Reddit mentions: The best digital art books

We found 407 Reddit comments discussing the best digital art books. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 78 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

2. Game Feel (Morgan Kaufmann Game Design Books)

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Game Feel (Morgan Kaufmann Game Design Books)
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4. Real-Time Collision Detection (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3-D Technology)

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5. 3D Game Engine Architecture: Engineering Real-Time Applications with Wild Magic (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)

3D Game Engine Architecture: Engineering Real-Time Applications with Wild Magic (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)
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6. 3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3d Technology)

3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3d Technology)
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7. Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications: A Programmer's Guide, Second Edition

Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications: A Programmer's Guide, Second Edition
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8. Game Physics

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Game Physics
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11. Generative Design: Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing

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Generative Design: Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing
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12. The Art of Titanfall 2

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The Art of Titanfall 2
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14. Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists
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15. How to Cheat in Maya 2014: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation

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How to Cheat in Maya 2014: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation
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18. Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques

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  • Watson-Guptill Publications
Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques
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19. Nintendo 64 Anthology Classic Edition

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20. Digital Painting Techniques: Practical Techniques of Digital Art Masters (Digital Art Masters Series)

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🎓 Reddit experts on digital art books

The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where digital art books are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
Total score: 66
Number of comments: 9
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u/CodyDuncan1260 · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Game Engine:

Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory, best you can get.

Game Coding Complete by Mike McShaffry. The book goes over the whole of making a game from start to finish, so it's a great way to learn the interaction the engine has with the gameplay code. Though, I admit I also am not a particular fan of his coding style, but have found ways around it. The boost library adds some complexity that makes the code more terse. The 4th edition made a point of not using it after many met with some difficulty with it in the 3rd edition. The book also uses DXUT to abstract the DirectX functionality necessary to render things on screen. Although that is one approach, I found that getting DXUT set up properly can be somewhat of a pain, and the abstraction hides really interesting details about the whole task of 3D rendering. You have a strong background in graphics, so you will probably be better served by more direct access to the DirectX API calls. This leads into my suggestion for Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX10 (or DirectX11).



C++:

C++ Pocket Reference by Kyle Loudon
I remember reading that it takes years if not decades to become a master at C++. You have a lot of C++ experience, so you might be better served by a small reference book than a large textbook. I like having this around to reference the features that I use less often. Example:

namespace
{
//code here
}

is an unnamed namespace, which is a preferred method for declaring functions or variables with file scope. You don't see this too often in sample textbook code, but it will crop up from time to time in samples from other programmers on the web. It's $10 or so, and I find it faster and handier than standard online documentation.



Math:

You have a solid graphics background, but just in case you need good references for math:
3D Math Primer
Mathematics for 3D Game Programming

Also, really advanced lighting techniques stretch into the field of Multivariate Calculus. Calculus: Early Transcendentals Chapters >= 11 fall in that field.



Rendering:

Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX10 by Frank. D. Luna.
You should probably get the DirectX11 version when it is available, not because it's newer, not because DirectX10 is obsolete (it's not yet), but because the new DirectX11 book has a chapter on animation. The directX 10 book sorely lacks it. But your solid graphics background may make this obsolete for you.

3D Game Engine Architecture (with Wild Magic) by David H. Eberly is a good book with a lot of parallels to Game Engine Architecture, but focuses much more on the 3D rendering portion of the engine, so you get a better depth of knowledge for rendering in the context of a game engine. I haven't had a chance to read much of this one, so I can't be sure of how useful it is just yet. I also haven't had the pleasure of obtaining its sister book 3D Game Engine Design.

Given your strong graphics background, you will probably want to go past the basics and get to the really nifty stuff. Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition by Tomas Akenine-Moller, Eric Haines, Naty Hoffman is a good book of the more advanced techniques, so you might look there for material to push your graphics knowledge boundaries.



Software Engineering:

I don't have a good book to suggest for this topic, so hopefully another redditor will follow up on this.

If you haven't already, be sure to read about software engineering. It teaches you how to design a process for development, the stages involved, effective methodologies for making and tracking progress, and all sorts of information on things that make programming and software development easier. Not all of it will be useful if you are a one man team, because software engineering is a discipline created around teams, but much of it still applies and will help you stay on track, know when you've been derailed, and help you make decisions that get you back on. Also, patterns. Patterns are great.

Note: I would not suggest Software Engineering for Game Developers. It's an ok book, but I've seen better, the structure doesn't seem to flow well (for me at least), and it seems to be missing some important topics, like user stories, Rational Unified Process, or Feature-Driven Development (I think Mojang does this, but I don't know for sure). Maybe those topics aren't very important for game development directly, but I've always found user stories to be useful.

Software Engineering in general will prove to be a useful field when you are developing your engine, and even more so if you have a team. Take a look at This article to get small taste of what Software Engineering is about.


Why so many books?
Game Engines are a collection of different systems and subsystems used in making games. Each system has its own background, perspective, concepts, and can be referred to from multiple angles. I like Game Engine Architecture's structure for showing an engine as a whole. Luna's DirectX10 book has a better Timer class. The DirectX book also has better explanations of the low-level rendering processes than Coding Complete or Engine Architecture. Engine Architecture and Game Coding Complete touch on Software Engineering, but not in great depth, which is important for team development. So I find that Game Coding Complete and Game Engine Architecture are your go to books, but in some cases only provide a surface layer understanding of some system, which isn't enough to implement your own engine on. The other books are listed here because I feel they provide a valuable supplement and more in depth explanations that will be useful when developing your engine.

tldr: What Valken and SpooderW said.

On the topic of XNA, anyone know a good XNA book? I have XNA Unleashed 3.0, but it's somewhat out of date to the new XNA 4.0. The best looking up-to-date one seems to be Learning XNA 4.0: Game Development for the PC, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7 . I have the 3.0 version of this book, and it's well done.

*****
Source: Doing an Independent Study in Game Engine Development. I asked this same question months ago, did my research, got most of the books listed here, and omitted ones that didn't have much usefulness. Thought I would share my research, hope you find it useful.

u/raydenuni · 2 pointsr/tabletopgamedesign

If you can get away with a required book, I would insist you use Theory of Fun. It's not about boardgames specifically, but more about what is fun and why games are fun. It's quite easy to read (every other page is a drawing), but it's excellent and deep. It would definitely give you a good foundation to go on and talk about games from a more educated standpoint.

"Why do you like this game?" "Ok, do you remember where the book says that's a fun thing to do?"

Or look at some critically acclaimed games and see why they fall under good design, or some popular, yet poorly designed games and why some people don't like them (Monopoly for one).

Scott Nicholson had a great video series called Boardgames With Scott that might have some useful videos. He's currently at MIT on sabbatical doing game design/teaching research (looks like maybe he just finished).

If you're looking for a book for yourself,

  • http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
  • http://www.amazon.com/A-Theory-Fun-Game-Design/dp/1932111972/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3
  • http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/ref=pd_sim_b_7

    You'll notice a lot of them aren't specifically games, but deal with fun and play. It's important to understand those before you can talk about games. That is also a good topic. What is a game? How do you define it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Definitions
    I personally like Chris Crawford's definition, but you get a lot of backlash from the general public for such a strict definition, as if forms of interactive entertainment are somehow inferior if they are not "games."

    I'm just sort of rambling and vomiting thoughts here, but to summarize some topics I would want to go over:

  • History of games
  • Definition of a game
  • What is fun and play and how are those used to make good or bad games
  • Genres of games and how that affects design choices.
  • Pick a different game to teach and play each day/week? Perhaps at the beginning tell your students why a specific game is thought to be fun, and by the end ask them if they can recognize the major mechanics. You could start off a lesson this way and then revisit it at the end.

    Artificial intelligence could be an interesting side topic. Looking at search algorithms and how they are used to solve tic-tac-toe and how you use the EXACT same method to solve checkers or play chess and go (currently unsolved).

    If you do decide to talk about a variety of games, here are some I would suggest you look at:

  • Go, for its simplicity in rules and depth of strategy. I would consider it one of the most pure games.
  • Settlers of Catan for introducing euro-style boardgames to the USA and popularizing board games. Also involves heavy player to player trading.
  • The Resistance as a short-form hidden treachery and secret agenda social game.
  • Dominion as a game that introduced an entirely new genre that is now super successful. Also a good example of a multiplayer solitaire game.
  • Tic-tac-toe as a game whose depth ceiling is too low and complexity space is too small for humans.
  • Pandemic as a completely cooperative game (there might be a simpler game for this, not sure)
  • Can't Stop - a look at chance and how it can be used as an interesting core mechanic and not just a way to make things random


    As you can tell, I love stuff like this. Let me know what you think about my ideas, or if you want to talk more or throw ideas back and forth, feel free.

    Other sources:

  • http://boardgamegeek.com
u/MrBushido2318 · 20 pointsr/gamedev

You have a long journey ahead of you, but here goes :D

Beginner

C++ Primer: One of the better introductory books.

The C++ Standard Template Library: A Tutorial and Reference: Goes over the standard template library in fantastic detail, a must if you're going to be spending a lot of time writing C++.

The C++ Programming Language: Now that you have a good idea of how C++ is used, it's time to go over it again. TCPPL is written by the language's creator and is intended as an introductory book for experienced programmers. That said I think it's best read once you're already comfortable with the language so that you can full appreciate his nuggets of wisdom.


Intermediate

Modern C++ Design: Covers how to write reusable C++ code and common design patterns. You can definitely have started game programming by the time you read this book, however it's definitely something you should have on your reading list.

C++ Templates: Touches on some similar material as Modern C++ Design, but will help you get to grips with C++ Template programming and how to write reusable code.

Effective C++: Practical advise about C++ do's and dont's. Again, this isn't mandatory knowledge for gamedev, but it's advice is definitely invaluable.

Design Patterns: Teaches you commonly used design patterns. Especially useful if you're working as part of a team as it gives you a common set of names for design patterns.

Advanced

C++ Concurrency in Action: Don't be put off by the fact I've put this as an "advanced" topic, it's more that you will get more benefit out of knowing the other subjects first. Concurrency in C++11 is pretty easy and this book is a fantastic guide for learning how its done.

Graphics Programming

OpenGL: A surprisingly well written specification in that it's pretty easy to understand! While it's probably not the best resource for learning OpenGL, it's definitely worth looking at. [edit: Mix it in with Open.gl and arcsynthesis's tutorials for practical examples and you're off to a good start!]

OpenGL Superbible: The OpenGL superbible is one of the best ways to learn modern OpenGL. Sadly this isn't saying much, in fact the only other book appears to be the "Orange Book", however my sources indicate that is terrible. So you're just going to have suck it up and learn from the OGL Superbible![edit: in retrospect, just stick to free tutorials I've linked above. You'll learn more from them, and be less confused by what is 3rd party code supplied by the book. Substitute the "rendering" techniques you would learn from a 3d book with a good 3d math book and realtime rendering (links below)]


Essential Mathematics for Game Programmers or 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development: 3D programming involves a lot of math, these books cover topics that OpenGL/DirectX books tend to rush over.

Realtime Rendering: A graphics library independent explanation of a number of modern graphical techniques, very useful with teaching you inventive ways to use your newly found 3d graphical talents!

u/kevodoom · 1 pointr/gamedev

It depends. A game design degree from a well-designed and well-connected course (USC and Carnegie Mellon are both well-set-up) can sometimes help, but more through the connections you'll make than the things you'll learn in the course. In general, though, I agree strongly with the people here advising you to learn a practical skill.

Someone looking to hire a junior designer (and please don't have any illusions that you'll be considered anything other than junior until you've shipped titles) will be looking at you through two lenses:

  • Does this person have potential to be a good designer?
  • Can I use this person right now for work I need done?
    For both questions to be answerable in the affirmative, you need to be able to demonstrate both that you know how to think like a designer (what choices were made to make a given game work, and why did those choices have the effect they had?), and that you know your way around a game engine. A designer who knows only how to write design docs won't be useful in the short-term, and probably won't be useful in the longer term either, because this person won't be able to prototype their work. Good design is an iterative process, and your ability to explore and respond to your work hinges on your ability to express it in the medium.

    Regardless of the degree you choose, my recommendation is that you pursue your own education aggressively. The game industry changes extremely fast, and your ability to teach yourself constantly is essential to your ability to keep up and stay relevant. To this end, I'd do two things:
  1. Pick a game engine and learn it. Do the tutorials, learn how it runs, and make something worth playing in this engine. My recommendations here would be either Unity3d or Unreal. Both of these are solid choices for a few reasons: they're commonly used in the industry, so there's a high likelihood that someone on the hiring end would find your knowledge of the engine attractive, and they both do things in standard enough ways that if you learned either one, any other engine you approached would likely be structured similarly enough that you'd get what it's doing. Both of these engines allow you to get very deep into the sort of scripting designers regularly do (UnrealScript or C#). Most designers don't wind up needing C++, but it does happen on rare occasions. If you walk in the door with running software that's genuinely fun to play, you'll put yourself ahead of a huge chunk of the candidates in the field.
  2. Learn how game designers think. There are three books I'd recommend for this, probably in this order:
  • A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster, as a good relatively lightweight introduction to design thinking.
  • The Art of Game Design, by Jesse Schell - the best practical course in design thinking I've ever seen.
  • Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman - a foundation for most current game design thinking.
    There are other great books out there, but these three will set you off in the right direction. As a practical way to learn to apply this thinking, I'd recommend writing notes about the games you play from the perspectives taught in these books. Learn the theory by reading about it, recognize how it's working in the games you play by writing about it (even if just for yourself), and then try to apply this thinking to the game you're designing and building in the engine you're learning.

    Do these things, and you'll be an impressive candidate, and well on your way to becoming a good designer. At that point, the degree you choose really comes down to the specific areas in yourself you'd like to strengthen. I've worked with designers who earned degrees in architecture, film, english literature, philosophy, computer science, experimental music, and game design. Truthfully, few people will be swayed one way or another by the particular degree - they'll want to see your work and your ability to think. Above all, listen to those people here who are telling you to learn both sides of the coin - how to think about and write about design, and how to build running software - they're absolutely right that you need both.
u/DiggyDog · 9 pointsr/gamedev

Hey there, I'm a game designer working in AAA and I agree with /u/SuaveZombie that you'll probably be better off with a degree in CS. BUT... don't give up on wanting to be a designer!

 

You should realize that it's not giving up on your dream at all, in fact, it's great advice for how to reach that dream. A designer with an engineering background is going to have a lot more tools at their disposal than one who doesn't.

 

Design is way more than just coming up with a bunch of cool, big ideas. You need to be able to figure out all the details, communicate them clearly to your teammates, and evaluate how well they're working so you can figure out how to make something people will enjoy. In fact, working on a big game often feels like working on a bunch of small games that all connect.

Take your big game idea and start breaking it down into all the pieces that it will need to be complete. For example, GTA has systems for driving and shooting (among many other things). Look at each of those things as its own, smaller game. Even these "small" parts of GTA are actually pretty huge, so try to come up with something as small as possible. Like, super small. Smaller than you think it needs to be. Seriously! You'll eventually be able to make big stuff, but it's not the place to start. Oh, and don't worry if your first game(s) suck. They probably will, and that's fine! The good stuff you make later will be built on the corpses of the small, crappy games you made while you were learning.

