Ah, it seems we have just filled those positions! Apologies to get your hopes up, that was bad timing. We will need more UI designers later this year - most likely in late Summer. Perhaps this is better suited for you anyway so you have time to prepare an application!

Adobe XD is a must - the fastest "basic" prototyping I've ever experienced. I've pushed it's use through our studio and it's producing awesome results (at least till InVision Studio comes out!). After Effects is optional but an invaluable tool for communicating bespoke animations for the programmers.

Really, as long as you can apply good UX practices to your designs, consider different player experiences at all stages, and can create something awesome in XD / Photoshop / Illustrator that is enough.

Some relevant books from the top of my head:

• Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1133134750
  
  > Basic, good for references to how other games implement UI. Gets you thinking about all the necessary interactions and states required for effective communication
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0321965515
  
  > Old but gold. Remains the most solid book for understanding UX for software applications of all time. Still relevant to games, particularly on PC.
  
  
• The Gamer's Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gamers-Brain-Neuroscience-Impact-Design/dp/1498775500
  
  > Very good for understanding basic psychology without delving too deep, and applying those fundamentals to game mechanics and common player behaviours.
  
  There's plenty more non-game specific design books that are fantastic. I can send more examples if you like via DM.
  
  I tend to watch a lot of YouTube channels too that create game design-specific content. Tends to be more detailed about mechanics and user experience. Nothing too UI heavy (There is a sever lack of game UI video content online) but will help you get into a game design mindframe:
  
  
• Super BunnyHop - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWqr2tH3dPshNhPjV5h1xRw
  
• Game Maker's Toolkit - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqJ-Xo29CKyLTjn6z2XwYAw
  
• Raycevick - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1JTQBa5QxZCpXrFSkMxmPw
  
• Errant Signal - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4JnxTxtvItQecKUc4zRhQ
  
• Game Array - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIr5cIzrkBIOwMCxJVJOx7Q
  
  Finally, some good reference sites to look up inspiration and ideas when you want to work on a new element:
  
  
• http://videogameinterfaces.com/
  
• http://www.gameandtype.com/screenshot/
  
• https://ilikeinterfaces.com/
  
  DM me if you want extra details. Good luck!

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About This Software

Leadwerks Game Engine is the easiest way to make 3D games. Learn everything you need with our comprehensve tutorials . Build games with the world's most intuitive game development system. Publish to Steam Workshop and show your game off to the world with Leadwerks Game Launcher (now available in early access).

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New Global Illumination and Volumetric Effects

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.1 introduces environment probes for global illumination and reflections, along with volumetric lighting effects, all in an easy-to-control and intuitive interface. This makes it easier than ever to create games with amazing graphics.



New Vegetation Painting System

Leadwerks Game Engine 4 introduces a one-of-a-kind vegetation system for handling massive amounts of foliage. Instead of storing each instance in memory, our new system uses a distribution algorithm to dynamically calculate all relevant instances each frame for rendering and physics. This allows enormous densely packed scenes with minimal overhead. The results are blazingly fast, efficient, and easy to use. In fact, our new system is so advanced it's featured in the book Game Engine Gems 3 .



Advanced Graphics

Leadwerks makes AAA graphics achievable with hardware tessellation, geometry shaders, and a deferred renderer with up to 32x MSAA. Our renderer redefines realtime with image quality more like a cg render than real-time games of the past. The use of OpenGL 4.0 provides equivalent graphics to DirectX 11, with cross-platform support across operating systems, for future expansion.



Built-in Level Design Tools

Build game levels from scratch right in our editor with constructive solid geometry. Our tools make it easy to sketch out your design and bring your ideas to life. Anyone can build their own game worlds in Leadwerks, without having to be an expert artist.



Integrated Lua Script Editor

We integrated Lua right into Leadwerks because of its proven track records in hundreds of commercial games including Crysis, World of Warcraft, and Garry's Mod. Lua integrates seamlessly with native code for rapid prototyping and instant control. The built-in debugger lets you pause your game, step through code, and inspect every variable in the program in real-time. Lua is perfect for beginners, and the integrated Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler ensures your games will keep running fast as they grow. (Please note that C++ programming support requires the Standard Edition DLC.)



