Game Design Books

Recently I started to entertain the idea for a game prototype I had in mind, since I was a bit green on the process I wanted to find a book that will cover the basics and make it all crystal clear for me. Unfortunately most books on the topic were severely out of date, unnecessarily complex or even too expensive to warrant a purchase. That's when I found Game Design: Principles, Practice, and Techniques and being recently published, it was an added bonus. This book not only takes the reader through the entire process of the production cycle, but it keeps everything light and entertaining with just the right balance of type and a wealth of colored illustrated pages, just the way I like it. And with illustrations on practically every page, it wasn't hard for a visual guy like me to read the book from cover to cover. (Why are there no programming books like this is beyond me)

Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green, and Nic Cusworth keeps the book extremely consistent between the three of them, so well in fact that you won't realize when another author took over.

The book is broken up into 3 chapters; the first begins with a brief history in video games and takes you through the genres, styles and popular game mechanics used today, which are broken up with practical case studies.
The second chapter then moves unto elaborating on what you previously learnt and applying it to the real world. Everything from creating a game design document to gathering inspiration for concept art, level design and actually taking you through the process of creating a low poly solider from concept to completion. However keep in mind most of the topics are just the fundamentals to get you going, and rarely spans more than two pages since there's so much to cover, but it's all well written and flows like a gentle summer breeze. The third chapter then takes you through the pitching process, prototyping and a discussion on industry standard tools.

All in all it was a great book to read and money well spent, I've learnt quite a bit, and the only topics I wished they covered more was some programming and asset management, but as it stands the book still makes a great reference and resource.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Especially if you're a bit fuzzy on the process of taking a game from idea to prototype and beyond. Here's hoping for a 2nd edition expanding into more advanced discussions.

Just a caution for buyers - this book has no code what-so-ever. It is meant for english/literature majors. It has terms about different genres of games and different types of games like the HUB game etc. The information is useless. Why on earth would you want to know things that are obvious and of no use? I don't get the point of this book. If you are a person who doesn't know how to define the term "game" or who has never heard of "game", well then maybe this book is for you.

This books' structure does a great job at making you think actively about game and simulation, what makes them tick, which simulation strategies are successful or a turndown and why so, etc. It offers an indepht view of the genre through a thorough classification, experts comments and quotes, tips and useful case studies. Finally, it describes nicely past, present and future trends along with technology bottlenecks.
A must have for training managers and learning system developper...

This is a poor book. Written to explain someone who has live for years inside a hidden jungle what game simulations ARE. It doesn't address at any moment how you should face development of such kind of titles, it just show you the many types of titles that could match simulation games.

If you expected to learn something from this book, just move on to another one.

This book has eight chapters. 358 pages
Chapter 1: Programming Tools
Talked about GDI+ class Hierarchy and writes one program which displays "Welcome, GDI+!" and also talked about programming in C++ and C#.
Chapter 2: Using GDI+ to construct vector Images. This has about 3 programs Clock and Bezier Curves. Clock looks beautiful, but rest of it garbage.
Chapter 3: Working with output Devices and using Metafiles. There is nothing in this chapter which I conceder that I have learned something.
Chapter 4: Implementing 3D Transformation using software: I was expecting the author will cover solid objects, but there are only wire frames objects and they are absolutely none impressive.
Chapter 5: Operations with Bitmaps and Graphics in GDI+:
Page 138 Fig 5.5 C# demonstration program. I have not seen such a worst program yet. Second program: Output of a bitmap with additional alpha overlay,
Third program: Outputting inverse graphics using .NET (It did not work on my computer)
Chapter 6: Viewing and editing bitmap images: Talk about brightness of an image and filters. And GDI+ is finished.
Now Directx 2 chapters: They are not worth looking.

Do not waste you money on this book.

My thinking is that this is a pretty good book on graphic programming.
Two subject areas are distinguished in this book: the one addressing GDI+ utilization issues and the other describing DirectX usage. Generally speaking, these subjects are not tightly coupled, so it would have been better to have separate books on each graphic library (perhaps it might be already in authors' plans).