 

If you're truly interested in design, you can learn a lot about usability, player psychology, and communication methods without having to shell out $17k for a degree. Same goes for coding (there are tons of free online resources), though a degree will help you get in the door at companies you might be interested in and help provide the structure to keep you going.

 

Here's some books I recommend. Some are specific to games and some aren't, but are relevant for anything where you're designing for someone besides yourself.

 

Universal Principles of Design

The Design of Everyday Things

Rules of Play

The Art of Game Design This and the one below are great books to start with.

A Theory of Fun This is a great one to start with.

Game Feel

• Depending on the type of game you're making, some info on level design would be useful too, but I don't have a specific book to recommend (I've found pieces of many books and articles to be useful). Go play through the developer commentary on Half-Life 2 or Portal for a fun way to get started.

 

Sounds like you're having a tough time, so do your best to keep a positive attitude and keep pushing yourself toward your goals. There's nothing to stop you from learning to make games and starting to make them on your own if that's what you really want to do.

Good luck, work hard!

u/Sentient68k · 4 pointsr/oculus

It might be slightly shameless but you're at least being very upfront and honest about your project. I would also say you are realistic in your funding goal. It might be best to make it clear next time that you're the developer when you post these things as Reddit tends to be a place that isn't too thrilled about unclear self-promotion.

I would say a working demo of the game would be best but all things considered it doesn't sound like you'll really have one relatively soon. I would say a video of yourself that's maybe accompanied by some 3D renders of assets you've made for the game and an explanation of your overall design would be good.

But most of all I would dial down your expectations. It sounds like you have a lot to learn in this project and I mean it in the nicest way when I say 20 karts, 10 characters, and 15 tracks is probably more than you'll be able to handle. I would aim for a much smaller and more realistic goal - perhaps just 3 of each for now. Remember that creating all of those things will involve not just modeling and animating them but also balancing them out so they are all fun to play with. Really you don't need that much if your game is fun. Check out "Lethal League" as a good example of how you can make a really great game with very little. There's only a small selection of characters but they worked to make them distinct and fun to play!

There's also a book I definitely recommend to you that you will probably find very useful in planning out your game and figuring out the steps you need to take:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses will teach you a lot about the process of actually making and designing a game from scratch. In fact I may recommend holding off on your indiegogo campaign until you've read at least a good portion of this book. I think it will help you clarify your idea to yourself which will in turn make it easier to clarify to potential backers.

u/Torus-shaped_Donut · 3 pointsr/gamedesign
When you say "2D rpg" we all have a different view on what you might mean. You probably mean numbers in a single player game, but the thing is, the more detail you give, the better. Are there any items? Is the amount of items nearly infinite, do you pick some prefixes, suffixes like in Diablo? Are there classes in your game? Do they have a unique purpose, different play-style? I'll try not to focus on multiplayer, because it's highly improbable that it is in your game. And even if we know nothing about your game.. There are still a lot of useful tricks and rules about balance.

 

Numerical relationships
Firstly, math, excel, custom tools.
Most things are numbers. The player has 5 health, is that a lot? No idea. Enemies might deal 500 damage, maybe they deal 1 damage. This leads to NUMERICAL RELATIONSHIPS. How does one stat work with others? Make diagrams showing enemy damage vs player health and you'll see how many hits the player can take in a quick succession in some part of your game.
There are a lot of numerical relationships. Linear, Identity, Triangular, Polynomial, Exponential, Logarithmic. Try to figure out what works best. You can see a lot of information scanning through diagrams in the Reverse Design: Diablo 2, make sure to check out the other pages, because I just gave a link to the beginning. Also check out Ian Schreiber's GDC talk A Course About Game Balance.

 

Expected Values
Use expected values, they are a very powerful balancing tool.
Lets say we have some kind of board game and the players pick cards from one deck of cards.
Player A picks a card:
You gain 2 gold.
Player B picks a card:
If you have at least 2 buildings, gain 3 gold. Otherwise gain 1 gold.
Oh well, Player B didn't have 2 buildings, he got only 1 gold. Did he get a worse card? Maybe yes, maybe no. How do you even treat calculate things like this? Well.. If the players played this game 100000 times in a row, how often would one card be better than the other? Or.. How often does a player have at least 2 buildings? Maybe players have 2 buildings about 70% of the time, which means that on average, in 70% cases that player gets 3 gold and in 30% cases players get 1 gold. Of course, if you pick a SPECIFIC case, you get 3 or 1, but hopefully you get the point.
Expected value of card1:
100% 2 = 2 [gold]*
Expected value of vard2:
70% 3 + 30% 1 = 2.4 [gold]
Hey, maybe card2 isn't that bad after all? It actually is better than card1!
Of course there are many other relationships, maybe gold is only good at the beginning of the game and worthless later, check out how the expected value changes over time, in turn 1, turn 2, or after 10 minutes of play and so on. Maybe on your turn the chance to have 2+ buildings is 0% or only 10%, but it gets higher over time.

 

Treating everything like numbers
Now that you know expected values, just treat everything like a number! Make sure that all players feel that the game is fair. In single player games, make sure that all characters have same power level. One way to do it is to assign a value to each attribute or ability and make sure that it adds up to the same number for all characters.

Base Value | Health | Damage | MoveSpeed
--------|:--------:|---------:|---------:
Low | 1| 2 | 2
Medium | 3 | 3 | 3
High | 4| 5 | 4

Then look at the starting values of your classes and check if they same the same or similar total power.

Class | Health | Damage | MoveSpeed | Total
--------|:--------:|---------:|---------:|---------:
Warrior | High (4) | Low (2) | Low (2) | 8
Archer | Medium (3) | Medium (3) | Medium (3) | 9
Mage | Low (1) | High (5) | Low (2) | 8

From these made up stats, it looks like the archer is the best character. Does playtesting support this? Maybe I got the table wrong, it needs a lot of iterations to get it right.

 

Randomness
You might want to add some randomness (which means probability, which means expected value again). When people win, they will think they are good. When they lose, they can always blame it on bad luck. This is a very powerful feeling that works for a lot of casual players. Hearthstone might be a good example, if not a bit too extreme.

 

Rock Paper Scissors
You can also use rock-paper-scissors mechanics. Card games have it, strategy games have it. The most common example is archers beat pikeman, pikeman beat cavalry, cavalry beats archers. Just don't make it too obvious or straightforward, just enough to prevent players from going full-on one thing. For example, look at armor and damage types in Warcraft 3, you can't just go and produce the same unit all the time.

 

Diminishing returns
"is the decrease in the marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant", which in RPGs it can mean that the first 100 points in strength increase your damage by 5 per point, but above 100 strength they only increase it by 3 per point. Sure, the math is usually more complex, just an example. Even Blizzard uses this in Diablo 2 and 3.

 

Choices and dominant strategies
Giving players a lot of options is generally good, but if goals can be achieved in many ways it can lead to dominant strategies. Even if you give 5 options (you can shoot an enemy, shoot a chandelier to make it drop on enemies, sneak past them, use dialogue to avoid fights) players might pick the "best" one, even if it is boring. This is a kind of a balance problem. Make sure nothing is the best in every case, but make sure the player doesn't have to change weapons every 10 seconds in order to be efficient or to progress.

 

Proper level of challenge
When you make it too hard, people will get frustrated.
When you make it too easy, people will get bored.
In addition to that, you will have different types of players and they will get better over time. This is one reason why you need to know your target audience, know what your average player will be and how much time are they realistically willing to play your game.

 

The problem here is that the players will get better over time and you need to keep them challenged. You can have a game with waves, where the game gets harder with every wave, thus increasing difficulty all the time. This leads to a problem of boring early waves, maybe give pro players an option to skip the early parts of your game so they don't get bored and just quit the game. You can have difficulty levels and just let the player pick. It might seem I'm getting off topic here, but "too easy" and "too hard" are balance problems as well and you need to keep that "just right" level all the time.

 

Sources
- GDC - A Course About Game Balance
- Art of Game Design - A book of lenses
- And more.
u/Freddex · 2 pointsr/gameai

I can see how AI is a really neat goal!
However, I would do small steps. AI is more of a Computer Science problem than a programming problem, so you'll need a different set of skills to make useful AI.
I am normally a big advocate of the trial-and-error approach, but I don't think it's quite as feasible for learning AI/Machine Learning.

My advice:

  • Start with programming. There are countless approaches to programming and I'm sure /r/learnprogramming will be happy to help you pick one. It's a good place!

  • Go on with basic Computer Science. Trying to accomplish something in AI without the basics ready to hand is like digging a hole with a spoon. This is your spade. Udacity has a nice, interactive course: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101

  • You're getting good! If you're still into this, now you might have a good shot at AI. Again, Udacity has a cool course: https://www.udacity.com/course/ud120 This one is very general though. As for resources more specific to Game AI, there are some nice books, and here's one example: http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Millington/dp/0123747317/

    This might seem daunting to you, but I don't mean to demoralize you. It's quite a nice journey of the mind, so to say.

    So yeah, best of luck with your plans!
u/CheesecakeMilitia · 2 pointsr/Games

> I haven't heard of Chris Franklin so I'll check him out.

He's fantastic! I especially love that he promotes many games I haven't otherwise heard of.

> I couldn't really follow this tbh...

Yeah, sorry. I literally mean he uses first-person perspective too much, as in "I thought this." This is another academic writing thing, though I understand that YouTube video essays are inherently more personable than that medium of discussion. Reviewers should try to wring out their biases when analyzing text (text here meaning the content of the game, not literal text). None of the reviewers I mentioned fully abstain from this, but (like I said) Joseph Anderson seems to embrace his anecdotal perspective. This is a hard concept to fully communicate, but it's probably the cornerstone for why I'd label his style unprofessional. It's also a big factor in why his videos seem dense with so much filler - an essayist really doesn't need to qualify their statements with "I think..." when everything they say is already inherently coming from their point of view. And I do think the other reviewers I mentioned constitute a form of academic writing on games, just one that's more accessible.

> I haven't played the game mind you

Yeah, and that's another academic writing thing - analysis should be written for people who are already familiar with what's being analyzed. I still enjoy analysis videos of games I haven't played, but I shouldn't be the target demographic in that case.

> I don't get the impression these statements are designed to provoke...

They probably aren't, but it's reflective of an unprofessional writing style. Using words like "worst" and "best" rarely promotes interesting discussion.

> I strongly (and passionately) disagree with this...

I know it's hard work to make videos and it sucks when their points are rendered irrelevant (if I could find that CGP Grey video where he talks about someone else planning a video exactly like one of his and losing all steam once Grey's video steals all the attention, I'd link it). However, the date of publication is everything, and I'm sure Joseph has at least gone to Korok forest since the 1.1 update - since that's where the consistently worst framerate drops were - and seen the drastic improvements. It came too late to help his experience with the game, but the author has a responsibility to mention it since the world he's publishing the video in is the world where the 1.1 patch has been out for weeks. Or, you know, cut that section entirely since everyone else covered it at release and he said nothing new about framerates, anyway.

> I'm watching the video you linked now...

KingK suffers from many of my same complaints I just wrote up, here. Here's a comment I left on his Wind Waker video that I'll just quote here in its entirety because it's easier to quote than link YouTube comments - it's really not necessary to read but I believe I'm consistent in my complaints given that this was written a month ago.

> As a fan of a lot of these analyses-type videos and having watched your OoT, MM, and now WW videos, I have a few critiques. Main thing: be more succinct. It comes in a variety of forms - especially the times when you're trying to be humorous (brevity being the soul of wit and all). I'd pretty much recommend cutting out a lot of your humor except for the hardest hitting jokes - otherwise the jokes become tiresome and make me want to just watch matthewmatosis's reviews for the umpteenth time. Also cut waaaay down on the swearing - it doesn't make the viewer respect you any more, it doesn't make you any funnier or relatable, and it can at worst be off-putting when the viewer's trying to take you seriously. The emotional tones should in general be more reserved (like during your rant on the minigames, which I thought brought up rather valid, critical points) as it changes the tone from "discussion" to "rant" and makes your points less respectable. In general, though, I feel like you belabor many of your specific points. Just listening to you explain your bias towards this game was agonizing in the beginning as I got the gist in 10 seconds what you took 45 seconds to describe. Like at 28:11 , you don't have to defend yourself as "not being a game designer" - just assume your authority on the subject and don't waste time (and make me question your ethos) with such an empty point about why you bring up your points. This is a bit of a snobbish acadamia-sort of observation, but I'd try to limit your usage of first and especially second person pronouns - the audience can think for themselves and the more you bring yourself into the equation, the less impartial your stance seems. Also, some of your footage and editing seems ever-so slightly ill-timed, like at 36:11 when you don't actually show the doors in the room unlocking in a linear order, or even earlier where you mention how nice the great sea theme is while playing dragon roost in the background (I know you played great sea before then, but still). Another acadamia-obnoxious-observation: there's a lot of retelling of what happens in the game (or the text, rather) when you can skip over a lot of that as a reviewer. With video games, this point is less important and I did appreciate your overview of sidequests that I never bothered with, but your explanations can definitely be more succinct (as can everything). It becomes overbearing when you go through each boss in order saying little else than "they're easy". Overall, I seriously think this video could be 15 minutes shorter with all the filler and repetition cut out - I definitely wouldn't be shy about leaving more on the cutting room floor next time. All that's to say I think this was a decent analysis, and me writing that up that critique of your presentation was also a means for me to further reflect on my own analysis video I'm developing and its room for improvement. Thanks for the video, and I look forward to Skyward Sword.

> Remember that bit you said about Anderson taking controversial stances?...

Touché, but the little criticisms I've levied about un-academic writing and longwindedness do amount to comparative unprofessionalism. He does show why "he thinks" combat is shallow (he seriously needs to cut out those "he thinks" types of qualifiers), but he can get all of his points across in a far more concise manner.

I'm going to throw in a new pedantic complaint real quick: why does he center the text of his lists in the video? His lists start with numbers! Numbered lists are always aligned by the . or ) which separates the numbers from their text! Just... frame composition, man. It's like getting upset with kearning and ligatures, but damn if it doesn't have an easy solution to look more professional.

> I don't know. It just sounds like you want more videos by the other people you mentioned...

I do, but

> I'm surprised so many people (not just you by any stretch) lump these guys all in together...

/r/videogameanalysis is the subreddit for that. It is a new phenomenon that sort of started with Egoraptor's jokey Megaman X video and morphed into serious discussion videos from the home grown video game community - not academics from other media trying to apply their understanding of something like film to games. It's taking actual textbooks on game design and distilling them for the masses. I'm amazed whenever I see a new person that enters this "scene" and brings up original points with new personality. Noah Caldwell-Gervais is an example of one of these types whom I respect yet don't enjoy watching. Joseph Anderson I can't respect when he doesn't meet the bar set by other "video game analyst" -types. There's of course something less serious about having these discussions on democratic platforms like YouTube and Reddit, but seeing Anderson's videos getting the praise they get worries me about the future quality of this entertainment and these discussions.