Visual Flowgraph for Advanced Game Mechanics

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Free Self-Publishing to Steam Workshop

Leadwerks Game Launcher is a new way to distribute games. You can publish your Lua-based games from Leadwerks Editor, then send a link to your friends to play without installers, plugins, or zip files. Use this to get your game in front of players and build a following. Games can be played on the desktop with a PC or in the living room with a Steam Machine. (Does not support Workshop publishing of C++ games.)

Steam Features

• Download and publish game content with Steam Workshop.
  
  
• Publish your Lua game to the Workshop for other users to play.
  
  
• Publish image renders and YouTube videos directly to Steam from the editor.
  
  
• Built-in Steamworks support makes your game ready to publish to Steam.
  
  

  Graphics
  

  
  

• OpenGL 4.0 deferred renderer with uniform lighting model supports any number of lights, all casting soft dynamic shadows.
  
  
• Up to 32x hardware MSAA makes rendered images incredibly sharp and detailed.
  
  
• Full support for vertex, fragment, geometry, and tessellation shaders.
  
  
• Dynamic megatexture terrain provides fast rendering of terrains with many layers.
  
  
• Hierarchical hardware occlusion queries provides fast visibility testing.
  
  
• Hardware tessellation for dynamic real surface displacement on the GPU.
  
  
• Normal mapping with specular and cubemap reflections.
  
  
• Instanced rendering allows fast drawing of large volumes of objects.
  
  
• Hardware skinning provides fast skinned animation.
  
  
• Deferred transparency with multiple overlapping layers of shading.
  
  
• Real-time mesh modification.
  
  
• Trilinear and up to 16x anisotropic filtering.
  
  
• Blend and transition animation sequences.
  
  
• Extract animation sequences in the editor.
  
  

  Editor
  

  
  

• Automatic asset management reloads models and textures when they are modified from another application.
  
  
• Drag and drop import of FBX, DDS, BMP, JPG, PNG, TGA, and PSD files.
  
  
• Visual interface controls every aspect of the art pipeline.
  
  
• Constructive solid geometry modeling tools.
  
  
• Brush primitives include box, wedge, cylinder, sphere, arch, tube, and torus.
  
  
• Automatic UV mapping.
  
  
• Brush smooth groups.
  
  
• GPU-accelerated terrain editor makes sculpting silky smooth and fast.
  
  
• Built-in shader editor with instant visualization and error highlighting.
  
  
• Native user interface is used on each supported platform.
  
  

  Programming
  

  
  

• Built-in Lua script editor with debugger, code stepping, and syntax highlighting.
  
  
• Visual flowgraph lets you connect objects to control game interactions and set up scripted sequences.
  
  
• Launch your game and debug the Lua virtual machine as it runs.
  
  
• API design with an object-oriented command set lets you code any type of game.
  
  
• Entity scripts provide a per-object hook interface.
  
  
• Direct programming gives you control over your game's loop and program structure.
  
  
• Script variables are displayed in a visual interface and reloaded in real-time.
  
  

  AI
  

  
  

• Navmesh pathfinding provides automatic AI navigation that works everywhere.
  
  
• Character controller movement seamlessly integrated with physics and pathfinding systems.
  
  
• Set entities to automatically chase another object or navigate to a position.
  
  

  Physics
  

  
  

• Fast and accurate rigid body physics.
  
  
• Constraints including hinge, ball, and sliding joints.
  
  
• Joint actuators provide fast and stable motorized constraints for doors, robotic arms, and other motion.
  
  
• Automatic physics shape calculation.
  
  
• Generate physics shapes in the editor from models or brushes.
  
  
• Swept collision.
  
  
• Raycasting with lines or spheres.
  
  

  Particles
  

  
  

• Real-time particle editor with instant visualization.
  
  
• Emission volumes include box, sphere, cylinder, tube, and cone.
  
