Game Programming Golden Rules (Game Development Series)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 318 pages
• Published by: Charles River Media
• Edition: 1st Edition March 12, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1584503068
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1584503064
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Product Description
Writing computer games is hard. Games today are complex projects that involve large teams of specialized artists and programmers. These teams are perpetually pushing technology beyond its boundaries and stretching their skills to the max. To alleviate these problems, Game Programming Golden Rules presents a series of nine "Golden Rules" that help define a methodology for creating a modern game. Each rule is written as a simple principle and covered from the perspective of how it works in the overall structure of a game project. The rules cover a variety of topics from embracing C++ and scripting, to the resource pipeline, finite state machines, and optimization. The order in which the rules are presented was carefully chosen, so that each rule presents a topic that is then put to use in later rules. Many of the rules involve empowering the designers and artists to put their own content directly into the game, bypassing the need for a programmers involvement beyond the initial setup. This frees up the programmers time to concentrate on creating the systems that make the game, rather than focusing on the output of these systems. By the end of the book, you will have deeper confidence and a more profound understanding of the essential techniques of game programming and how the theory of these techniques interlocks. This is an great resource for the entire development team.

About The Author
Martin Brownlow (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA) has been a professional video games programmer for ten years, and has a degree in Computer Science from University of Nottingham in the UK. He has received numerous awards for his work on both MDK and Sacrifice, including ?Game of the Show? and several ?Game of the Year? awards. He received a nomination for excellence in programming for Sacrifice. He also contributed to Game Programming Gems 3. He has worked for such companies as Virtuality Entertainment, Shiny Entertainment, Tremor Entertainment, Visual Concepts, and Planet Moon Studios. His latest project, Armed & Dangerous, was released for Xbox and PC in December 2003. He is currently employed at Swingin?Ape Studios in Aliso Viejo, CA.

Reader Reviews
Martin Brownlow, Game Programming Golden Rules (Charles River Media, 2004) The main thing you need to know about this book is that if you're new to programming, or you've been programming in languages that hide pointers (e.g, VB.NET or C#) and you're not terribly familiar with the pointer architecture of C or C++, you might want to hold off on buying this until you've familiarized yourself with some intermediate-to-advanced programming concepts. Once you're on the right level for the book, however, you are likely to find it a valuable reference tool as you progress through a project. I'd suggest reading it straight through at least once so you know where to go to find that little tidbit that's tugging at the back of your mind when you're trying to figure out what you need to do to, say, optimize your rendering pipeline. After that, keep it on the closest bookshelf to your primary dev machine; you'll be referring back to it on a fairly regular basis unless you have a photographic memory. (...)