> If I had to sum it up, I'd say matthewmatosis makes me change the way I think about a game on a deep level. Anderson points out what I feel like I should have noticed myself.

That's actually a pretty good sum-up that should negate everything I said in the previous (pretentious) paragraph. They speak to different audiences, but that seems like such a cheap conclusion when they're both in-depth, highly analytical long-form reviews.

I don't know - I think I'm a hate-watching troll at this point, and that bugs me. I can say "people should have higher standards" but at what point is that just me saying "people should have my standards"? It feels like wading through muck to find the golden nuggets of insight in Joseph's videos. Other people don't have that experience. Ok. This isn't a profound statement about the degradation of knowledge about games, but the more I try to argue my point the more it seems like that's the stance I'm taking. I just really don't enjoy his videos, and I probably shouldn't think about it beyond there.

u/ELManim · 2 pointsr/animation

Hi, sorry for the late response

Maya is definitely the right place to start if your looking at 3d animation. (http://blog.animationmentor.com/5-reasons-why-3d-animators-should-know-autodesk-maya/)
Im sure you can find plenty of basic tutorials on using maya and getting familiar with its work space, though as an animator you'll only need a very rudimental knowledge of the software.
Learning other things like modeling, rigging texturing ect will make you more employable but mostly with smaller companies where you need a more generalist skill set. Bigger studios everyone will have very specialist roles so no one will care if your show reel has no lighting. Maya is a very powerful piece of software so just stick to learning one thing at a time.

Since you are just starting out i would recommend this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Cheat-Maya-2014-Techniques/dp/0415826594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451708861&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+cheat+in+maya

Its a great book to learn with as it keeps things simple with clear instructions so you can gain a basic understanding of the principles in animation whilst letting you get familiar with maya.
The 11 second club also has a lot of good resources such as these exercises if you want to get started right away
http://www.11secondclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=19776

The resources tab has a list of good free rigs as well though a full body rig would most certainly be very hard for a begginer to animate

Animation takes a lot of time to learn so feel free to post more questions. Good luck and have fun with it. If you find its something you want to pursue more then i would look at books like "The animators survival kit" or "acting for animators" and "timing for animation"

u/corysama · 3 pointsr/gamedev

If you want to know specifically about Doom, then you want to read this and this

For collision detection in general, Real Time Collision Detection really is a great book and covers all of the data structures I mentioned. (Note about the upcoming 2nd edition)

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/forum/7-math-and-physics/ should have accumulated some good information over the years.

Personally, I focus on dense grids for constrained situations and AABB-trees for general solutions.

For example, a 2D game with a reasonable max level size can be handled easily with a dense grid. Just pick a bucket (grid square) size and make a big ole 2D array of linked lists pointers to collision nodes that touch each grid square. That sounds like a lot of memory. But, if you do the math, it's not much on modern machines. Linked lists are bad for cache, but you can make that better by having each node store 7 pointers to collisions + 1 pointer to the next node. At 8 bytes each, 8 pointers is 64 bytes which is 1 cache line. Don't malloc the nodes individually. Pre-alloc an array of them and keep the free nodes in a linked list using the node.next attribute.

For more flexible situations, having a hierarchy of axis-aligned bounding boxes tends to work as well as any other solution. By stuffing 4 or 8 boxes in each tree node you not only gain efficient use of cache lines, you also have the opportunity to arrange the data to make SSE SIMD intrinsics work out.

A fun trick is to separate static vs dynamic objects into their own trees, but then hook them back to together at the top. So, you can pre-bake a slow, carefully balanced tree for the static geo. But, leave one free slot in the top-most node of that tree. During the game, maintaining a dynamic tree is hard, so make compromises for update speed in the dynamic tree. But, once you have the dynamic tree, you can point the static tree's spare pointer at the dynamic tree and BAM, one unified tree!

You can also do stuff like this where you pre-calc a good BVH for each object individually, then insert those small, static trees into an overarching dynamic tree as the objects move around.

u/benjibaboon · 0 pointsr/IWantToLearn

I've worked in Game Development for several years now, so hopefully I will have something useful to say.

I'd start by asking, whats your end goal here? To be a game designer, or a level designer? To be able to make games on your own? Or to work on large AAA titles as a developer in a big team? Do you want to work on console, PC mobile, social or any of these?

If you want to be a game designer, understanding programming helps, but it's not the be all and end all. If it's console or PC games I'd look at games that come with level editors and try and make some great levels, and develop an understanding of how this works. Level design is a good entry level role to get in to the industry.

I am told this book is also very good for a design perspective - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348088653&sr=8-1

I'd also try and develop a good understanding of how a social game, or a freemium mobile app is different in design to a paid app or game, and how designing around monetisation drives these games.

If you want to make games on your own - or in a small group, you are looking at something like Flash, GameMaker or Unity. Here is a site with a load of stuff that can help you,

http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/

Finally, if you want to do programming, I'd recommend learning a basic entry level language, but not from a games perspective. Just learn about syntax, and fuctions. Then, once you have some confidence, try and write a Space Invaders clone. If you can do this, (get some feedback on it and then nail it), you've got a great thing to show people your commitment and passion, and will help get you a JNR coders job.

u/slvr13 · 2 pointsr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

First off, I think this is the most elaborate contest I've ever participated in, so congratulations for that :P Fear cuts deeper than swords. I hope some of my items are awesome enough for some extra credit ;) Also I wasn't sure if duplicates are allowed. I will revise if necessary.

1.) Something grey and it's been on my wishlist.

2.) Rain, well not technically rain, she is a water bender :P Previously on my wishlist.

3.) Unusual, I think this is something I would use like twice a year. With ice cream or cereal.

4.) Someone else My sister and I want to start playing tabletop games. Previously on my wishlist.

5.) "Book" I took a little bit of liberty with this one because it's a graphic novel. But it's Batman, so...(Previously on my wishlist).

6.) Under a dollar.

7.) Cats There's a catbus in it, which is pretty much the best part of the movie. Previously on my wishlist.

8.) Beautiful As a Star Wars fan having the original trilogy on Blu Ray would be beautiful to me. I love high definition movies, especially ones that are aesthetically pleasing. Previously on my wishlist.

9.) Movie As a Browncoat, I would encourage anyone who has a remote interest in Sci-Fi to give this a chance. Previously on my wishlist.

10.) Zombie tool I don't think this needs explanation.

11.) (Updated) Useful for future. I have a desire to create meaningful video games. Previously on wish list.

12.) Add on I actually had this on my wishlist but removed it because add-on items are lame.

13.) Most expensive As previously stated, I want to be a game developer/designer so not only would it be fun to play with, I could create with it too. Previously on list.

14.) Bigger than breadbox Total in the box it is bigger than a breadbox. Previously on wishlist.

15.) Bigger than a golf ball It's a large book. Previously on wishlist.

16.) Smells good As a guy...I enjoy the scent of lavender.

17.) Safe for children toy I don't think this needs any introduction of why it's awesome.

18.) Back to school drawing helps keep me sane. Previously on my list.

19.) Current obsession I'm a noob to tabletop games. But have been wanting to get into it obsessively within the past month or so. And this also takes my love of A Song of Ice and Fire into the mix. Previously on list.

20.) [Amazing] (http://www.amazon.com/Sony-XBR-65X900A-65-Inch-120Hz-Ultra/dp/B00BSREQI6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1376281533&sr=8-4&keywords=4k+tv) I've seen one of these in person at the mall and it literally made me stop walking the resolution was so incredible. I know it's as expensive as dicks...but man...when these are affordable...

Bonus 2) Made in Oregon I would have put Tillamook Ice Cream, since it's pretty awesome...but alas not on Amazon.

Edit: Changed an item because I saw it won't count because it's a duplicate.

u/csp256 · 21 pointsr/cscareerquestions

I know a good bit about this... engine programming specifically.

I have a physics degree and a standing offer to work at Naughty Dog. A good friend of mine from undergrad also has a physics degree, and is an engine developer at Naughty Dog. He is currently rewriting the companion AI for The Last of Us 2. And because it is only 7pm on a Saturday, I do mean currently. He is cited in the definitive text Game Engine Architecture. We talk often, and he even comes to me for help with especially tricky problems. I also have a copy of the 100+ pages of notes he used to study for the Naughty Dog interview... PM me your email for a copy.

This is what I suggest:

Step 1: Read Game Engine Architecture.

Step 2: Read Game Engine Architecture again, but slower this time.

Step 3: Learn 3D math. (There are other resources too, but one way or another you should know literally all the content in that book, because you will be asked 3d math questions during the interview, and if you're not you should keep interviewing.)

Learn how your computer works, from the ground up. Learn how to write extremely performant C++. This includes bitbashing, SIMD, caches, concurrency, etc. Not theory; real world experience. Learn how the GPU works. Learn computer graphics. Learn computer graphics for real. Learn collision detection.

Make a large number of small demos quickly. Decreasing development time is extremely important in the games industry. Make A*, a raytracer, a fibers threading engine, a shadow mapper, a FSM engine, etc.

Here is a recent question my friend asked me (as a brain teaser; he had already solved it):

> quickly check whether a uint64_t x is equal to any of 16 unique other uint64_ts

> bool f(uint64_t x, uint64_t a[16]);

> it will be called with the same a[16] every time, but varying x

Hint: you expect >99% of calls to this function to return false. Post your answer and I'll tell you what's wrong with it. The obvious solution is incorrect. Same is true for anyone else, by the way.

He recently came to me with a different problem: using all the time and compute in the world, encode a unit quaternion into 32 bits such that decode on the GPU is extremely fast, and minimize the max error possible. We managed to improve on the state of the art in both respects. No hints here, but I know some people you should talk to if you can show me a better solution. :)

Study games. Play games. Critique games. Love and breathe games. Because that industry will eat you up and chew you out, so you better be prepared to love every single second of crunch time. If you love it, you can do it, but it will torture you if you don't.

It is hard, but if you love it, and not just the idea of it, you can do it. However, as you can probably guess by my breakdown engine developers tend to be very experienced. My friend is an extreme anomaly at being as young as he is and an engine developer. It is more the type of thing you start trying to interview for with ~decade of experience.

u/Spacew00t · 5 pointsr/gamedev

SubLight

Build your ship, hire crew, and voyage across the stars... only there's no fancy warp drives, wormholes, or faster than light travel. You're tasked with managing your ship on the generations long trip between each star system, keeping them happy, healthy, and under control!

Play it in your browser!

Or download the Windows, OSX, or Linux versions!

This week was spent on a lot of behind the scenes stuff, namely the crew AI. I did a full write up of the new AI on IndieDB, full of fun graphs, but here's a brief excerpt:

>I knew what kind of actions I wanted my crew to do, from various hijinks like joy-riding the turbo-lift, to full out cannibalism when starving! I figured the AI I was looking for was similar to "The Sims", "SimCity", or "Roller Coaster Tycoon". After glancing through the glossary of Artificial Intelligence for Games, I found mentions of "The Sims", and after some investigation, got exactly what I was looking for, Goal-Oriented Behavior.

>In brief, the crew have a limited number of Goals they are trying to satisfy, through Actions made available by modules on the ship. For my crew, or "Simunauts" as I've called them, they have these goals:


>* Eat

  • Heal
  • Sleep
  • Urinate
  • Relax
  • Shower
  • Entertain
  • Socialize
  • Work

    >Each of these goals have an associated value that increases over time and through interacting with the ship. A hungry "Simunaut" may hit up the cafeteria module to lower their Eat goal at the cost of increasing their Urinate goal.

    >Here's a fun list of some basic actions available to the crew and you can see how important these goals are over time from this graph.

    New:

  • Completely overhauled crew AI using new Goal-Oriented Behaviour system
  • Parts now contain certain actions that they make accessible to the crew
  • The current happiness of your population is now displayed in the form of a smiley face in the top left corner
  • Important events, like the crew resorting to cannibalism, are displayed briefly onscreen
  • Added a new song by Ian Earle!

    Known Issues:

  • Some of the stats for the ship building scene are broken due to the new AI logic, those will be implemented again next week!

    What's coming next week:

  • A new UI for the Ship Builder
  • New parts: Knick Knack Storage, Orion Pulsed Propulsion Drive, Radex Protection Platter
  • Detailed breakup of crew needs (so you can tell they're hungry before eating everyone).
  • Another original music track from SubLight's musician, Ian Earle a.k.a OogalaBoogala
  • More??? Suggest what you'd like to see in the comments!

    Thanks again so much for taking a look at this weeks alpha build of SubLight! Can't wait to hear your feedback and leave some for others!

    As always, you can follow us at these fine locations:

    SubLight on IndieDB | Twitter @Spacew00t | LunraGames.com
u/drakonite · 16 pointsr/gamedev

You may want to narrow that down a bit, but okay, here are some highlights, with amazon links to help disambiguate.

u/fandangalo · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

I'd say it's a pretty complex set of conditions that need to be met, ranging from game DNA, the technical scope, cost of the project, and the market viability/RoI (unless you have a grant or are making an art game).

Recently, I've really gotten into Scott Rigby's work because he seems to be on to a testable idea surrounding the DNA, but I also pull from Jesse Schell and others--I just prefer Rigby because he's testing the ideas, not just arguing for them. Using his framework, I can place features into different categories before writing up actual design specs, so before the feature's nuts and bolts even exist, I know where it fits into the machine ("This aids in the competency part", "This aids in the autonomy part", etc.)

The technical scope and cost go roughly hand-in-hand after you've got the DNA and design specs going on, but you can do things in stages. Make a prototype with programmer art, the most essential features, and test it. If that does well, pull from the plan and add more based on cost. Test again, etc. Build up the team as you need. If something isn't playtesting well, figure out if its worth it to double down or scrap. And if you're scrapping something central to the DNA, then figure out if you can replace it with a functionally similar feature or scrap the game.

The market viability and RoI can be more or less important depending on the type of game. If it's something like Jason Rohrer's Gravitation, then your scope and technical cost is smaller, and you might have a grant, so there's less risk to sell. If you're making a F2P mobile game, you're at the exact opposite--business is much more at the forefront and really has to be for a financially successful game. AAA are less extreme vs. F2P, although there's high investment which certainly puts the pressure on, but the business model isn't there as much. An Indie PC, crowd-funded darling focuses much more on the developer/community relations and how the community, when treated as investors, have a voice in development, like any other investors would. So there's complex constraints there too (the public may not understand a decision at first or might disagree with you, do you explain and try to win them over or listen to the sway of the crowd?)

As you mentioned, there's also platform concerns that will change the design. A mobile phone experience is different than a tablet experience. The market's on those platforms react differently to different products. I wouldn't make a game with features that indie PC gamers would love on mobile because the market just isn't there. Likewise, I wouldn't make a console game on mobile phones, because that mistakes what people want out of mobile phone experiences over a long period of time. Other features, like VR, come with huge unknowns because we're just starting to work in that space.

Finally, I would say, "Make something you would like." and "Make something you can sleep with at night." If you want to make something like Smash, do it, but put your own spin, since you can't make Smash (unless you work at Nintendo). If you work in F2P, make something you would like to play, not just something you think will make money. And, paradoxically, realize that sometimes you aren't the consumer (AAA and mobile F2P come to mind), and in those cases, playtest and listen to the people more than your gut.

u/enalios · 19 pointsr/gamedev

Eh. It's a fine method, it's not the only method and I'd probably advise using multiple categorization systems to look at your game. Yes they mention that it's only one of many but I don't think they really highlighted that particular point enough.