The first part describing GDI+ utilization covers the following topics:
Library review: class hierarchy, usage of GDI+ on various platforms, usage of GDI+ when programming on API-functions, etc;
Vector graphic programming: brushes, feathers, etc, primitives, Bezier splines, use of metafiles, 3D-graphics (for example, for drawing of various surfaces);
Raster graphic programming: loading and saving of images in various formats, transparency usage, image analysis with the use of histograms, diversified transformations (for example, brightness, contrast, blur and sharpness filters, trace contours and creation of effects like emboss, development of multithread applications with the MDI interface.

The second part is running on DirectX, it describes both use of unmanaged code (I.e. C++ is utilized as a programming language) and managed one (C# is utilized). Examples show how DirectX initialization is performed, what is transformation matrix and how it is used, the ways to use primitives, vertex buffers, textures and meshes, how to use various effects (for example, fog) etc. Besides, several pages can be considered an introduction to pixel and vertex shaders.

The appendix describes mathematical basics of spline building, plane and 3D transformations.
A CD is provided with the book. The CD comprises source code of all programs and some test images utilized in the book.
C# or C++ programming skills are required to understand the given examples.

I believe this is an excellent book for beginners and middle level programmers, but it also covers some pro technique. I have learnt a lot of useful things from the book, for example, with minor modifications I used the method of brightness and contrast correction (explained in chapter 6) for automatic adjustment of quality of images from a video capture card, and use of noise reduction filter improves compression of video sequences via MPEG algorithms.

No doubt the book is a good introduction to graphic programming on the .NET Framework and Windows platforms.

I would recommend students and developers studying basics of graphic programming read this book. The book gives an insight into a wide range of issues related to the subject and in general helps to start implementing practical graphic programming tasks.

Ralf Karlson, university lecturer.

Good book, although a little dated. Recomended as a start point for those interested in Mission/Arts and Crafts/Shaker furniture.

This book is a collection of actual Popular Mechanics magazine projects to make Mission style lamps that were originally published in the twenties. However, some techniques presented are outdated, but the daigrams for the proportions and measurements of the lamps and shades are the real jewel here. Some of the instructions are slightly vague and at times a bit hard to follow. But the measurements and proportions are what give true Mission style its appeal and elegance, and these are straight forwardly presented.

For what's here, it's worth the price.

While the book title may be deceptive to a Western audience, I Love Games Graphics is not a book of screenshots and sprites. Instead, it is a photo and illustration gallery that explores the infiltration of game culture into pop culture and society's consciousness. If you're looking for screenshots and official artwork, move along - this book is not what you're looking for. But if you are interested in gaming and pop culture as a whole, this books does an excellent job at showing how certain video games and game concepts have become iconic and second-nature in our modern culture.

This book is absolutely needless.
Good-for-nothing.

It not contais graphics!!!!!
Only photos of some game console and repetitive needless things.
Paper to the wind.
Now I understood why is not possible to view the inner pages as preview.
Money for nothing.

PLEASE DON'T BUY IT!!!!!
ANYWAY

I was really struck by the projects in this book. I wanted a better understanding of Gradient Meshes and I hoped for some tips and techniques.
The projects really are appealing to do, at least most of them are. As a person who is totally willing to read a tutorial book from cover to cover, I was really disappointed. Right from the start there were glaring omissions from one step to the next.
In chapter 5 there was a heading titled "Adding Gradient Mesh Effects to the Petals" for a section about drawing the outlines of Egyptian characters. But, honestly, that was the least of the problems. Further, I felt the book lacked good technique. The first project has you create an hourglass. Instead of making the whole hourglass and then rotating the whole thing 15 degrees or so, each separate item was draw at an angle which made scaling and sizing the separate pieces much harder than necessary.
This book feels like it was proofread merely for typos while no effort was made to check the usability of the instructions.
I'm a fairly advanced Illustrator user and there were several times where I had to re-read a section several times and then throw up my hands and just do it my own way.
This is a good book for someone who just wants some artistic inspiration but doesn't much care about reading the instructions. If you browse the book, you will probably pick up a trick or tip or two, but don't expect any revelations. For [money amount]you can do better.

"Illustrator 10 - Mastering Art Design" is a very good training book. Similar to the Adobe Illustrator Classroom in the Book which is for beginners, this one is for those in the intermediate level. The book comes with a CD like most training design books.

