patchwork blocks each of which is carefully drawn and appropriately coloured on the computer. The author's source and a pattern name is given in each case and the blocks are sorted into the usual patchwork categories of four patch, nine patch etc.

There is a very wide range of different styles and the blocks are fully indexed at the back of the book.

This book is absolutely superb and once it is in your collection you will probably not need any other collection of patchwork block drawings.

Beginners will need another book to complement this one because no actual finished quilt patterns are provided nor are there any instructions on how to make a quilt; Lynne Edwards's "Sampler Quilt" series would be an excellent partner as her books cover many different techniques.

For me, the sheer number of blocks in this book are well worth the price. Just flipping through the book always gets me thinking about my next project or ten. If anything, I get too many ideas from looking through it.

Echoing what the others have said, this book really needs better editing. In addition to the mistakes other reviewers have pointed out, the chapter titled "Octagons, Diamonds, and Eight Point Stars Patch Patterns" also includes basket blocks, trees, flowers, animals, houses, "apple core," miscellaneous borders... huh? I also don't get why there are separate chapters featuring only a few eight patch patterns and twelve patch patterns when the chapter on four patch patterns is HUGE and includes a bunch of 4x4, 8x8, 12x12 and 16x16 patch blocks. The book is well-indexed, though, so if you are looking for something specific, it's easy to find. One feature I like is that, where possible, she has indexed the patterns that came from particular publications. If you are looking for Kansas City Star patterns, for example, you'll find a long list of them back there.

Overall, it's a really fun resource. In a book this mammoth, I'm willing to overlook the goofy editing mistakes. (Especially considering that my quilting projects are pretty much a series of goofy mistakes!)

Not bad at all. Practical exercises relevant to the real world. You do need prior knowledge of the application before starting into the book. What you do learn is very useful though..

The book livews up to it's name, these were all projects you can use on the job. I have used multiple projects in my own work. It is helpful to go to the site and download the project files to follow along. There is one section in the first book that gives ou instructions on making the E that are wrong...this drove me crazy for two days until I figured it out. But otherwise, you'll recieve use out of most of this book.

I first purchased this book to try to help me with Illustrator 9 (yes, I know - it's for CS2, but I was totally lost trying to learn my inherited version of Illustrator 9 on my own, and I figured things couldn't be THAT different between versions, right? hah.) To anyone else considering this book for anything other than CS2: Stop. Turn back. It will only make you salivate for CS2, for the features CS2 has that earlier versions of Illustrator lack.

That said, I've since been able to upgrade to CS2, and this book, although modestly helpful -- (it uses projects to teach, and who has time to work through the book's projects? I've got my OWN projects to complete, and need to get up to speed, fast, on only the tasks required for my project) -- is not nearly as helpful for a complete Illustrator nincompoop (i.e. me) as is the Quick Start CS2 guide by Elaine Weinmann, also available here on Amazon.

This book is the one that should've been included in the box with the software, instead of the semi-useful one that was there. But it's not as helpful for a total novice as is the Weinmann book.

Adobe Illustrator CS2 @work uses a language that is easy for non-english readers to understand. The descriptions for the projects are also thorough explained.
I am using the book as a part of the education of adults for vocational occupational rehabilitation in graphic pre-press and design.

I'm a newbie to Illustrator, and I found several of the teaching projects in this book difficult to follow. There is a presumption in the steps provided that you know your way around a little bit more than a novice may be able to grasp. Also, a couple of the projects have mistakes in them which render the reader incapable of completing them unless you go to the publisher's website and download the errata PDF.

This book has great tutorials on beginning to model and good descriptions of the functions of Cinema 4-D through those tutorials. It does leave some features/buttons out. However, the walkthrough practice modeling it gives you, knowledge of basic buttons and the knowledge of how to go about exploring the rest of the functions, as well as the fact the tutorials are easy to follow, easily makes up for it not being a modeling dictionary. If you're just starting modeling or just want a layout for the basic features of Cinema 4-D, I highly recommend this book.

I took a class on maya in college a year ago, spend most of my time in maya. When I received a full copy of cinema 4d I thought ill give it a world & see what the fuss is about.
This book is pretty simple, I was amazed at how simple 3d can be. As a Maya user, there is no node based system, no user control, no history in cinema that iv come to know in maya.
cinema turns 3d from a high end user to a hobby. some may find this strange, im one of those that want that level of control maya has to offer however for anyone just starting out who doesn't want to know the why behind modeling & whats really going on then cinema 4d is your flame & this book will guide you in a world of fun.

The projects are ok, short & to the point, you get a well coverage of modeling, animation, rigging, rendering even cloth & toon. after browsing the book I must say it would take anyone a month to learn cinema & another month to master cinema using what you learn in this book which is unheard of in Maya. I highly enjoyed this book, found it less detailed keeping the reader more on skill then brainy concepts that make you feel as if you just earned a P.H.D. If you buy this book, congrats!

As a fan of two previous versions of the C4d Handbook I looked forward to working through the tutorials in the v9/9.1 book. The enclosed CD (necessary for the tutorials) refused to load and/or allow its files to be copied for use in Cinema 4D. I returned the CD to the publisher with explanation and received a new CD. Same problem. Returned it and got a third CD. Same problem. Very frustrating. The book looks well written as usual. Too bad it is usless to me.

This book makes learning Cinema 4D easy. The book has a good flow to it, and continually builds upon itself to help you remember the basics.

This book, like Tony Alley's "3D Modeling with Cinema 4D R9" is geared towards beginners. Unlike Tony Alley's book, some of the lessons are disorganized and do not clearly outline an approach to modeling, animation, lighting, or creating materials. The examples are fairly good in the beginning of the book, but towards the end, the author has individual paragraphs for each animation tool but never clearly describes how to use them. By attempting to cover so much material, the author leaves out details that gives one a somewhat muddy understanding of the program.