You can find many different patterns in game design if you look - but games are not really made of such discrete parts.

So yeah look at the planning, improvising and practice involved in your game. But also look at the different challenges it provides, or any of a hundred different lenses.

Game design taxonomies each present themselves as the way to look at games, but they're each just a way of looking at games and you should use a variety of different points of view when analyzing or otherwise working on your design.

But because I liked the video: my game Honor Bound is heavy on improvisation, and practice - but that practice is only to support the planning you will do.

In Honor Bound you play rock paper scissors but you choose a Class that has Abilities that may encourage you to use one move over another. Also you can tell your opponent what move you're about to play - you can psyche them out or gain a damage bonus for telling the truth.

There's a lot of improvising against your opponent's strategy. Previous experience (practice) will inform you how each Class is played and you will plan around that at the start. However this will always go back to improvising against how your particular opponent is mixing things up to try and psyche you out.

u/azimir · 15 pointsr/linux

My first reaction was to run away from this question, but it's really not that tough in the end.

The classic textbook is "Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach" by Russel and Norvig. That will give you the agent based philosophy of building AI agents.

There are lots of game-based tutorials for making AI agents. It gives the development a nice goal and they're fun to work with. A few random places to look:

http://www.raywenderlich.com/24824/introduction-to-ai-programming-for-games
http://aigamedev.com/
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596005559.do
http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Millington/dp/0123747317

Once you have the basics of search, pattern detection, flocking, reinforcement learning, supervised vs unsupervised learning. Then I'd suggest you start looking into the more interesting bits. Right now the really cool terms you should search for are: deep learning, deep belief networks, convolutional neural networks, random forests, biologically inspired algorithms. There's more, but those will keep you occupied for plenty of time.

There's lots of pre-built AI packages you can dig through and find tutorials for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_projects
Weka
Orange
PyBrain
OpenCV

You can also find AI based programming competitions which give you that "I'm better than thou" feeling as you hack together algorithms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitions_and_prizes_in_artificial_intelligence

This is really cool stuff, but there's a lot to learn about. Dive in and try using tools. Sometimes you'll want to jump off of a bridge in frustration, but then it'll work and it'll be almost life changing at times (not the jumping off the bridge bit, but that would be too I guess).

Good luck and have fun out there.

u/k_Reign · 1 pointr/gamedev

Thanks a lot! I actually have that first book bookmarked but I forgot to put it on the list.

I'm leaning closer and closer to purchasing a copy of The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and it's one I'm actually really curious about.

On Game Physics Pearls - I peeked into the first few pages and it looks like something that I will pick up once I have a bit of experience in that area...does that sound about right or would you say it could cater to beginners fairly well?

Game Physics seems like it may be a bit more beginner-friendly but you are right about it not being a tutorial, which is kind of important for me at this step. I'm definitely bookmarking this until I know a bit more on the subject, though. I'll be taking a Physics course next September so it may be a good time to look at it after that!

Real-Time Shadows looks very interesting but I'm unsure to the difficulty level of it to a beginner. It sounds like I need to brush up on my math after three years of not using it very often at all.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

*I'll be taking a course on Linear Algebra here in the coming semesters, but that book does sound like a good introduction along with how it works within 3D programming. I'll keep a look-out on that for a while; do you think it would be very worthwhile to read that before something like Real-Time Rendering?

u/EngineerVsMBA · 1 pointr/truegaming

Not totally sure about requiring a massive budget. You would for the full realization of your dream, but there are many intermediate steps that can be turned into games. Have you played Pandemic? It could be something like that, where there are a ton of choices, but in a very manageable manner. It has a sophisticated yet elegant underlying ruleset that makes it workable.

It all depends on how you want the player to interact with the game. 3rd person action? Implausable. Top-down city sim? Mid-core budget. (Think Tropico). Text-based adventure? Inde game.

As I said, the text-based can evolve. Even if it was simply a choose-your-own-adventure style game, it would be entertaining. Remember the lense of a toy (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965). First, you create a toy. See if the toy is fun. If it is fun, then you can create a game using the toy.

u/gavinb · 1 pointr/opengl

Well if you want to be the next Carmack, get cracking! :) You have a lot of ground to cover, such as: mathematics (matrices, linear algebra, etc), physics, artificial intelligence, real-time processing, multithreading, architecture, networking and protocols, rendering, sound, and much more!

It is certainly possible with enough time and dedication to develop your own engine. It's just that there are so many excellent engines already out there, that you would be competing with projects that have already invested many thousands of hours and have loads of titles already developed for them. Why not get involved with an existing project to start?

BTW I really like your idea of creating a FPS with one room and focusing on making that environment the richest possible, exploiting a wide variety of techniques. Do it!!

Is your ultimate goal to create an engine? Or to create a game? Remember, the engine is in many ways a means to an end - it's not much use without a game that uses it!

Either way, I think you would be well advised to get involved with one of the open source game engine projects, and start contributing. Once you've learned how they work, you will be in a much better position to design your own. And realistically, you can't really just design an engine without a game - you need to know how games work in the first place, and what features and architectural decisions and designs make for a good engine.

Consider joining:

u/LycaonTalks · 1 pointr/careerguidance

I used to hate math, too. Rest assured, you don't hate math, you hate the way you've been taught math. Math is beautiful and wonderful and every bit as lovely as the most eloquent of sonnets. There's true beauty in Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many primes, and in Cantor's proof that the infinity of the real numbers is greater than the infinity of the integers, or in any proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Math isn't about numbers, or equations, or multiplication tables, it's about seeing the beauty that comes from exploring a set of rules, be that algebra or calculus or geometry.

If you want to make video games, you've come to the right place. If you want to try it out, Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game jam, is coming up soon, and you can make something very simple for it to see if coding is for you. More than math, computer science is about problem solving and logic. The math is there, but that stuff can be done with calculators and Wolfram|Alpha. Even if you don't like code, you may like designing games, and if you do, you can make simpler games with less coding knowledge in GameMaker or Twine or Stencyl until you've built up enough of a portfolio to justify working with coders to make your designs become reality. (GameMaker, Twine, and Stencyl are all really mature tools at this point. GameMaker was used to make Hotline Miami, and Twine was used to make Depression Quest)

Note, however, that game design is not just being an "idea guy". Game design is real work involving real problem solving, playtesting, and a lot of study of the greats of the past, like any artistic endeavor. You'll want to play and dissect the great works of the past and see how they tick and why they're still memorable all these years later, read things like Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design", or Steve Swink's "Game Feel" to understand what games are and what they can be, so you can push those boundaries in new and exciting directions.

u/KarmaAdjuster · 11 pointsr/gamedesign

I'm honestly a little surprised you can't come up with anything of your own.

Some things that really stand out to me are...

  • The visuals are distractingly static.
  • The audio is non-existant (the clearing of your throat is actually a refreshing change of pace from the clicking on the keyboard)
  • It appears to be another flappy bird knock-off that fails to even capture what works well of the original much less improve on it.
  • There's no progression of difficulty, or even really any variation in the challenge of it.
  • There's no apparent objective beyond making the distance counter go higher, but it doesn't even look like your distance is saved.
  • The floating blocks feel completely out of place with the rest of the environment
  • There's a graphical glitch with the ground. It looks like the ground is just one big long piece that you're teleporting to the right side of the screen once you reach it's end.
  • The fail state is pretty jarring, and gives players no time for reflection or rest before throwing the player back into the fire.

    There's a variety of ways you can address these issues, but depending on what you want to do with this game would inform what solution would work best.

    Honestly the game looks like a programming exercise in recreating a primitive flappy bird (which is already pretty primitive), or maybe you're asking the internet to help you with a homework assignment. I would ask yourself some basic questions about what you are trying to achieve with this game? Define a goal or mission statement for your game. Once you have that, you should be able to better steer the direction of your game and provide you with the direction you seem to be seeking here. Also doing some research on what similar games in this genre have done may also prove illuminating for you. By looking at other games in the genre, you may find features in those games that you liked and want to emulate in yours.

    You may also find the following links useful

  • Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
  • The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lense
  • Extra Credits Youtube Channel
u/ode_ · 1 pointr/gamedesign

Yep, hit a block recently where I realized I really suck at game design (at least coming up with something that I can actually finish myself).

I can code anything, but actually coming up with a design of a simple game that is fun to play and can be developed by a single person has been hard. So I've backtracked a bit and realize that I have been focusing on learning how to make games so much that I never learned how to design them. So I am doing a lot more research and studying of games to realize what makes them good.

I've found http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965 (also has a free android app to go with it, definitely worth the download! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.schellgames.deckoflenses) to be excellent so far, and all the stuff I thought I knew that I took for granted (like why do we actually play games, what "fun" means or even what a "game" is) are revisited and makes me think a lot deeper when making design choices. Before I would just implement a bunch of features I thought were cool with a vague understanding with how it fits into the game as a whole.

u/Pogotross · 3 pointsr/gamegrumps

I think Arin likes The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition and either he or Jon liked Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation.

Personally my favorite game design resource is either Mark Rosewater's design articles or his podcast. I prefer his podcast but both covers most of the same information. MaRo is the lead designer for Magic: The Gathering so a lot of the articles are about MtG specifically or about tabletop games but nearly all the general design podcasts are worthwhile. Most importantly, he has around twenty years of successful (and unsuccessful) design under his belt, so he isn't just talking in vague generalities or theories. He has examples backing up pretty much everything he talks about including, and maybe most importantly, times he thought he was doing the right then and messed up. I think anyone interested in game design should listen to the "Ten Things Every Game Needs" and "20 Lessons" series. You can hear his GDC version of the 20 Lessons here.

*: But the absolute best thing you can read on game design is a gamemaker tutorial. Theory is useless without execution.

u/Varixai · 29 pointsr/titanfall

The Art of Titanfall 2 had this to say about Pilot Classes:

>We're taking a step back into the earliest stages of gameplay development with these prototype Pilot sketches. "We weren't sure how the Pilots would be used yet, so we were trying all kinds of ideas from the tradional engineer classes to weird nonspecific designs," adds Art Director Joel Emslie.

>"One thing that we kept with the heavy Pilots was the idea of the robotic arm they wear on their backs to help them with tactical gear."

-
And about the flying one without legs:

>"An early concept for light pilots was to remove their legs entirely, but it seemed a bit too abstract in the end," says Joel Emslie. "We needed the Pilots to feel physically bound to the ground so that their moves could still have weight."


-
And that's not all - Some of the code for Pilot Classes was left in the game, including a detailed description of each class' role and weapons.

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Edit: The Pilot silhouettes on the "flying craft" may only be included for scale. They also appear without caption on a page labeled "Turrets & Drones" in the art book.

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Brad also uploaded a clean look at several decals/signage, and how they fit into the Titanfall world. (and another amazing album on iconography that warranted its own thread)

-
For his Titanfall 1 stuff, Brad uploaded a ton of amazing art on his personal website here.

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For other concept art and more - this is your hub.

-
Fun Fact: This glorious piece of art was the very first concept art made after Respawn was founded, by future Art Director Joel Emslie also by Brad Allen. Pretty crazy that the creature pictured made it into the final game. (Sources: The Final Hours of Titanfall and Brad Allen's site above)

u/huxtiblejones · 3 pointsr/pics

This is a complaint someone makes every single time there's a digital painting. You might not realize it, but it's a totally outdated and incorrect thing to say. Bear with me and I'll prove it. I know this is a big wall of text, but I'm trying to be exhaustive and answer every objection.

Digital painting is an accepted medium in the art world and every single artist who creates work like this calls it painting. Adobe itself agrees, in Photoshop you can arrange your workspace for painting. Wikipedia calls this digital painting. Books are published that teach digital painting techniques and every single artist in the industry calls them such. Wacom, the most ubiquitous maker of drawing tablets in the world, puts out tutorials for digital painting. You can argue semantics but understand that you are fighting a battle you will not win.

To call this 'digital image creation' or 'digital art' is non-descriptive and too generalized. Digital art is an umbrella term that includes disciplines like photo retouching, photo manipulation, digital photography, collage, graphic design, 3D modeling, architectural rendering, animation, and digital drawing and painting. Digital painting is the act of placing individual strokes on a virtual canvas using digital brushes to create an image. While some of the tools that a person could possibly use are not always found in traditional media, you can simulate real painting to a very high degree with programs like Painter and ArtRage. You can mix your paints on a palette just like you would do in real life, you can manipulate paint with a palette knife, you can dry brush, you can do washes, you can adjust the texture and thickness of your paint, you can emulate real media like canvas and watercolor paper.

I've been painting digitally for the last 9 years and I have been creating traditional art since I could hold a pencil. I've got a degree in Illustration and have been taught traditional media techniques alongside digital techniques and there are way more places of overlap than you might believe. For example, glazing is a technique where you paint black and white imagery and tint it with thin layers of paint to get color. A very common approach in Photoshop is to paint in greyscale and then glaze over your underpainting with a color overlay. While the tools might differ, the technique is identical. I feel like people who complain about this think that Photoshop painting involves filters and tons of artificial hand-holding. For some artists it might, but the majority of Photoshop painting is laying down strokes by hand using a pressure sensitive tablet. The most common artificial technique is to use a textured brush instead of a flat brush, but even then, that's very similar to using a distortion pedal on a guitar or using a lens on a camera to get a special effect.

If you ignored everything I wrote above, at the least I'd ask you to watch the following video. Feng Zhu is a well respected name in the digital painting scene, here's a tutorial I want to show you where he paints a landscape in a technique that reflects traditional painting. He's using a tablet which is a little screen or pad which you draw on with a stylus. It can sense the pressure of your stroke, the velocity, even the twist of your brush if you use the right tool. The only 'effect' he's using is a textured brush and a color picker rather than mixing tube paints. Skip ahead to around 16 minutes if you want to see his completed work. You cannot even argue that he's not painting if you listen to his tutorial, he's using the same concepts you're taught in plein air landscape painting and figure painting. There's no artificial usage of filters or tracing or painting over photos - it's a 100% hand created, stroke-by-stroke painting.

If you want my credentials, here's an example of an extremely tightly rendered Photoshop painting I did based off a photo I took: http://www.caycegoldberg.com/images/sirroderick.jpg

And here's one I did referenced off a photo of my cat in ArtRage using the oil paint brush on canvas: http://www.caycegoldberg.com/images/rambi-small.png

I don't use any kind of post-processing or artificial aids. I hand pick every single color I lay down and when I paint in Photoshop I only use the standard round brush and vary the hardness, flow, and size. In ArtRage I only use the oil paint brush and the palette knife.