I was really impressed by the type of projects you learn and some of the things you create are really stylish and cool!

I highly recommend this book but for those with at least some knowledge of Photoshop. This book is intended for the intermediate level. For instance, in the first project, you will need to make ruler guides and rotate the guide to an angle. Also, you will be dwelving into meshing and blending colors. This is not a beginner book to explain what meshing and blending is about.

So, if you are a beginner, check out the Illustrator 10 bible. Then with a bit of knowledge you can dwelve into this book because you will be making really awesome things with this book.

As for the book, it is easy to follow but it really asks a lot from you especially if you are good using the pen tool. I've used Illustrator for years and to this day, I'm not good with the pen tool. So, for this book on certain projects which asked to make something with the pen, I switched to the pencil tool, used a Wacom pen on my tablet and drew it (if you have good control with your mouse, use a mouse)

Otherwise, it's a really good book. The type of projects are very glamorous and stylish compared to other Illustrator books with projects/training.

Check it out!

I picked this book up hoping to begin learning 3DS Max 2008. What I got was a book filled with errors that is mostly written in a "paint by numbers" style. In the first project alone, it is very easy to keep messing up, or missing steps, because the book had incorrect words, or was unclear at steps, or was just plain missing instructions. Adding to that frustration, was that the first project did not explain to you why you were doing so many of the steps "Change this to 0.5, then check this box", etc. Great, but why am I doing that?! I would instead recommend "Mastering AutoDesk Viz 2008" by Jon McFarland. It is a way better book.

Sometimes a bit challenging to follow, but that is the fun of learning! When you finally work through it...it is great fun. The process is really good in how it slowly begins to take you through the processes of learning the ins and outs. It can be a bit frustrating in that you don't want to mess up a project step...because each tutorial leads into the next...but if it gets too bad...the accompanying DVD allows you to get back on track.

This book demo few examples to help reader to learn how to create a complete model from modeling to final render. I don't like this kind of teaching style. Hopefully. there will be some learning kit with complete learning process.
sincerely Yours.
Roger Ma

A basic guide complete and clear. I expected to have more infos about the advanced features of the program and some further details about automotive models.

According to the authors the RAW file format is mainly for use in transferring graphics between Apple and PC computers and loses a great deal of detail. In other words they wrote a book about Photoshop CS but they know little if anything about the subject.

Whether you be new Photoshop user or experienced, you'll find great information in this good book.

This book provides an introduction to some of the basic concepts
involved in using simulation as a part of computer applications and
games. Its content is both conceptual and practical. Conceptually, it
provides extended discussions of some of the theory that might be involved
in simulation design. The theory in part relates to literary and
sociological approaches to cultural criticism, so if you do not do much
reading in this area, you will find the language fairly strange. The
vocabulary goes beyond anything you'll ever find in a standard book on
programming (iconic logic, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and so on). On
a practical level the book provides several MS Studio projects that put
the concepts to use. In most of the chapters it provides extended
discussions of C++ and DirectX, and in this respect it is helpful to
beginning programmers. The last chapter includes a C# project that can
be used for testing games. The testing theory is supported by software
included with SmartDraw.

One of the games included with the book is called Gold Finder. It is a
good start if you want to create a 3-D game. It is complete, so you
can play it and then start modifying it. It includes a 3-D model of a
man. You control the model as it walks around a world and searches for
gold. The book provides a 2-D simulation that shows how a big
retail store can wipe out local economies. If you do not like criticism
of the way corporations do this sort of thing, then you will probably
not like this chapter. The authors don't try to force anything on you,
however. The book also includes a 2-D simulation of a forest fire. The
best thing to do is start with these projects and remake them for
yourself. The authors try to discuss the software in both theoretical
and practical terms so that you can work with it to conceptualize what
you are doing while programming. There are software packages you can
buy to do this sort of thing, but through this approach, you get a chance
to build programs from scratch using Direct X , C++, and C#.

Key words: Obscure, vague and unfocused.

Even simple ideas and concepts are presented in an unfocused, hand-waving style. The (vague) signal has a hard time penetrating the noise.

The few things the authors have to say has already been said before and better by other authors.