  
• Adjustable curve graph for alpha and scale.
  
  
• Particle animation sheets with adjustable frame counts and layout.
  
  
• Velocity-based rotation for directional particles like sparks.
  
  

  Sound
  

  
  

• 3D sound spatialization.
  
  
• Emit a sound from any entity.
  
  
• Automatic channel management frees up unneeded channels.
  
  
• Skip to any time in sound.
  
  

I think it's definitely developmentally appropriate if you approach it the right way. Here's a link to Kylie's "Gaming the System" book that is targeted at middle schoolers.


In my (undergrad) courses and presentations the point I make is this: systems thinking is to the 21st century as literacy was to the 20th. You could get by in the early 20th without knowing how to read or write, but eventually if you were illiterate it sidelined you completely. We're facing the same thing now with systems thinking, and we have to be teaching this in the lower grades.

For your purposes, some goals could be having students be able to diagram dynamic relationships (predator-prey, accelerating erosion, etc.) using the language of sources, stocks, and drains to the point that they can see how many relationships result in non-linear effects -- how many small inputs can create a disproportionately large output. This is like the analytic part of playing with a sand/stream table: they have to be able to recognize and describe the processes at work, not just observe them (and ideally, they should be able to transfer that knowledge from one domain to another). If you can get them (and you! :) ) to the point of being able to recognize and describe emergent effects too, that's a huge win.

And man, congrats on living close to (or being able to travel to) the Olympic peninsula. that's one of the most beautiful (if, okay, not always sunny) places on Earth.

Edited to add: if it helps, here's a video of me giving a presentation about systemic design and game design at a conference in Sweden. Probably above where you want to be with your students (and just hitting the wave tops of what I do in my course), but maybe some useful concepts for you.

Ah! Looks like I saw this post a little late but I'll throw in some additional suggestions as I am year into a PhD on a games related subject area (social dynamics of online games are of particular importance to my work).

I would start off by suggesting Johan Huzinga's Homo Ludens and Roger Cailois' Man, Play and Games which often underpin so much of the game studies field. Although many of the assertions made here are often extremely dated in new technological contexts they do provide an excellent reference point to more pure notions of play (as problematic as the concept may be).

Keeping it specific to your interest of social games and mention of T.L. Taylors Play Between Worlds I would recommend Mark Chen’s Leet Noobs; Celia Pearce’s Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds; the recent Routledge compilation Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games and also Mia Consalvo’s Cheating: Gaining Advantages in Videogames. All of these books approach the topic of sociality in and around games in different ways but I would highly recommend them all.

I would also recommend T.L. Taylor’s latest book Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming for an important study into the burgeoning cultural practices surrounding e-sports in the West. This is a subject matter that is really close to my own personal interests and current work so I might be a little biased, but much the same as Play Between Worlds, it’s a fantastically informed and important book to the field.

I could go on for a while though.. If you would like any more suggestions or have any similar material to share yourself please don’t hesitate to drop a message!

My degree was only in Film, which was heavily spent on theory, which at the time I thought was stupid. I wanted to learn the tools.

Now I realize that it's actually a lot more important to understand how and why things work(the kuleshov effect, editing theories, story archetypes) because the tools are always changing(at an insane rate too). Learning these theories and studying the past gives you a better "eye" and more inspiration to pull from.

So you can take those ideas/theories you learned in film school and apply them to almost any visual medium. I was already using After Effects and Photoshop outside of class(heavily) and I originally wanted to be an editor. So eventually I just cutup a reel of all the animations I was doing in my free-time. Luckily learning all those techniques and devouring tons of other material and reels allowed me to create a shitty but short reel(nobody wants to watch 2 minutes of garbage animation).

It was enough to get me an internship, which lead to my first advertising job, which lead to my second job in a much higher paying field. In-order to keep up and progress I basically just bought a bunch of textbooks on animation and design.

I didn't read all of the books, I just got what I needed from them and moved on. Online communities are incredibly helpful as well. You can learn everything you need about design, animation, and even film online. Just create a good portfolio.