There really is no sharp line between drawing and painting. You can make a figure on a canvas by painting it only with line, or you can draw with a pastel stick on its side, making large strokes and blending them together like paint. You can apply powdered graphite with a brush, and you can apply paint with a marker. You can water down ink and apply it with any tool you want, or you could stipple in oil paint. You can wipe out dirt with your fingers to create a lifelike portrait, or you can carefully drip paint into layers of resin and create art that straddles painting and sculpture at the same time. It's not all black and white, and to disqualify digital painting on the grounds that there's 'no paint' is just absurd.

u/gibmelson · 1 pointr/gamedesign

If you want something broader than just writing plot then looking into game design in general might be a good idea - and that of being a creative director. On this subject I recommend the book The Art of Game Design. You can also try find design documents for games you enjoy, maybe get in touch with and interview game designers working on games you like. I don't have any examples to give.

Sounds like you have your own ideas which is great, honestly the best way forward is to just invent your own structure that works for the game you want to create. You're looking for a format that is easy for you to organize and communicate to others. Focus on what you need right now, and the techniques and structure will follow.

u/TheVioletBarry · 3 pointsr/truegaming

For me it's not the inherent graphics (assuming you meant graphics to mean technically impressive renderings) themselves, but rather the general "look" of the game that matters. Part of that is the obvious response, "I like things that look good over things that don't," but I think there's another factor here that often gets overlooked, one which I find to be very important: gamefeel (there's a book about it that uses that term)

The virtual sensation of playing a game, I think, matters a lot more than it's given credit for, and the way a game "feels" to play is—as far as I know—entirely based on the sensory feedback the game provides, a large portion of which are its visuals. There's a reason action games use all those particle effects when you land a hit: the visual feedback changes the sensation of the hit. In other words, the aesthetics strongly affect the gameplay.

The Errant Signal episode "Kinaesthetics" articulates the concept of gamefeel (which he likes to term "kinaesthetics") very well. You should consider checking it out.

u/all_or_nothing · 3 pointsr/gamedev

I'm like you, I'm a programmer not a designer. I often times will get stuck because I feel the need to iterate on an idea over and over until it's perfect, but by that time I'm bored of it and I move on to something else. Unfortunately, there is no real way to know if a design is good until you've made something you can interact with. This is something that occurs quite frequently in the professional game design world as well. So, my solution has been to force myself to implement my initial designs so I can play it. Then, and only then, will I allow myself to iterate on the design.

Also, my base metric for a game is "Would I play this game?" If the answer is yes, then I make it. Chances are if I like it, others will as well.

Also, I would say pick up a copy of The Art of Game Design. It breaks down the different aspects of games and explains them in great detail. Some examples are the balance between skill and luck, storytelling, risk and return, etc.

u/domogrue · 7 pointsr/gamedesign

First, if you want to make music for game, make music! EVERY job in the game industry is hard, including design. No matter where you start you will probably have to get your foot in the door with QA. That's a place where people "learn" where they want to move into, whether that's code, production, design, or art. If I were hiring for an audio member, I'd look at:


  • Are they making music in their spare time?
  • Is it technically well executed? Does this person have the flexibility to work in genres and styles that they may not be comfortable in, but willing to learn and have the technical chops to back that up?
  • Have they done any game jams?
  • Do they understand how music/audio for games is different from music/audio for a movie or just to be listened to?
  • Are they knowledgeable about the industry?
  • Are they professional?


    But back to design. Read, have varied hobbies, and make games.


    A Book of Lenses and Rules of Play are both good sources to start learning "What is Design". Also, for more general design principles, study UX and Graphic Design and get a general idea of what the world means by "Usability" in general. For hobbies, try to pull inspiration from everything; if all you do is play games, all you'll do is make the same thing everyone else is. Finally, make your own games. I used to do a lot of game jams, but nowadays its focused on hacking my DnD games, thinking about board games and tabletop RPG games, and even working on my MTG Cube. Having a side project that's exercising the muscles that make you think about balance, systems, and play experience will keep you sharp and let you know if this is the thing for you or not.


    Finally, understand a designers job isn't to have good ideas, but to execute on ideas and solve problems. Designers are problem solvers: "How do I make a progression based off crafting balanced, fun, and engaging?" "How do I make this F2P game meaningfully monetize while being playable for free players?" "How complicated is the character customization tool, and how do I not make it overwhelming for the players, and how do I make it fit in the technical constraints of our engine?" The faster you get away from "whats a cool idea" to "how do I solve the problems this idea brings", the faster you become a Designer.
u/InvisibleMan5 · 9 pointsr/gamedev

I highly recommend Real-Time Collision Detection.

This next book might not apply to your field directly, but I believe it is a good idea to be at the very least aware of what it discusses, and it is a very excellent book on its subject: The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

I recommend this book as more of a reference than a tutorial; it will allow you to quickly brush up on those areas of math and physics which you will need while writing (or perhaps working with) a physics engine. I don't recommend attempting to learn the subjects through this book alone though. Game Physics

Reading 3D Math primer for Graphics and Game Development is how I learned linear algebra, although I plan on studying the subject from a textbook when I get the opportunity. I keep the book close for easy reference of the math related to 3D rendering (such as the projection and view matrices), although if you get this book you will want to read the errata document on its website. There may be better books to teach this stuff now, so please don't jump on it too hastily.

A couple books I do not own, but plan to correct that as soon as I can:
Game Physics Pearls and Real-Time Shadows

If I think of any others, I will edit this comment.

u/TerdSandwich · 2 pointsr/gamedev

There is actually a lot of good reading about level design out there. I can't remember all of the books/articles off hand, but I'll see if I can throw some links together.

Edit:
This one had a lot of good theory and concepts

Great book. If you are going to spend some money to buy a book, get this.

Also, I would recommend playing through games with good level design and breaking down each design choice. Getting a few overhead maps helps too. Start with old games, because their levels/art is often more simple and easier to pick apart. Then move up in generations to get a feel for how people tackle more complicated scenes and designs.

I am not sure what aspect you are interested in. The set dressing or the actual level design, but there are some differences between the too.

u/LegitimateEconomics4 · 2 pointsr/scratch

Make a good, 2 player, fighting game. It's as simple as that.

The thing about this is that the question isn't very useful because people have spent their entire careers trying to answer that question, it's not an easy thing to do. Questions like this are often attempts to skip over the long process of learning. Also, good is subjective.

Here's the thing about making good games/songs/paintings/etc that it really is just that, too make something good, just make something, and figure out what's good and what's bad about it, and next time maybe that will help you avoid the bad and have more good. The rule for music is don't "study" music production/theory until you've written atleast 20 songs, maybe more like 5 games, but the same logic applies. Don't focus on making something good, until you've already made something bad, and another slightly less bad, etc

Im going to talk about music because quite frankly im more confident talking about it than games. The way you learn is you just try over, and over, and over again. You learn from your mistakes, and move on. It's like how I asked my music teacher "how long it takes until I can somewhat improvise [on piano, Im new to the piano, it's new to be on the non technical part, making sound from a physical instrument instead of a computer]" and his response was "you already can improvising isn't that hard, it's good improv that is"

My first song was awful, like literally painful to hear. I kept working at it, admittingly not very consistently, and I've made progress. (https://soundcloud.com/mark-leard/october-26-song) but I have a lot to learn. Im complely lost, but one thing I've began realizing is that so is everyone else.

Also don't be afraid to be influenced by things you like, heck the term scratch is a reference to a technique used by DJ's to manipulate the sound of a already created song. The talking before rap-god is all sampled, and the funky drummer groove has been sampled thousands of times.

Also I love this book, it's worth a read ( https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965 )

Good luck

u/jaymeekae · 1 pointr/processing

I'd definitely recommend Learning Processing which is also by Dan Shiffman. It's probably more basic than Nature of Code but if you're only just starting Processing it's a better place to start, I think. I'm making my way through it at the moment and THEN i intend to go on to Nature of Code.

If you particularly want to create stuff like the sketches you linked, then this book seems like a good bet and is on my list to read after Nature of Code. I can't personally recommend it though as obviously I haven't got to it yet.

Unless you are well versed in other programming languages though, I think it is really important to get the basics down first so I'd suggest starting with Learning Processing.

u/Mantronus · 2 pointsr/CasualConversation

Got into 3D mostly because I knew a couple of people who were going to the same school for it, which pushed me to go in the same year as them instead of taking a gap year like I had originally planned.

I always planned on going into the R&D side of things, doing concept art etc. But then one day in a team project, I drew the short straw and was left to animate our characters. I fucking smashed those animations. After all that time avoiding animation- it ended up being the thing I was best at, and the thing I enjoyed the most. Finding you have a natural talent for something you enjoy is a great way to get motivation.


On a side note, if you are serious about Game design; I highly recommend This book. Its a resource I keep going back to when I run into problems. It truly covers everything.

u/MITGameLab · 3 pointsr/IAmA

This course is just intended to be introductory, so yes, there's plenty of things to learn after this first step.

The most important goal is to figure out how you can keep practicing, and for that you need to be able to share and discuss your work with others. If you manage to find local game designers while taking this course (e.g. fellow participants of 11.126x) the next step might be to start a project with them. I also love game jams, which are like game hackathons. The Global Game Jam happens every year in late January, and if making a game in 48 hours sounds appealing to you, it's a good challenge.

There are quite a lot of good books I'd recommend. Challenges for Game Designers (Brathwaite/Romero & Schrieber) is probably a good second step after our class, especially if you're focusing on card/board game design. If you're looking for reading that's focused on more digital design, look at Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton.

Also, I have a whole lot of classes on MIT's other online courseware site, OpenCourseWare! Just search for "Philip Tan".

u/hakamhakam · 2 pointsr/VideoGameAnalysis

The biggest inspiration of this video, come from Game Feel book written by Steve Swink. I recommend any Gamers who have interest in Game Design to check it out. Learn a lot about the design philosophy of Game Feel. The book did an incredible job tangibilizing abstract concept like Game Feel to something you can closely examine.


Book Source:

Game Feel Book by Steve Swink

http://www.game-feel.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Virtual-Sensation/dp/0123743281/


Source for all gameplay are in the description of the video but I think I'll leave it here too. All of these guys deserve their credits since I use their gameplay. Hopefully they won't issue a takedown against this video. Tried my best to only use their video for examination purpose.


Gameplay Source:

ChristopherOdd Gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STH5fk4cSiM

Cryoatic Gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckSZFlxwaJo

DSPGaming Gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52buVPD9uHA

Markiplier Gameplay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYQA-ee7kEw


My last video that I made that I touched on in this video if you're interested.


Level-by-Level Analysis Episode 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQyMjjDjmw4&index=3&list=PLzPFnG00SHtsdumNa9ZXldjcM0qH5RUbE

u/c-r-u-x · 2 pointsr/gaming

I talked to my flatmate who's a game designer (and feels the same way about Journey as I do) about my experience and told him that it was like nothing I had ever seen or felt in a game before. That it doesn't compare to any game I know, that I'm not sure if you can even call it a game.

He stopped me right there and said "It is a game. This it what games can be, this is how powerful, artistic and deep games can be."

And he's absolutely right.

I feel like Journey might be another milestone on gaming's path to maturity. Much like film was rather gimmicky and enjoyed only for light entertainment in its early days and now over the course of a century has progressed into one of the most captivating artistic media by exploring new ways of cinematography, editing, story structures and ways of engaging viewers emotionally by using certain instruments and methods for their soundtracks, Journey is a game that may inspire developers to think of games on another level.

Journey does everything right in my eyes and the Game Feel or the Kinaesthetics are absolutely stunning and make you feel exactly what the game wants you to feel instead of showing or describing it to you.

u/jmtb02 · 3 pointsr/IAmA

Buy this book next: The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses - http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/

That book you have is great but a bit dry, I like it more as a reference than a book just to read. I learned from online forums mostly, picking up things from seeing other people's tutorials, techniques, sharing code and asking for help when I needed it. The internet is a neat place. If you have a chance, take a programming class. It will help a lot in understanding the basics.

u/barnes101 · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

The only course I've taken so far was through Digipen University's project fun and it was a Programming course with only basic game design principles covered, it really focused on the programing. Link-a-dink


Being only a a Senior in highschool everything else has been personal study through Video series (Extra Credits is one of my favorite)
Lectures given at GDC, commentary on games, podcast done by studios and books(This was and is fantastic in its in depth way of looking at game design)
This year I convinced a computer teacher to let me and a friend just have a year of independent study in his class developing from the ground up our own game, so that should give a lot of learning opportunities. A line I remember from The Art of game design said it best "The first step to becoming a game designer is simple, say you are a game designer. Then, design games."

u/monkeyversusrobot · 2 pointsr/gaming

What exactly do you want to do in gaming? Programming? Design? Art? There's also producing.

However, no matter what path you decide to take, one of the best things you can do is learn programming. Programming is obviously building the game and bringing its mechanics to live, everything from render the artwork to the physics is all programming. Even if you don't want to do it as a job, knowing how to program is an incredibly beneficial skill to have in the gaming industry, and if you go into design, it can really inform your design skills.

Design is defining the mechanics that make the game. The designers main job is to make the game fun, but that covers a lot of material a(anything from setting, characters, and plot to rules and mechanics). For designing, there really isn't a specific course you can take. Mainly you just want to play games, and break down why they are fun. Thoroughly examine every way you interact with the game; break it down into parts. A really good book that covers nearly all aspects of game design is The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

Art can be anything from creating textures to 3D modeling to concept design. And producing is basically team management.

u/anlumo · 3 pointsr/webgl

Well sure, a library is also just code. It's just a lot of additional work.

This is a pretty well-known book about how to implement a physics engine for games. However, platformers like Super Mario don't use real physics, it's all fake. What you do need though is collision detection, like rectangle/rectangle collision. That's pretty easy to do generally.

In general, don't look for JavaScript tutorials in particular for these, look for the math behind it. Translating that into code should be easy once you know what to do.

u/armillary_sphere · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

It just isn't fun to completely simulate reality. Paintings are the same way. Most are naturalistic and not realistic because imitating reality perfectly is impossible and often aesthetically unsatisfactory. It is better to bend things a bit to be a bit more fun; visually appealing; and responsive, especially considering how human perception shapes our expectations.

Check out a book called Game Feel. It has a lot of cool case studies of game design that is geared towards creating good-feeling gameplay. Mario's jump is a good example. He rises much faster than he falls. This allows the player to have more agency over where they land, and in fact the fast-rise, slow-fall character ends up feeling better to everyday people. The realistic version feels stilted and unnatural, oddly enough. I'd say this is sort of analogous to entasis in columns in architecture.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/gamedev

As general advice:

  1. Get the fundamentals of programming down
  2. Start making basic 2D games, and progressively get more advanced. Look at arcade games by era for that purpose if you need game ideas. Start with Pong, then go from there.
    2.a. Feel free to experiment with different languages/APIs/etc., but try and stay at least somewhat focused
  3. After spending plenty of time at #2, start playing with 3D. You can either learn by coding the logic of 3D from scratch (e.g. in ActionScript following along with the end of http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Actionscript-3-0-Animation-Making/dp/1590597915 ), using a graphics API (e.g. DirectX, OpenGL), or using a game engine (e.g. UDK, Unity, etc.). The hurdle from 2D to 3D is big, and it can be really confusing. If you're having trouble wrapping your head around the math, try http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Mathematics-Games-Interactive-Applications/dp/155860863X and http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interactive-Technology/dp/1558607323

    But above all, have fun! Make sure you balance learning more advanced things with just playing around with pet projects - that way you get a good balance of theoretical knowledge with practical experience. =]
u/testudoaubreii · 7 pointsr/gamedesign

You want to be a game designer, right? As opposed to a game programmer? They're very different.