Although the name of the concept "serious games" sounds strange and evokes some debate, it is broadly accepted as a those games that are not intended for entertainment (alone), like games for education and training. The author takes it even broader and includes games-for-marketing-purposes also into this category. Almost implicitly serious games are computer-supported games, video games for short. Part of the argumentation in the book applies to non-computer games as well, however.

For those who are new in this field and for those who have their roots mainly in non-computer games, the book offers a broad overview of what is going on at this moment: examples in different sectors (certainly not education alone), possibilities, underlying software, the way of organising development projects, funding, best practices etc. If you are a specialist on one of these topics you may find its treatment too simple. For topics you are not a specialist on, the book offers a valuable introduction and overview, accompanied by numerous references and interesting links. The only thing I missed was an accompanying DVD crowded with demo software, white papers, clickable links etc.

As serious gaming seems to be hyping at the moment, the book was published just in time. The book is full of actual information. Therefore it is very useful NOW, although you may expect it to become out-of-date within a few years.

This books definitely have good stuff in it, but you become frustrated because you have to dig so much. The books cover way too many issues that are non-specific to serious games. In the places where it do deal with serious games it on, however, quite successful but without being brilliant.

Bergeron's DEVELOPING SERIOUS GAMES provides game developers with a practical manual exploring serious games: military, academic, medical and training games, to be specific. With the wealth of titles focusing on pleasure games, it's good to see a developer's guide which explains business concepts, tools which can be applied to real-world challenges and concepts, and discusses major differences between entertainment and educational gaming. Students and developers alike will find it a fine practical 'how-to' guide teaching concepts ranging from locating funding sources for such games to choosing game shells and marketing finished products.

Serious games is an interesting offshoot of the standard gaming industry. While most of the characteristics of the games have to be the same as 'play' games the key to a serious game is that it imparts 'a skill, knowledge or attitude that can be applied in the real world.'

When the hijackers who were to crash their planes into the World Trade Center wanted to learn to fly, they used simulators. These very expensive devices move the 'game player' around in three-D to impart muscle memory to the player. Other less serious games can't quite do that, but they can still impart a lot of knowledge about how to fly a plane (microsoft flight simulator), drive a car, or drive a tank.

This book presents a fairly high level overview of the serious game business. It talks about the general concepts of things like marketing (quite different than what's needed for space blasters), costs, marketing and so on. It then covers the basic techniques for game development including the specialized software that has been developed to facilitate the software development.

This is a very good book on serious games. It does give you probably up to a hundred examples of serious games on various fields such as the military, medical training games, educational games, simulations, etcetera. In the book serious games are categorised as: Activism Games, Advergames, Business games, Exergaming, Health and medicine games, News games, Political games, Realistic games, Core competency games, Repurposed of the shelf games and Mods. Within all these lots of examples are given that give designers examples. Unfortunately these examples are not really analysed in detail so the reader has to make up his mind if the given example is a good practise of a serious game or not. The book does give some basic ideas on what makes a serious game a good practise and gives lost of references for further study on particular serious game design issues.

It does give an introduction into the development process of (serious) games, technologies, (project) management and business aspects. I could care less for this part and on a occasion or two I found the book (in my opinion) wrong. For example the game development process is being described as a `pipeline' process, thus being linear. However good games, serious or not, need to be tested and tested and tested by players and thus redesigned and redesigned and redesigned many times. You can not do that in a linear managed project, where you go from fase to fase! I have never seen it work in practice. This is what happens if a museum, institute or school wants to make a serious game and does it in a linear way: they have an idea, they design the game, they make it and then when almost all the money is gone, they have it tested by some kids only to find out it is a boring game and that it needs to be redone all over. Back to the design fase! They did manage their money well throughout all the fases, but they never realised they needed to go trough the idea and design fase up to 10 times! For this reason and others the use of MS projects as proposed in the book is a bad suggestion. MS projects is ok if you manage a construction project, not good for software development. But the use of MS projects in software development (and thus game projects) is
another story.

Another part of the book is about the hardware and software you could use to make a serious game. The suggestions on software and the lists of examples is very good (even though there is lots more software available to make (serious) games. E.g. have a look at gamesmaken.startpagina.nl. The remarks on hardware, could be left out. It lists what kind of PC configuration you would need to make a serious game. Ok if you are a total beginner in this field, but for the 98% of the other readers it does not make much sense. This list will be outdated at the time the book has left the presses. Also, there is always so much debate on which hardware to use. The book for example suggests a pc configuration for sound recording. Now, I do not want to get into the Mac- PC discussions, but all the people I know (and I have a lot of musicians as friends) use Macs for audio recording with protocols or logic or on a occasion Steinberg software. I did not find these tools in the book. The same goes for graphics design. The book suggest a Alienware or Dell to work on. But all the professional designers I know (more than 50 I estimate) work on Macs. So the solutions mentioned in the book are not wrong, but well... you know it is too personal. I would not even write about it in a book.

But ok, besides these two small issues mentioned above, I think the info in the book is very good.

What I personally was looking for the most is how to really do it. How to make a good game for education, how to make a good game for a museum or how to make a game that convinces kids to eat healthy or not to start smoking. Design issues like these are introduced and discussed in this book, but not enough in my opinion. It would have made this book superb instead of very good if the writer had done that. Just maybe analyse two or three serious games that turned out to be working very well. How where they made, which design choices were made, how was the result measured, which dead ends were tried before they had the final result, how do the players respond to the game, etcetera. But then again, this might be a great subject for the next book on serious games!

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