And I'd just like to clarify animation is a pretty broad term, technically I'm in the middle of design, animation, and video. I've worked on commercials, installations, and explainer videos and I'd like to eventually get into title sequences like the Bond intros or True Detective titles.


I'd recommend picking up these books.

Animators Survival Guide

Design for Motion

Animated Storytelling

Also start learning some of the tools. All of the adobe programs are heavily used, specifically After Effects, and some 3D programs like Cinema4D are helpful. As with anything it's good to get the fundamentals down. People don't realize how much animation there is in their daily lives. From apps to games to TV shows. You can carve out a niche in anyone of those spaces.

awesome, I'm glad, some people are really bad at taking criticism. (these people tend not to last long unless they are total rockstars.)

http://www.zbrushworkshops.com/

http://www.visualarium.com/

http://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Studio-Projects-Realistic-Characters/dp/047087256X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334196595&sr=8-1

the websites are by a guy named ryan kingslien. He offers online courses on lots of topics, I took his zbrush sculpting course, and his anatomy course (which was ridiculous, we went so much further than an artist needs to, including learning about forensics, medical journals, and all kinds of crazy obscure stuff).
He is a traditional sculptor that studied in florence under some of the best living masters in the world. he was also the product manager for pixologic when zbrush first was invented. he knows zbrush inside and out. He is also an outstanding teacher.
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm a spammer or anything. but honestly, his courses levelled me up in a few short months faster than 3 years at college for game design did.

If you have the time and money I would seriously suggest taking one of the courses he offers.

If you can't afford it, you can get a subscription to his website which offers at least 100 hours of training videos.

or you can get his book.

there's tons of other good stuff out there too,

Mark DeDeckers stuff over at gnomon is excellent.

or just keep plugging away on your own.
But honestly, take the time to truly learn anatomy. buy an anatomy for the artist book and read it cover to cover. Anatomy is the true key to character modelling. if you want something to be believable, you have to understand the forms all the way down to the skeleton. Learn what causes these forms. then you can recreate them.
Learning anatomy will level you up exponentially.

sorry for the long responses, but it may seem like a long and difficult road (anatomy) but it is so worth it. :)

keep up the good work.

I followed your blogspot by the way.

markorbik.blogspot.com if you'd like to see mine :)

I'll start off with some titles that might not be so apparent:

Unexpected Fundamentals

These 2 books provide much needed information about making reusable patterns and objects. These are life saving things! They are not language dependent. You need to know how to do these patterns, and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to implement them in your chosen language.

• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  
  
• Game Programming Paterns
  
   
  
  Good General book
  
  
• Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
  
   
  
  This book is great if you're going to make a browser based game
  
  
• HTML5 Canvas Cookbook
  
   
  
  General Knowledge books
  
  
• Pro HTML5 Games (Expert's Voice in Web Development)
  
   
  
  Provide a working moveable 3D model with C++ and DirectX, Very cool.
  
  
• Character Animation With Direct3D
  
   
  
  More general game base building
  
  
• Game Engine Architecture, Second Edition
  
  
• Programming Game AI By Example
  
   
  
  Working product results books, little if any modification needed
  
  Releasing in a couple months (hopefully) 2 Very good books using C++ to develop by.
  
  
• Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 12
  
  
• Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 11
  
   
  
  Not presented in the best manner but still noteworthy:
  
  
• DirectX 11.1 Game Programming
  
   
  
  I used to love XNA...but now it's not feasible for commercial development. If you're a beginner to game design...starting out with XNA might actually be useful. It's easy to pickup and put out a working product. XNA is C#
  
   
  
  
• Learning XNA 4.0: Game Development for the PC, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7
  
  
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 Programming: Developing for Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360
  
  
• XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example: Beginners Guide
  
  
• Beginning XNA 3.0 Game Programming: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in XNA)
  
  
• XNA 3.0 Game Programming Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in XNA)
  
  
• Building XNA 2.0 Games: A Practical Guide for Independent Game Development (Books for Professionals by Professionals)
  
   
  
  Working product books, modification needed to make run on current systems
  
  
  Provides a working FPS game in C++ on DirectX 9. Good for some starting out knowledge for an FPS
  
  
• Programming Mutliplayer FPS Direct X
  
   
  
  Good for 3D Terrain rendering in DX9...however much of this is outdated...some concepts still apply, and it's not the worst idea to see a working example.
  