And just to get this said up front, playing a lot of video games does not necessarily make you game designer material. Playing and designing are two entirely different things.

Okay, that said, here are some of the things you need:

  • basic programming
  • perceptual, cognitive, and social psychology
  • basic statistics
  • calculus and linear algebra are a really good idea too
  • anthropology
  • theater and/or film studies
  • creative and technical writing
  • public speaking
  • at least one drawing/art class
  • a game design class (or minor, or major) if you can get it

    Oh, and watch this video for anything I might have missed.

    Then read this paper to give yourself an idea of some of the depth involved in game design. Check out some of the better game design books too (Art of Game Design, Game Design Workshop and others).

    Finally, go make a game. Don't wait. Copy someone else's game if you have to while you're learning the ropes, but then make your own game. Make a small, crappy game. Then make it better. If it's any good, then make it bigger -- but not until then.

    And then, get ready to either be a starving indie, or to get a job in QA, or if you're really lucky, to get a job as a very junior designer. Then you're off to the races.

    Good luck!
u/adrixshadow · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

You basically have no game design education and have absolutely no idea on anything.

Luckily for you I have collected some resources that is the distilled essence of game design that makes a complete noob to pro game designer.

Read/watch this:
http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/231225/Video_Practical_Creativity__A_way_to_invent_new_kinds_of_video_games.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/233326/Video_Designing_your_game_to_offer_meaningful_choices.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/game-design/paradigm-shift.html

Bookmark this: http://129.16.157.67:1337/mediawiki-1.22.0/index.php/Main_Page

Subscribe to this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA

and this:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWqr2tH3dPshNhPjV5h1xRw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI3GAJaOTL1BoipG41OmfyA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4JnxTxtvItQecKUc4zRhQ

Troll and read all the articles from this: http://www.gamasutra.com/category/design/

Good books on game design I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449363210/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1449363210&linkCode=as2&tag=atheoroffunfo-20

Now my personal advice as a indie game designer.

Specialize!


You have to specialize on one domain where you devour any information available.
Her are some domains I know about that you can take on as an indie on a budget.

CRPGs: Info on: http://www.rpgcodex.net/

JRPG: Look also at japanese hentai rpgs because they are some game design jewels there, RPG Maker community

Action Games and platformers : Understand game feel and juice/impact, somewhat saturated indie scene

Puzzles and board games: Do not buy into f2p as it kills your creativity

Roguelikes and survival: Saturated indie scene

Narrative: Visual Novel style games and adventure games, great if you have a good writer and artist, some overlap with JRPGs,
VN community: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/index.php?sid=59e38b38f69f9e5b5c271de0843d2569 ,
http://www.renpy.org/

Server Multiplayer: Games like space station 13

A forum where you can find information on games of the above types: http://forums.tigsource.com/

Do not do 3D, without a astronomical budget you won't get far.

Congratulations! Now you are better game designer then 90% of inde developers!



u/mysticreddit · 5 pointsr/gamedev

Every game programmer should have at least one of these books:

  • Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics by Eric Lengyel
  • Game Physics by David Eberly
  • Real Time Collision Detection by Christer Ericson

    I own all 3. What I love about them is that they are some of the best ones around written by programmers to understand math in a clear and concise fashion; they are not written by some mathematician who loves theory and likes to hand-wave the worries about "implementation details."

    To help provide direction I would recommend these exercises to start; Work on (re) deriving the formulas (from easiest to hardest):

  • Work out how to reflect a vector
  • Derive the formula for how to calculate a 2D perpendicular vector
  • Work out the formula for how to project a vector A onto B.
  • Study how the dot product is used in lighting.
  • Derive the translation, scaling, and rotation 3x3 and 4x4 matrices.
u/howtogun · 3 pointsr/roguelikedev

Procedural Generation in Game Design is really good. I would read chapter 26 after reading Chapter 1 through. The order of the chapter should have really been changed.

Artificial Intelligence for Games
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Millington/dp/0123747317
Easy python, easy to understand.

One other book that is really nice is Algorithms 4th edition if you know Java.

Not really programming books, however fighting fantasy books are really nice. Also, RPG books like D&D, Rolemaster and GURPs are good to study.

u/evilanimator1138 · 5 pointsr/learnanimation

Start with Eric Goldberg's book "Character Animation Crash Course!"

http://www.amazon.com/Character-Animation-Crash-Course-Goldberg/dp/1879505975

It reads a lot less like the stereo instructions that is Richard Williams's "Animator's Survival Kit" providing for a much more accessible and lighter introduction to animation. If, after you've read through it, you find that animation is still for you then absolutely 110% get Richard Williams's book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/086547897X/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0MV2H6MZNC3HHHH1ED43

Another must have is "The Illusion of Life".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786860707/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S91BNCH9AFXPJQCA1HH

Always keep in mind that the word animate means "to give life to." You are bringing a character to life be it a drawing or a 3D model. Before even touching paper and pencil (because you thoroughly plan your scene out that way first before touching the mouse ;-) ask yourself "what is the character thinking?" Get inside that character's head. Sketch out exploratory poses. They don't have to be gorgeously rendered drawings. They are your visual notes and can even be stick figures just so long as you can read them. Get away from your desk and physically act out what your character has to do or hit up YouTube for research. Shoot reference with your smartphone (use an app like ProCamera which lets you shoot at 24fps) and analyze how long it takes you to perform an action. Don't sweat the software just yet. That's the technical stuff that comes later. Animators are actors and it's important to understand acting first. That being said, this book is great for learning Maya.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0415826594/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1453026213&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=how+to+cheat+in+maya+2015&dpPl=1&dpID=51IrWwVyubL&ref=plSrch

This book combines learning to animate in Maya while simultaneously teaching the 12 principles of animation. The very best of luck to you in the beginning of your animation journey. Take your time and practice everyday. Think of animation as a muscle. You have to workout everyday for it to get stronger even if you only work on something for 15 minutes a day.

u/PaulPaterson · 3 pointsr/PyRollersCasino

I've been trying to use some of the Lenses in Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design - A book of Lenses" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965)

It is a great book and is very practical, giving you a series of questions you can ask about your game to help you focus and polish it from different perspectives. I'm finding it very useful to keep me focussed on developing the fun aspects of a game and ensuring that all the elements reinforce the overall theme.

I played a few online bingo games today and also looked at some videos. My picture of how this can work is starting to get a bit clearer. I'll get some basics coded in so I have something to "feel".

u/Evermore7 · 3 pointsr/VoxelGameDev

Like me, you probably expected to just jump into a making a game without much of a plan, or an actual game designed, just a bunch of vague ideas of what direction you are heading. You need to take a step back and now that you understand more on how to make things, you need to actually plan out what you hope to make by learning how to Design.

If you are also like me, where you have no clue on what it actually means to design a game, and trying to put together a clusterfuck of different ideas and hope it works, you are in for a bad time. Just because we spent our lives playing games doesn't mean we know how to design them. Also think about what design means, because it is not the same thing as someone who codes a game. Just because you can do something with code, doesn't mean you should.

You should be coding for only 1 of two reasons:

1 - you are prototyping a new idea to see if it works, or just testing/playing around with stuff

2 - you are actually trying to finish a game


If #2 is the goal, you need a game plan. What you want to accomplish needs to be written down/typed up, and you need to break out every task and estimate how long things will take. If you are still uncertain about certain ideas you have, prototype the most important ones first, knowing that it is a prototype and it should just be used as a proof of concept, being ready to throw it away if necessary. Often times, I see how unrealistic my crazy ideas are, and how long it would take me, and realize that I need to go much smaller. I'd recommend checking out this book, http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965, it is awesome and probably the most interesting thing I have ever read.

u/chuan_l · 1 pointr/gamedesign

"Formal Abstract Design Tools"
Doug Church [ Gamasutra article 1999 ]
This is kind of like ground -zero for thinking on
games, language and discussion of aesthetics.


"Rules of Play : A Game Design Reader"
Eric Zimmerman, Katie Salen [ MIT Press 2003 ]
The accompanying reader volume is also great and
collates historical, cultural perspectives including
Huizinga | Callois.


"MDA : A Formal Approach to Game Design"
Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek [ 2004 ]
A clear and lucid framework for analysis of game
design, and how different aspects work together.


"Influences Talk"
Raph Koster [ Project Horseshoe 2006 ]
Personally got a lot more from this than his
"Theory of Fun", kind of pertinent given recent
popularity of "Flappy Bird" ha -ha.


"Game Feel : A Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation"
Steve Swink [ Morgan Kaufman 2008 ]
Really great in -depth look at interaction design.
A must read for all gameplay programmers.


u/jamesfilm · 1 pointr/gaming

Do you not agree that there are a whole load of really immature books about game design that are sold more on the fact that "its a book about games" than its inherent content ?

Even within the space of magazines I think it would be fair to call Nintendo power immature and something like EDGE , Games TM or Develop magazine Mature.

for someone starting from scratch you would get allot more by reading these books than by watching EC ( obviously can do both and EC is a nice starting pion for someone totally new to games)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0465067107?ie=UTF8&tag=alwaysblack01-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0465067107

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0273693646?ie=UTF8&tag=alwaysblack01-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0273693646

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1932111972

allso over view books on Game theory , the history of the microchip and computing , evolution and basic biology can be incredibly good in helping think about games as an art and the limitations in the development of software.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fun-Games-Text-Game-Theory/dp/0669246034/ref=cm_lmf_tit_12

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321193679/zx81orguk00

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633439/zx81orguk00

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-History-Information-Machine-Technology/dp/0465029906


I realise EC is just easily consumable general information and that's fine just wish they did it without the pretence , like I said in other comments I'm glad they make it even though it personally annoys the hell out of me its beneficial for games as a whole as there is a general lack of even moderately intelligent talk about games.


u/kylerk · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Playtest your game with a wide variety of people. You need to find out if people actually enjoy it. And you need to make sure that the feedback people are giving you isn't just them being nice. People should want to play without you asking them to. If it is not good yet, iterate, or start something new.

If you have a game that is genuinely good, other good things will follow. Otherwise you are in for a never ending up hill battle.

Other than that, I'd suggest finding 1 or 2 partners to actually start a game company with. They need to be equally or more competent than yourself. Do game jams with them to test if the team works well together.

And read this book https://www.amazon.ca/Game-Feel-Designers-Virtual-Sensation/dp/0123743281

u/thatbooisaspy · 2 pointsr/gamedev

This is where refining google searches and just finding information would shine, and this is a necessary skill when entering game engine development because trust me, some information is near impossible to find, especially with OpenGL.

There is a book everyone recommends reading, personally I haven't but it's called "3D Game Engine Design" and "3D Game Engine Architecture". I can't vouch for these though, but i've made it without them, it's your choice.

There's also tons of information online that you can use to build a engine (specific parts like timing) but not necessarily a monolithic tutorial. For example, there is a book online called "Game Programming Patterns" that I found useful for someone else's insight on how things like input is handled. Again, i'm not going to post all the resources you want here because this same question has been answered before.

If you don't find that the tutorials or resources linked here or found yourself enough, there are hundreds of game engines, or games that are open source (or at least have source available) that is a treasure trove of design patterns, bad or not. An example would be id Software's Doom 3.

I know you're looking for something specifically OpenGL, but really despite how old OpenGL's design is at the end of the day it's just a graphics API. You take data, and you process it and display it at the window, every graphics API does this. I'm guessing you are searching for things like "OpenGL game engine design" but it's not necessary and may help your search effort a bit.

At the end of the day, and at least try. If I don't know how to tackle a problem, I attempt to solve the problem with usually the worst way possible then improve and improve until it's at least presentable. No one thought of a perfect engine design, and ideas are constantly improved.

u/Ga1apagO · 1 pointr/gameai

> However, I would do small steps. AI is more of a Computer Science problem than a programming problem, so you'll need a different set of skills to make useful AI.

That is probably true and I think I will definitely heed your advice.

>Go on with basic Computer Science. Trying to accomplish something in AI without the basics ready to hand is like digging a hole with a spoon.

Is...... computer science an actually course or do you mean beginner friendly programming languages like python?

> https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101 [...] https://www.udacity.com/course/ud120 [...] http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Millington/dp/0123747317/

Thank you so much!

u/CatchCo · 1 pointr/Unity3D

I don't have a gift idea. I use NGUI, iTween, EasyTouch and FX Maker (or is it studio?) nearly every day, but a new asset can be quite the time-sink.

However, in three years when you have the money (my predictions never miss), this would be an awesome gift: Premium support


Also, if you need a book, this is one of my favorites on the subject of Game Design: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses

u/MerlinTheFail · 1 pointr/gamedev

When I was still working in C++ (also my beginner language for some years), before I switched to Java, I spent some time working through this book.

Granted, you're going down a difficult route by starting with C++, but it's doable after a couple of hard months of practice and coding projects. Work your way up to implementing algorithms by reading the requirements (and none of the code) and then you'll be good to try this book out.

As a former hobbyst, honestly, it's a lot of fun and very rewarding to work towards this goal :)

u/hatu · 1 pointr/gamedesign

I really enjoyed that book too, but I would say it's basically only about two subjects: state machines and path-finding. It covers them really well but you might want to get another broader book too. Maybe after reading this one.
If you want a broader view - I found this book to be pretty great: http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Millington/dp/0123747317/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=09B2HPTBM3NA2CNG477Y

u/balefrost · 3 pointsr/MechanicalKeyboards

I mostly agree with /u/RitzBitzN, but if you dive right in with data structures and algorithms, you're probably going to get bored pretty quickly. Theory should be matched with practice.

I think it's best to learn programming in some environment where you can experiment and quickly see results. I don't know if this is good advice, but I suggest Processing as a decent place to get started. There's a nice book on the subject, and there's even a port to Javascript .

I got my start on a Commodore 64, taking the sample code that came in the manual (to draw simple graphics and animations) and tweaking them. Processing reminds me a lot of that. Sure, the particulars are different, but I think it encourages the same sort of "play" that is so important when learning to program.

u/leaves_of_three · 1 pointr/gamedesign

My favorite game design book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965 A lot of what follows can be found in there.

Unity is what I use when making and prototyping games but that's only because that's what I happened to learn to use first and I have a decent programming background. You're probably better off with Game Maker or something else just starting out.

There are several approaches to conceptualizing and making games but my approach involves using a list of game mechanics and combining them to see if something interesting pops into my mind. Here's the nicely formatted Board Game Geek website list: http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic and my own personal sloppy list with extra mechanics, my thoughts on them, as well as misspellings galore! http://pastebin.com/jQ68Z8cn A lot of the ideas are board game specific but they can all be applied to video games if you consider them in an abstract sense.

Any game idea I come up with I then subject to a validation test to make sure it's actually something that's a game an not just an interesting idea. I ask myself, does this game include:

  • Challenge
  • Decision-making
  • An action that the player takes
  • Purpose that the player takes that action
  • Ultimate Goal

    If the idea has those properties then it can probably be made into a game.

