Game Design Books

This "coloring book" is not just a coloring book: it's a book that you can color. It is a little more than 50% text, with 31 illustrations (usually half-page or less) over 48 pages. The line art pictures are detailed and could be colored or left alone; they are not at all baby-ish in their qualities. The text is a reasonable abridged version that I think an above-average second grader might be able to read without difficulty, and would be appropriate for girls up to about age 12.

The paper is relatively thick and high quality -- not at all like the cheap pulp/newsprint sort of coloring books that you find for 99 cents at the grocery store. The binding is three staples, but since the book is large (8.25 by 11 inches), it will lay flat enough to color. The cover is thick, glossy, and has full-color illustrations inside and out.

I bought two copies of this as a gift, to go with a copy of the original book, which will be too difficult just now for the children in question. I had expected simpler drawings and only a very few lines of text, and had been wondering if I ought to buy an abridged book so they could read it. Consequently, I am absolutely delighted to discover that this coloring book includes a simplified story with wonderful, beautiful drawings.

This coloring book is "not what I expected, but just what I wanted."

This is a catalog of patterns for marbled papers, including many traditional and some modern patterns. It certainly isn't exhaustive, but contains may brilliant examples to work from.

The real value of this book is in the patterns if shows, not just the figures but some very striking color combinations. Each page gives instructions, in a highly condensed format, for recreating the pattern on your own.

This is not an introduction to marbling, though. It gives very little description of materials, tools, and basic methods. You should already have some experience at marbling before you pick this up. Beginners should look elsewhere and practice a bit before looking for inspiration here.

This book isn't for the pro or for the just-starting. It might make a good second book for an amateur crafter, though.

//wiredweird

The book addresses a pressing problem with computer usage. You can readily amass megabytes, gigabytes or even terabytes of data. But how to understand it? This problem arises in every industry that has large databases. Which by now means most industries.

So the book offers possible solutions that let you visualise your data in a manner that transforms it into your expert knowledge. The papers and authors are deliberately drawn from diverse backgrounds. There is a hope that this mixing might through serendipity offer you discontinuous ideas that are fruitful to implement.

The biggest impetus comes from evolution. We cannot easily assimilate large tables of textual data. Evolution lets us more easily assimilate visual fields. So the book is about overcoming this wetware impedance mismatch.

One thing lacking is a color picture of all designs to assist in glass selection.

Average size 1.5 inches by 2.5 inches. Very nice designs.

Indeed, the book's format is very apropos. It explains Photoshop to a beginner. But Matthews took the approach of emphasising illustrations showing what you can do with Photoshop. A natural fit, given what it is used for.

So, deliberately, the amount of textual content is relatively minimal. Instead, you are shown in detailed graphics how to accomplish common tasks. Like touching up images. Or cropping or rescaling. Along with very little jargon to learn.

Radiosity and Global Illumination has been written by two real experts in the field of advanced computer graphics. The main focus of this book is a very readable introduction to the radiosity-method but the authors also cover most of the more advanced techniques. The book could dig a little deeper into the underlying mathematics though.

This is the official full-scale rule book for the collectible card game "Redemption." The book contains a complete description of rules (including a few popular variants) and the basic cards, as well as a sample game and a list of the basic available cards (including their rarity).

Unfortunately, this book doesn't hold its own when compared to, say, the "Magic: The Gathering" player's guide. "Redemption"'s guide is written in a rather plain style, favoring a straightforward description of cards and rules. The guide isn't badly written; it's just not all that much fun.

Either way, if you want to learn "Redemption", this book will tell you everything you need to know.

Excellent short summary of Late Roman military history, contains the rules for "Comitatus" -an excellent simulation for wargaming this period. Short but good bibliography of historical works as well as fictional works..."Eagle in the Snow" etc.

Make sure you have the Fireworks MX software loaded on a PC and do the chapter exercises while reading the material. Else this book will put you to sleep. I found the end of chapter exercises to be a bit vague. If the book had more chapter examples, some enthusiasm and the end of chapter exercises were not ambiguous, I would have given this book a rating of five.
Nonetheless, the book has a lot of useful information thus making it a handy Fireworks MX resource.