  
• Real-Time 3D Terrain Engines Using C++ and DirectX9 (Charles River Media Game Development)
  
   
  
  TLDR: Click links starting at top, buy, read, profit

The developers and the gaming community in general needs to have better language to designate types of player characters. I think our expectations get messed up because our terms are muddled.

For my part, I consider basically three types of player characters: avatars, actor characters, and role-playing characters (terminology borrowed from this textbook, and that's honestly the only part of the book that's remotely useful). Avatars are literally just the player in virtual space; they have no place in narrative games and largely function as representation for the player among other players. Actor characters are fully-scripted, set-in-stone characters whom the player happens to control during gameplay segments (so most FE lords-- Marth, Eirika, Alm, etc.-- would fall into this category). And then in between those two you've got a spectrum of role-playing characters where the player has varying degrees of control over their person and narrative actions (whether in their imagination, as with silent protagonists, or in the actual mechanics of the game). It's possible to build a functioning story around a role-playing character, but it requires tact and understanding. I would say it also only works well with a tacit understanding that the player is separating themselves from their character to a certain extent. They are, in fact, playing a role. They should not be coddled.

I think IS has been writing for actor characters in FE games, letting the player change their gender and hair color, marketing them like they're role-playing characters and their choices matter, and then putting bumpers on the narrative to avoid hurting the player's ego. It's pretty confused IMO. But I also think Nintendo's getting more of a handle on this sort of thing. I'm looking at stuff like Xenoblade going from a customizable player character back to an actor one, Zelda finally settling on just calling Link Link... it seems like they're starting to get either that they can write better stories with actor characters or that role-playing characters stretch their resources too thin without offering the player the payoff of meaningful choice (which would require, guess what, more resources). FE Switch may be a good outing for them to experiment with meaningful choice, but they really gotta commit to it and get over any "avatar-ism" with the character. Otherwise I'd be fine with an MU in a very minor role. I'd recommend planning for supports with every character, but parceling them out among different character "types," so that only 4-6 are available per playthrough. This creates organic character development and a sense of choice without forcing the MU on characters unnaturally or getting into massively branching paths.

Hey there, so I'm on the same journey as you are and trying to find a pathway to learning this stuff seems really difficult. First of all there is an audio programming discord server you should be a part of. I'll send you a pm with an invite.

Second, there seems to be two branches to game audio programming: DSP programming and engine programming. The DSP stuff is easy to find resources for as it is a more general audio programming discipline. Not just for games. And the JUCE framework is a great place to get started. This guy has a course that you can take days 1-7 for free and he has a good way of showing and explaining things and giving exercises and a slack channel. The guy who runs the audio programming discord server also has a youtube channel with an in depth series for JUCE.

Sooo... for the engine programming stuff. Really good tuts or resources are hard to come by. I'm still looking for a good guide. The book you mentioned: "Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Development" Seems to be a good resource and it was the next book I wanted to get! buuuuut.. What you said about the API not being available anymore is worrisome. The next book on my list is Game Audio Programming 2. But I hear this is more of a good practice and tips and tricks book than a how to manual. The author of the book, Guy Somberg, Gives a presentation that lays out the basics. And so its kind of like learn how to do that stuff? that's the stuff you need to know, but good luck trying to find some resource that walks you through it. My path was going to be to find a basic game engine like the OlcPixelEngine from One Lone Coder and then try and do with that engine what Guy Somberg lays out in the presentation.

Good luck! If you find any awesome resources please pass it along!

> What should I do now?