    More important than any of that, though, is to start simple in concept and small in content. No one's a game designer, developer, or maker until they actually make a game.
u/doxydejour · 1 pointr/Fallout

First off, you are good peoples.

Secondly, the best place to check would be Etsy - there are handmade Fallout items on there for just about everything, from clothing to household items. You could ask him in general about the game(s) and see if he mentions any particular favourite characters/factions and get merchandise associated with them.

Or you could go the official route and consider:

u/colordodge · 1 pointr/Design

The official processing website is a good place to start. There you can download the software and get some great learning resources. I highly recommend the youtube channel The Coding Train, which is done by one of the main processing guys. My absolute favorite book is called Generative Design, and you should also check out The Nature of Code, which is book written by the same guy who does those youtube videos. You can download this ebook for free.

u/treysmith · 6 pointsr/Entrepreneur

No problem, glad you enjoyed it.

If you are interested in game design, read The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schnell. At least skim it. It's great and gets deep into the emotion and psychology of game design.

For business stuff, I got a lot of input from the classic E-Myth Revisited. I won't say it didn't get boring, but the actual point of it (systematize EVERYTHING) is a really important concept to learn. That changed the way I do things and now we have systems for everything in the company.

Read Crossing the Chasm when you start getting traction. It's a very important book that answered a lot of questions for me.

Right now I'm reading Behind the Cloud by Benioff, and man, this book is also great. I had no clue they used a lot of fairly controversial tactics to get press and traction. It's a good read.

u/Coriform · 4 pointsr/gamedev

Artificial Intelligence for Games is a great book. Additionally, the various volumes of the AI Game Programming Wisdom series have some great examples.

u/buddingmonkey · 1 pointr/devblogs

SUNY Represent! (Binghamton Alum)

You should check out this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

Right now your game is missing that "Game Feel" (which coincidentally is the title of another awesome book you should read by Steve Swink http://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-Kaufmann/dp/0123743281).

Also, I can't tell if your capture software is dropping frames or your video is. If it is the capture then you should really find good capture software. If it's the actual framerate that we're seeing then you need to get on top of that ASAP!

Finally I would consider making the camera tighter/closer on the characters, and compressing the overall architecture of the levels. The world right now seems so big and empty. Your level design does not excite me. I should want to explore your world, and the design should be encouraging me to do so.

Here are some good free level design reads

u/idounitytoo · 1 pointr/gamedev

​

Get a book or two (& free app from book of lenses itunes store or play store

Hit up your local book store and library to get a good look at what's available, explore all sections frequently.

Learn some art

Buy assets.

Here's some sexy stuff.

Get a Git to keep your goods on.

Hands on, in person, training is way behind the times as far as education is concerned.

Get Unity Certifiied.

Get Live Training

Check with your library they may off Lynda.com for free.

Get a big android tablet to build games for and show off at the office.

Join Meetup.com and look for local game developer groups.

Check the closest community college for game design class, if not see how much basic drawing, life drawing and basic design principles cost, if it's more than $500, try meetup.com and youtube/lynda or udemy or coursera to cover those experiences.

Use the force,

u/stinkfist_vg · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Although it is indeed impossible to cater to everyone's needs, I think there are many cravings shared by all of us.

Anyway, giving it a bit more thought, I think that instead of "addiction", the term "engagement" might suit you as well (since both end up getting the player hooked to your game but from different reasons) and even in a happier way so to speak.

In that case, analyzing your design through tools like the MDA and many of the lenses might help you.

u/Random · 10 pointsr/gamedev

Two books (and you can google talks by the authors).

Jesse Schelle - a book explicitly based on pattern languages (from Alexander's A Pattern Language)
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965

Richard Bartle - how do design virtual worlds / types of players / motivations / etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-Bartle/dp/0131018167/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bartle+designing+online+worlds&qid=1554913435&s=books&sr=1-1-spell

Both have given talks, etc. etc. etc. that are online, but both books are superb.

I can provide lots more to look at but those pretty much bracket what you are asking for and both authors are VERY knowledgeable.

Bartle was the co-author of the first shared world game, for example.

u/McP1ckl3s · 1 pointr/ludology

This is getting lots of love- what do folks think is the best section of this to include?

It feels important to include a reading that's particularly relevant to game design - do y'all think that this is the one to include? I'm also considering a section from Game Feel if anyone has thoughts on that. Might be too specific...

Alternatively, is there a short reading, or section from a book, that has an interesting way of contextualizing what it means to design a game, or perhaps how designers think about games differently than theorists?

u/TobiasWe · 1 pointr/processing

Thanks! I think the best way to start is this book: https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Art-Matt-Pearson/dp/1935182625

Afterwards, less of an introduction and more a collection of generative art recipes, this book is worth every cent: https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Design-Visualize-Program-Processing/dp/1616890770

A great, free and often mentioned introduction to Processing and a lot of interesting concepts is http://natureofcode.com/book, but there is less of a focus on interesting visuals.

u/dm0x48 · 3 pointsr/Unity3D

For the basics of mathematics I usually suggest "Mathematics for Computer Graphics" by John Vince.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1447173341

On physics, there are a number of specialised books. Nevertheless, if with "physics" you mean "movement", the third chapter of "Artificial Intelligence for Games" by Ian Millington is for you (beware, source code is provided in C++, not C#).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0123747317

About shaders, there are a number of sources out there. From a didactical standpoint I like the following two blogs:

https://www.alanzucconi.com/

http://catlikecoding.com/

And another interesting source is also http://www.shaderslab.com/shaders.html

If you prefer a book, a good primer can be "2D Shader Development: Foundations" by Francisco Tufro. Not the absolute best, but may give you a nice jumpstart in a limited number of pages

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BGYF7F8 (also available from the author's website).

Happy hacking.

u/Tefferi · 3 pointsr/JobFair

The best piece of advice that I can give you is this: Figure out what you want to do, and then throw all your time at learning to be the best at that thing. I focused on programming, and that's what I'm doing now.

If you want to be a designer, read design books, study games, listen to podcasts and videos from insiders. I highly recommend Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and Extra Credits. This is probably the hardest role of game production to get your foot in the door.

If you want to be a programmer, get a computer science degree from a four-year university. I wouldn't recommend Full Sail for this, but then again, I have no experience with them, so don't listen to me.

If you want to be a producer... yeah, I really have no idea about this one. Producers are mostly managers, people-people, who facilitate the interaction of artists, programmers, QA, and others.

Unity is good. I wish I'd spent more time playing with it. But again, your focus should be on "How do I get experience doing the thing that I want to do".

u/ketura · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Game Design by Bob Bates covers a bird's-eye view of general game theory and the process of game development from beginning to end. It's very "readable" and gives you context to help you understand how your development process can help aid your particular design paradigm that you decide upon. If I recall correctly, it also goes over a lot of the different type of design documents that are often used in the industry.

Depending on how much textbook you can stomach, Software Engineering for Game Developers by John Flynt and Omar Salem is an interesting take on the whole game design angle by delving entirely into the source code development. It follows an actual game created by the authors and the entire process used from beginning to end in designing the engine. The game itself was shitty, but the code was immaculate and the process certainly gave me a lot to mull over and cherry pick for my own projects. Be warned, however, this book is as dry as a road trip in the Sahara and twice as long.

Besides these two, I can also definitely recommend Level Up! and The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses as previously recommended elsewhere in this topic.

u/cislunar · 1 pointr/gamedesign

Yeah, I saw that in your post.

Now that I read it again, perhaps you could try you hand at writing? There's lots of copy and story required for games nowadays and someone has to write them.

If your heart is set on design and you want to break into the industry, getting a minor in game design isn't going to help you; It's the work you'll be doing for the classes, in the form of a portfolio, that will help the most.

So, on that note, here's a very good starting place for an academic look at game design:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Playcentric-Innovative/dp/0240809742

Tracy Fullerton wrote the book and she's had a strong hand in directing the industry via her USC alumni (e.g. thatgamecompany). Follow the lessons and you'll pick up a good understanding of how to approach game design.

I feel like I should also state that game design isn't like math or programming where you can insert XYZ component and have it work. Game design is art, aesthetic, math, psychology, design, organization, writing. You can learn and memorize methodologies for development but they don't guarantee anything. When educational institutions offer to teach you game design... caveat emptor.

u/raphendyr · 2 pointsr/Eve

As a birthday gift I would go with AUR as it can be used for mementos (stuff that doesn't help you, but you can have and remember it was a gift from someone).

Though if you want to give something more useful, then you can buy game time or PLEX (it's mostly sold for in game money, but can be used as game time as your self too).

Or you can look here for real live items: http://store.eve.com (also there are few EVE books in Amazon this for example).

u/tyrrexx · 6 pointsr/gamedesign

Don't let it stop you! You can do it by yourself in your freetime, here's some stuff to get you started.

I'd recommend learning either Unity or Gamemaker or something for actually making the game.

Unity2D Tutorial: http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/

Unity2D Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPV2KyIb3jR42oVBU6K2DIL6Y22Ry9J1c

Unity3D Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFiq9_AHuTMnmPy6YAGBLg

Gamemaker Studio Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v_7URcEGm8&list=PLPRT_JORnIurFYwHdWhLWR3bLH2nzChsm

Extra Credits, show on game design and game industry: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187

As for books, I really recommend checking out The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lens by Jesse Schell. He does a good job at explaining the basics of game design and game mechanics.

Look into Trello for management software.

u/dsuse15 · 1 pointr/gamedev

This has always been my favorite book on the subject:

Essential Mathematics for Games & Interactive Applications: A Programmers Guide

It explains in great detail the how, why and when of most mathematical concepts as they relate to gaming: core concepts, rendering, physics, lighting, shading, animation, etc. It comes with examples and code. It's awesome.

u/S1CKLY · 1 pointr/gamedev

This is the book I recommend for everyone. It doesn't have practise questions, but I still think you should pick it up (perhaps one of those peer-sharing things I've been hearing so much about ;) ). It's usefulness is damn near endless for beginners/hobbyists.

Edit: Amazon is recommending Game Engine Architecture to go along with it, which is another book that I own. It's not the greatest book in existence on the subject but it does the job fairly well and, again, is aimed at beginners and hobbyists. If you're headed in that direction it may be helpful, but I personally don't recommend it. Just thought I'd add my two cents :)

u/HiroP713 · 2 pointsr/gamedev

I'm a big fan of http://www.amazon.com/Game-Physics-David-H-Eberly/dp/0123749034/ref=pd_sim_b_3

I also have physics for game developers but the Eberly book is superior. How's your physics knowledge already? Do you already have a base of knowledge that you're looking to apply to games or are you pretty much starting from scratch?

u/Arcedants · 2 pointsr/fo4

It's difficult going for your dream game as your first project, since you learn so much from every iteration. Here's a gdc talk on 2D camera movement that's useful for getting across the correct feeling of motion. Most of my experience is in Unity, so I wouldn't really know much about gamemaker. I will say for movement a lot of it is based on how it feels to control, so get lots of different people to test your game and give you unbiased feedback. Make sure you let them know that you won't be upset if they don't like something, positive feedback on a bad game is one of the worst things that can happen to a game dev.

This is a good book to guideline what feels good in controls and other elements. A lot of what makes a game good is the polish that goes into it, which is why I can't stress the importance of this video. It starts slow, but it changed how I view my project pipeline.

Also focus on making a few mechanics really deep, instead of a lot of really shallow mechanics. Especially for indie games this will help you keep a focus on what you want the player to get from your game, and it feels a lot better on the players end to explore deep gameplay mechanics rather than throwaway gimmicks.

Edit: another useful video for polishing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

u/BloodedRogue · 2 pointsr/learnart

I actually just recently got these books, they may not necessarily be what you're looking for but these have been absolutely informative to me

p.s I checked these out of my local library but I'm hoping to purchase these soon.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Digital Painting Techniques

Make Great Art on your iPad

u/auzden · 1 pointr/Unity3D

Hi,

You've chosen a pretty interesting and intricate topic for your thesis - good decision getting started early! :-)

You've probably already stumbled upon this, but Unity uses Collider components for collision detection and Rigidbody components to generate a physical response to a collision. The Unity manual on Colliders is probably a good place to start.

Beyond Unity, our studio frequently references this book for the majority of our collision detection needs. Collision detection and response is a fairly broad topic and I imagine you'll uncover a lot over the next two years. Best of luck to you. :-)

u/__o0__ · 3 pointsr/gamedesign

When I first commented I did not notice you had written a book on this topic.

In my experience people who ask for feedback after having created something are 9 time out of 10 looking for validation and/or compliments.

Sorry, no compliments or validation here. As a game designer I cannot see how your system of forms matures the game development industry. I feel this idea is severely lack in substance and applicability. The theory as a whole, is based upon definitions which are confusing, easily misinterpreted, and grossly under-explained.

There is nothing present in this system of forms that isn't already explained elsewhere but more elegantly. Jesse Schell concretely demonstrated that these things should not be categorized, in his book The Art of Game Design where he explores the differences between toys, puzzles and games.

Your new definition of a GAME as Decisions is eeriliy similar to Sid Meiyer's own more elegant definition as "games are meaningful choices".

There is nothing seminal here.



u/empyrealhell · 1 pointr/gamedev

As an alternative, I own this book. While it's a bit heavy on the math at times, and the concepts are pretty advanced, it's a solid book. if you have a basic understanding of physics and a good background in math, it's a fantastic reference.

As for writing a physics engine from it, I haven't tried, but it covers the bases pretty well. I used it to write a very simple 2d platformer with any-angle collisions with arbitrary polygons and circles. Nothing fancy like fluid dynamics or variable density and elasticity, but it was a boon getting the rigid body mechanics set up, and I only touched probably the first couple chapters.

u/shr0wm · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Here you go:

> Calculus is the foundation for modern math. Always a good thing to have.

> Linear Algebra is the foundation for 3d mathematics in games. Things such as perspective projection, arbitrary rotation, and more exotic things such as quaternions come around here.

> Essential Math for Games is a most excellent book that, after having built your mathematical foundation through the previous two books, provides you pretty much everything you need to know about making a 3d renderer, which is probably one of the most educational experiences that you can undergo in game development.

u/cudgy · 1 pointr/GraphicDesign

I'm a graphic design student who wanted to learn programming and Processing was perfect for me! Particularly this book. It's written for designers/visual artists who want to incorporate coding in their art. I found it easy and fun to learn, and once you get through the basics, you can apply that knowledge to tons of other languages.

u/Mr_Stormy · 2 pointsr/skyrimmods

There's a problem I feel that many character mods for this game have.

Skin and complexions are perfect, there is no dirt or weathering, the pupil/iris in eyes are too high in detail (not necessarily resolution), among a few other issues. The mods that affect the face can cause tension with the hair/clothing if these aren't up to scratch, then you have the problem with eyebrows in that they can look like they're drawn on (as yours do here, no offense).

Unfortunately I haven't been downloading mods in a long time (still waiting since Legendary), but try to avoid smooth skins entirely, for a start. No skin is absolutely, 100% smooth and without edges. This makes it seem like the face has quite a low poly-count, even if it doesn't. And contrasts heavily with the world of Skyrim, and all other NPCs.