Here's what you should do: keep learning C# for now. C++ and C# are both form the C-family programming languages so when it's time to switch to C++ lots of things will feel familiar. When you are starting to feel comfortable with the language, install Unity and start learning about programming games while using your C# skills. C#/Unity will provide you with an awesome safe sandbox where you can experiment. Try creating small minigames like Snake or Tetris in the beginning and then try more complicated things. Also, at this point may be read Game Engine Architecture or a similar book. Learn about Scenes, game objects, entities, components, 3D math, meshes, shaders, animations, particle systems, etc. It will help you a lot to be familiar with all these concepts when you start working with Source.

When you are starting to feel comfortable with C# and Unity then start learning C++. The main difference compared to C# is that you will have to learn to be a bit more disciplined and manage the memory yourself instead of relying on a GC. Modern C++ (i.e. smart pointers) helps a lot with that but you should familiarise yourself with new and malloc also since Source is pretty old and I don't think it takes advantage of all the [not so] new [anymore] goodies in the standard. When you are starting to feel comfortable with c++, install Source and start working on that awesome Half-Life mod you have in mind! Looking forward to playing it! 😁

> Wait, what free drink? I totally missed this.

If you're in London hmu on reddit. I buy first drink for anyone whose name I recognise from reddit, as a general rule.

>(I'm sure there is more theory out there, of course, I just don't know what it is or how to find it.)

Once you've got the basics, you're starting to get into specialist areas. It's a bit like saying "I want to learn some science". Music theory becomes musicology, and that's literally a degree topic.

You could look for the following books:

On the topic of analysing music, try Nicolas Cook. A Guide to Musical Analysis, 1994. I'm not a fan of a lot of what Nicolas Cook writes and says but I can't deny that as an entry level for people that haven't read deeply, he has some of the seminal texts.

On the topic of harmony and form, you could try either Aldwell and Schachter or the much cheaper, but much less thorough [Pratt](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamics-Harmony-Principles-Practice.

On the topic of music history, you probably want to start with a general overview of classical music. Nicolas Cook wrote A Very Short Introduction. A textbook like Burkholder, Grout and Palisca covers most of the areas first year undergrads are expected to learn in the UK. Alternately, something like that Taruskin is also very thorough.

When you then want to focus down, you can use bibliographies from any of those books to find your favourite area.

Ethnomusicology might be worth considering. Look at the Very Short Introductions to Ethnomusicology, World Music and Folk Music.

If you have an interest in film music and how that functions, then you could start by looking at a book like Music and Mythmaking which is quite a nice introduction. There's another Very Short Introduction which is also useful. Kalinak is someone I find generally on target. There's also the Mervyn Cooke introduction to the history of film music which I found slightly inaccurate as it got more modern, but that's often the case in these books written contemporarily.

A subsection of this is ludomusicology (my field!) which you probably want to get into by reading either Collins or Summers depending on whether you want to read an established author, or read something written by one of my potential supervisors. You might struggle to find either of these depending on where you are. You could also try Ludomusicology.

There's also composition, but this might be a good start?

Jazz I'm not as sure about off the top of my head, alas.

E: It's worth noting that a lot of this steps away from purely mathematical relationships though. The mathematical relationships just get weird as you push further and as mentioned elsewhere in this AMA, the people that study them are the kind of people that nerds avoid at parties because they might want to talk about mathemusic.

Seems you want to code your own addon UI? If so, first you have to learn how to program. The best book for programming in WoW and Lua (the script language WoW uses) is World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons, which will teach you the basic of programming, lua and WoW stuff. Good for completely novices and programmers that want to learn how to code for WoW.

Keep in mind though that UI programming is the hardest one when it comes to WoW because it requires a lot of knowledge of Lua and how WoW handles a bunch of stuff. That's why UI addons like Tuk and ElvUI have more than one programmer and thousands and thousands of lines of code. I don't know if you're already a programmer but, if you're not, start by making small things and then go bigger. The book I suggested you is a good way to start.

I'm really happy with using Aseprite.. It has a few simple, but powerful tools for drawing, animating and exporting to your preferred game engine..

But ultimately it's not about what tool you use, but how you use it.. I would recommend watching/reading some pixel art tutorials to learn the fundamentals and what makes good pixel art good.. With enough practice, you can make great art with even the worst tools..

In short, to make good art, practice is more important than tools..

edit: A couple of recommendations

• Book: Pixel Art for Game Developers
  
• Online course: Learn to Create Pixel Art for your Games
  
• Tutorials on YouTube

Honestly, I don't know of any good resources that focus on designing strategy games specifically. Unfortunately every book on "game design" is addressing "all of interactive entertainment" so it's hard to get anything really concrete down. I mean, I guess I could recommend my own book FULL DISCLOSURE, I wrote it, haha.

Also maybe a book called Game Mechanics - Advanced Game Design by E. Adams.

Other than that, I'd perhaps recommend going to Boardgamegeek, learning about boardgames as much as you can, and reading their game design section perhaps.

When I first started I bought this book from Amazon. It goes over a lot of the different API's, the physics engine, and just general setup and submission of a game. If you don't want to spend any money though the Corona SDK forums and documentation are really great for figuring out a tough programming situation. I don't think I've ever had an issue I wasn't able to find the answer to with Google. Good luck! Hope to see your games soon.

Hi AvicSolaris,

EncapsulatedPickle's advice to start small is much better than ostrich160's advice to go crazy and just do it. But what is considered small these days is actually relatively big...

I'm going to give you a lot of unpopular advice (programmers hate it), but trust me, as a former uni. adj. prof., #gamedev, and published #gamedev textbook author it works. Start out w/ Playmaker and Unity. You can actually create video games by plotting out flowcharts instead of programming. I created The Blind Shrine Maiden using only Playmaker.

I have a video series on mastering Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaHk7Ix0PZU&list=PLWWn-q7oQDhGi8-Z3BRMCL0RMOCnPPsr3

I have a book/video series on Unity and Playmaker in which you make a modest, but complete, FPS game: https://www.amazon.com/No-Code-Video-Development-Using-Playmaker/dp/1498735657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462307560&sr=8-1&keywords=nocode+kelley

If you can't afford the book, let me know and I'll try to work smthg out for you. Email me. If I don't respond it's because I'm really busy these days (recently diagnosed w/ cancer).

Good luck!

> I played a little bit with Unity, but I would prefer to make it out of scratch.

if i understand correctly, you mean like using c/c++ and opengl/d3d. if that's the case, handmade hero is a decent resource. another more recent resource is handmade quake.

frank luna's upcoming d3d12 book might be of interest. from there you should see links to other books like gregory's game engine architecture, etc.

Try posting on /r/gamewritinglab, there doesn't seem to be a surplus of experienced game writers here.

I would recommend taking a look at games with mod support and tearing down their narrative structure - indie games that do this will often have a modular system for this. For example, Starbound uses JSON files for its NPCs, and they contain a list of randomly-triggered barks (ambient/short dialogue) as well as barks that respond to more specific situations. On the other hand, Hacknet - which I recently worked on - uses XML files to store its mission data, which includes both systems-related info (server difficulty, etc) and narrative elements (emails, chatlogs, smart devices).

In terms of larger games to look at, many use proprietary tools and formats, so it can be a bit of a crapshoot if you want to dissect them. That said, games like Divinity: Original Sin and StarCraft II have very robust toolsets that allow you to easily delve into narrative and scripted events, so maybe give them a shot. I think StarCraft has a free starter edition, too.

From the sounds of it, you're pretty new to game writing, but even if you weren't, I'd highly recommend The Game Narrative Toolbox as an introduction/comprehensive reference for games writing.

I started programming last year with the Corona SDK (www.coronalabs.com). You use a programming language called Lua, its a very easy syntax and very beginner friendly to learn. Its free to deploy to both android & iOS.

This book got me started: http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle/dp/B007X3UAE8

Well, for narrative design there's The Game Narrative Toolbox and The Advanced Narrative Toolbox (the second one just came out a month or two ago, so it's super fresh)


For general game design there's been a couple of good suggestions, but there's also this repository for tons of articles/blogs entries/etc, on game design, the list is massive.


As for game writing, that's generally something you pick up from work experience, but it's essentially the same as general writing.


Ultimately though I'd suggest you pick a specialization because it's a huge field with lots of sub-specialties. If you want to storytelling route, game writing is more to do with things like barks, item info, dialouge, etc. whereas narrative design is more high-level and deal with how you arrange the story and the implications, ect.

Raimondas Pupius has a couple of books on SFML (which is C++ based), which are quite good despite being published by Packt: SFML Game Development by Example and Mastering SFML Game Development.

As /r/Redkast has pointed out above, Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom is a definite 'must read' in my opinion as well. I also like this one by Sanjay Madhav: Game Programming Algorithms and Techniques.

The Kindle editions of all of the above books are reasonably priced.

I would say that this one is pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/Unity-Development-Hours-Teach-Yourself/dp/0672336960

I have looked at a few books, though I feel a tad overwhelmed by the sheer volume of C# books out there. I am not interested in just Unity though, I don't want to use it as a crutch and want to be able to make programs/games outside of it as well. Here are a few I picked out that seemed good via reviews.

The C# Players Guide


Microsoft Visual C# 2012 Step-By-Step

Beginning Visual C# 2012 Programming

Unity Game Development in 24-Hours Sams Teach yourself

Sams Teach Yourself C# 2010 in 24 hours

Pro Unity Game Development with C#

C# Programming Cookbook for Unity3D

Learnign C# Programming With Unity 3D

It's a small print run right now, and I (obviously) don't have the money to do a book tour, but I am talking to the publisher (CRC Press) about other ways to promote the book. Here's the amazon link, I think it becomes available in just a few hours.

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Theory-Philosophy-Understanding/dp/1466554207/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344010206&sr=8-1

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

https://smile.amazon.com/No-Code-Video-Development-Using-Playmaker/dp/1498735657/ref=sr_1_1

---

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

I'm also making my own engine (C++ with lua integration) and here are some resources I found helpful:

- Game Engine Architecture By Jason Gregory Probably my most used resource, especially chapter 6.

- This Blog by Ming Lou "Allen" Chou (All parts)

- Lua Integration (All parts)

As a side note, I would recommend using C++ because with game engines performance is a key problem and C++ gives you so much more control. Plus using C++ will make sure you really understand everything that is going into making a game engine.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean - https://www.amazon.ca/Pixel-Game-Developers-Daniel-Silber/dp/1482252309/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1511670706&sr=8-8&keywords=pixel+graphics+book

I found it to be short but really clear on how to actually make pixel art.

I wouldn't recommend Allegro for game programming tasks, but this is my personal taste.

For books, I recommend these:

• Game Programming Patterns
  
• Game Programming Algorithms and Techniques: A Platform-Agnostic Approach
  
• Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture

If you want to make interesting mechanical game i suggest you Clockwork Game Design from Keith Burgun

In this discussion i wrote some more information and links.

Highly recommend Clockwork Gamedesign

You can search the web and download the pixel art that you like to your PC and look at it with %1000 zoom and see how the pixels are organized and then try to replicate that yourself.

You can also read a book on the subject. I have this one and it covers the basics for beginners:

Pixel Art for Game Developers

its available on amazon on both kindle and paperback

I find on amazon 1 results for either "d3d12 programming guide" and "dx12 programming guide" and that book seems to only be a touched up version of a previous dx11 book.
The LunaGXchange holds the official Docs, SDK and examples. Most of it can also be cloned from Github.

You should check out Ralph Koster's A Theory of Fun, and Keith Burgun's Clockwork Game Design.

Those were the "eye openers" for me.

On the UX/psychology side, there is this book by the woman who directed the UX design of Fortnite.

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0672336960/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1466586524/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Have both. Helped me greatly. I only had some slight knowledge of programming prior to.

Pick your API first, then Google for that. For instance, here is one.

If you want to go even lower, then learn about Z buffers. Note that performance will be poor, though, since you will be implementing them in software.