Just don't layer on the mods too thick when it comes to characters. Less is more in this case. You'll end up crossing into uncanny valley territory when you add too much detail. "SUPER HD 8K EYELIDS AND EYEBROWS" aren't exactly necessary and only add to the dissonance you're experiencing.

I'm sorry if I haven't explained myself too well, it's quite late and its been a long day. Hopefully other people can help with suggestions for what to download!

One last thing to remember before I head to bed: this is a 7 year old game. Beyond making each texture look as good as possible, the game is old. Animation quality, and many features you can't really influence will still seem relatively dated. I understand there are mods for these, and I understand there are mods for animation, but to paraphrase Steve Swink the mechanics and feel of the game are 7 years old. You can't change that with mods.

TL:DR: You're likely using too many mods, they contrast with each other and create the unappealing character you see. A human face is never going to look like the above example. Less is more with character mods - choose carefully, all faces have signs of weathering or ageing.

u/r0bbie · 3 pointsr/gamedev

Have to add another recommendation for The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster is also a very good, accessible read (and heavily illustrated, which is always nice!)

Finally, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals is good for a more exhaustive, technical look at game design theories.

u/kungpoo · 3 pointsr/gamedev

I'm on a mobile so can't give you the in-depth comment that I want to yet, but for now 2 books spring to mind. A theory of fun for game design, and, the art of game design: a book of lenses. The latter option was especially helpful for me when I found myself in your position.

edit: added links, formatting

u/Bibdy · 3 pointsr/gamedev

If you want to learn about all of the ins-and-outs it looks pretty legit. But, if you haven't written a physics engine before this is probably way too deep as there's not a lot of sample code to absorb and understand.

If you're looking for something a lot less wordy, and more instructional, I really liked this book: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Physics-Engine-Development-Commercial-Grade/dp/0123819768/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368143382&sr=1-3&keywords=physics+game.

The book you linked above would be a really good reference guide for someone who's been working on physics for a while, though. Something to refer to when you need a kick in the right direction.

u/aethronic_dz · 1 pointr/gamedev

My top three books are:


https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965

https://www.amazon.com/David-Perry-Game-Design-Brainstorming/dp/1584506687

(more like an index of game design terms, ideal for brainstorming)

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-Robert-Nystrom/dp/0990582906

(more related to programming, but can give you a great insight how games should be structured, which can inform some design decisions)

u/Varaquli · 1 pointr/gamedev

Looks like a good reading. Thanks for the suggestions, this book is next after I finish The Art of Game Design both of which, I think, will help me a lot to see and plan the 'big picture' before I start a project.

u/browngray · 7 pointsr/truegaming

These are leaning towards the design and development side, but I would recommend The Art of Game Design and Designing Virtual Worlds. The former is a reference of patterns and questions for game design (including board and tabletop games), while the latter is focused on the design of MMOs and MUDs but the concepts can apply to other things like your typical shooter multiplayer.

u/pier25 · 16 pointsr/gamedev

Time and motivation. That's the essence of it.

Also you are going to need to study some 2D math (and 3D if you plan on making a 3D game). Trigonometry, vectors, etc. Those are bread and butter stuff when making games.

Before starting to write a single line of code read about game design. This is by far the most recommended book.

If you have any intention of selling your game you will also need professional art and sound. Don't underestimate this.

Finally marketing a game is as important as the game itself. There are cases when a game sells by itself, but it's so rare it's like winning the lottery. Don't count on that.

Oh, one last thing, don't start working on the first idea that comes to your mind unless it's for practice. Research the market before embarking on a year long project. There are hundreds of failed retro platformers, zelda like rpgs, etc.

u/Guest101010 · 10 pointsr/Games

I've never played, but I did read an amazing book by one of the intial designers for Toon Town. If you're interested in game design you should check it out!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/

u/keithburgun · 2 pointsr/gamedev

You're very good at ASSERTING your point of view without backing anything you're saying up. Sadly, you'll have plenty of company in video games with a destructively ignorant point of view like yours. Eventually that will change as video games mature as a medium.

Your "guesses" as to my personal life are incorrect, irrelevant, and mean-spirited. Nice.

If you ever change your mind and decide to open up to the world of game design, I would recommend that you read "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell for a really great introduction to the basics.

u/jcthechicano · 1 pointr/n64

I have to agree with Grooter48. I have the Nintendo 64 Anthology and it is an absolute delight to go through. I was one of the Kickstarter backers (my name's even in the book!) and can tell you that despite some typos and grammatical awkwardness (the author is French so you can't really blame the guy,) it is a must own for us N64 fans. The way it covers the history of the console, its successes and failures, accessories, a couple of developer interviews, and details the entire game library across all regions, makes it an incredibly worthwhile purchase. As for where to get it, I only know Amazon has it listed at around $40. It's currently out of stock but at least you can have a confirmed order waiting to be fulfilled. Here's the link

u/TChan_Gaming · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Here are two websites if you need help job searching. Gamedevmap and orcahq.

The best thing you can do right now is build up a portfolio, go to game conference and network, and read game design books like the art of game design by Jesse Schell.

u/Pablok7 · 1 pointr/gamedev

You should read these two books, The Art of Game Design and Reality is Broken. They're both a pretty good window into what makes games fun in a psychological way.

u/comiconomist · 1 pointr/Fallout

I don't think they are in the habit of posting really good quality versions of concept art - they know there's a market for that, so they offer products like the fallout 4 art book and even prints of the art. The image at the top of the digital version of the article is frankly even better than most of the digital versions of Fallout 4's concept art.

u/NaiDriftlin · 4 pointsr/visualnovels

I've read a few books on the matter and sat through a few GDC workshops. The odd thing is, outside of this, I've only ever heard /u/Arcanus44 refer to the concept as 'Juice'.

My personal oddities aside. 'Game Feel' is one of the reasons I opted to use Unity over RenPy for my VN development. There's a lot more to an experience beyond the words we use and the plot points we show.

I don't read a lot of VNs on mobile devices, but I would expect that(especially for 3DS/DS/PSP/Vita titles) to be more common than on PC releases.

Though, I think if you would like a great example of game feel in high-text environment on the PC, Undertale would probably be one of the best examples I have. Take a look at the sprite work during combat. And then how the text animates on. How the text read s l o w s d o w n and the blips deepen during dramatic moments, and is fast and big during more light-hearted moments. Sometimes, even after the text has been written the screen, it gets animated. The way the sprites animate throughout the combat (and non-combat, yet combat like) scenes screams high game-feel.


Edit:

Higurashi has a few good moments with color-shifting the screen, adjusting the text read speed, and sounding that creepy-ass music right when things start getting crazy.

Editx2: And for any devs interested in my reading material, check out Steve Swink's book 'Game Feel'

u/shikatozi · 3 pointsr/gamedev

if your talking about game programming, i just got Killer Game Programming in Java from O'Reilly, it's a pretty good start.

However, if you're talking about game development, as in how to actually think of a game, i suggest The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. Very good book IMO.

u/epreisz · 3 pointsr/gamedev

I don't want to spam since I posted a Reddit today on the topic, but our new tutorial was designed specifically for a noob. It's 3D, but the majority of info translates to 3D development.

http://www.garagegames.com/fps

If you want to be a designer, grab Jesse Schell's book ( http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321479907&sr=8-1) and make a bunch of board games and play them with your friends. You'll learn how to design more quickly if you take the tech challenges out of the equation.

u/joeldevahl · 3 pointsr/gamedev

I read Realtime Rendering a lot when I started programming 3D. It's good book , and the site links to a lot of other good books and sites.

I wouldn't recommend 3D Engine Architecture or 3D Game Engine Design though, since they give a very bloated approach and are quite C++ specific.

Remember to Keep It Simple. =)

u/ninjashaun · 2 pointsr/gamedev

I tend to agree with u/eepoo, mainly with the inexperience part. I don't think getting a team and making a game is as simple as a white bored sesh and trying to determine common traits of your fav games. Sound like a bucket of nightmare!

If you haven't already, check out The Art Of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses. Or even download the app of the same title, which is a little trimmed version with all the bullet points.

At least get your inexperienced guys to get the app for a crash course game design.


Url for the book, posting from phone and can't figure how to hyper link.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0123694965?pc_redir=1414060587&robot_redir=1

All that said, I am curious to know how the meeting does go? I may just eat my hat :-)

u/ToxicHamster · 4 pointsr/gamedesign

Game Design: A Book Of Lenses is one of the best / my personal favorite.

u/dnew · 2 pointsr/worldnews

BTW, if you are into games, here's an excellent book on the non-technical aspects: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965

If you want to know how the GPU works and such, these books give some insights: http://www.riemers.net/ the tutorials online are useful without the books. Note this covers XNA, which is the C# library for programming XBox games, unrelated to Unity, but if you just read it you'll get an idea of how Unity is translating your things into more lower-level details. Like, what's the "terrain" type really doing behind the scenes, and how do shadows work?

u/rowmens · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

This is a loaded question, and there are many factors that go into engaging the player. To make a linear game to be interesting, you need something to fuel the player. A good concept to focus on is that conflict drives the narrative, which in turn will drive the gameplay. Maybe read this one by Evan Skolnick: Video Game Storytelling http://www.amazon.com/Video-Game-Storytelling-Developer-Techniques/dp/0385345828

Alternatively, if you're interested, you could also give a listen to this podcast featuring Evan, the author of that book.

https://soundcloud.com/bigsushi-fm/ep-204-evan-skolnick

Sorry for the format, I'm on mobile.

u/silma85 · 2 pointsr/Eve

Be open about your relationship with EVE with girlfriend 3.0. If she's the right one, she will accept it and might even gift you some dank loot like this.

u/pd-andy · 1 pointr/processing

The code and that website accompany this book. If you're new to Processing and would like to get into it, I recommend it :)

u/Telos4 · 1 pointr/gamedev

You could take a look at this book about Game Physics Engine Development.

It covers pretty much every aspect of a physics engine you can think of.
There are chapters about laws of motion, mass-aggregated physics and rigid bodies.

The author requires you to know basic math, e.g. basic algebra, trigonometry and coordinate geometry.
Some knowledge of linear algebra might be helpful as well.
Everything fancier than that is introduced or reviewed to some extent.

u/SeraphEssael · 7 pointsr/Eve

EvE Universe, got the special edition when it came out. Amazing artwork, even has the Sunesis in it, goes to show how long they've had the models. Wonder how many more models that are concept art will make it to EvE.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/EVE-Universe-Art-New-Eden-CCP-Games/161655701X

u/intheweehours · 3 pointsr/Cplusplus

Real-time collision detection by Christer Ericson (https://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interactive-Technology/dp/1558607323) is pretty much the "go to reference", even for those of us who have written a fair bit of collision detection code.

It's pretty expensive in hardback form, but it's well worth the investment.

u/Froztwolf · 15 pointsr/gamedev

The art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses should give you a decent vocabulary to talk about these things.

But no book can teach you how to make fun games. All they can do is teach you vocabulary and frameworks in which to structure your ideas. (which is in and of itself extremely useful)

Post-Mortems and dev diaries (real ones, not the marketing ones) can show you some of the realities and pitfalls to expect during the production.

But there's no replacement for pure experience. Your first game will probably suck, and that's fine if you make it about learning, and not about not about stroking your ego. Ideas mean nothing if you can't execute on them anyway.

Check the history of the people making those original indy games you like. Go play their earlier games. What's new and fresh for you may be something they've been developing gradually for a decade.

u/ucankabak · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

I can certainly recommend you

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses


by Jesse Schell. Also, this book has a companion app in Play Store and App Store

u/MaxPlay · 1 pointr/gamedesign

Game Design has nothing to do with programming. Familiarize yourself with the different roles in development and you will find books for the right topics. r/gamedesign is nice on its own. Depending on your use of technology, you might want to look into the corresponding subs aswell.

Good reads on game design are Level Up! and The Art of Game Design.

u/yecats131 · 1 pointr/gamedev

I've recently started to research a lot more on writing game narratives and found "Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques". I thought it was a very helpful book. I'd originally checked it out from the local library (was a bit skeptical) and after reading it I went back and purchased it so I'd always have it on hand.

u/argvnaut · 7 pointsr/gamedev

Check out Programming Game AI by Example and Artificial Intelligence for Games. They are both decent game AI books, the former actually develops an AI for a soccer simulation in chapter four. There's also [Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI] (http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Mathematics-Game-Dave-Mark/dp/1584506849/), it expands on the concepts of utility and decision making which are only touched upon in the first two books. It's purely theoretical but very interesting.

u/iamktothed · 6 pointsr/Design

An Essential Reading List For Designers

Source: www.tomfaulkner.co.uk

All books have been linked to Amazon for review and possible purchase. Remember to support the authors by purchasing their books. If there are any issues with this listing let me know via comments or pm.

Architecture

u/LyndonArmitage · 2 pointsr/gamedev

This book is also pretty good for all things game AI related.

u/charlieb · 10 pointsr/generative

This is one of my favorites https://natureofcode.com/

This is also well regarded https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Art-Practical-Guide-Processing/dp/1935182625

They're also a ton of processing specific articles and many people here will describe their algorithms and share their code if you ask (and often even if you don't)

u/Jephir · 10 pointsr/gamedev

Seconded, Game Engine Architecture is the best book for an overall view on engine development. I've also found these books useful for implementing engine subsystems:

u/DrChrisp · 8 pointsr/boardgames

There ARE several good books, I would highly recommend

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

Kobold Guide to Board Game Design

BUT neither of those books actually teaches you mechanics and balancing, they just explore problems and ideas that you might run into. Playing games is how you learn different mechanics and how they combine, and balancing is just a thing that happens naturally as you playtest and observe what players do.

The coolest part of board game design is it doesnt require any previous training. Just grab some notecards and a pen and start exploring ideas. When you find something that seems fun, explore deeper into that idea.

You also might wanna check out /r/tabletopgamedesign

[Edit: Spelling]

u/tough_guy · 3 pointsr/gamedev

This is the best beginning resource along with http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1558607323 but as stephanimal said, my basic Newtonian knowledge comprised maybe 20 lines of code in my first physics engine, and about 100 if rotation was considered, but I don't remember if I learned to solve for inertia tensors in my first physics course or not. Good luck and if you need help PM me!

u/TJGM · 1 pointr/Fallout

On Amazon it's 25 pounds for the hardcover, or you could buy the kindle version for 15 pounds.

I think I'll buy it sometime during the Summer, the concept art in Fallout games is always fascinating to me for some reason.

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Fallout-Bethesda-Games-Studio/dp/1616559802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458996588&sr=8-1&keywords=the+art+of+fallout+4

u/tanyaxshort · 3 pointsr/gamedev

For game DESIGN, I personally like A Book of Lenses and Rules of Play. I didn't get much out of Theory of Fun, and the internet seems to like Level Up! but I haven't read it.

And none of those teach you really about game DEVELOPMENT -- the process, gameplay architecture philosophies, the pipelines, the team structures, the milestones, the industry jargon. The closest I've seen to that is having a games producer de-code chapters of Rapid Development for how it relates to games, back before I joined the industry and had my trial by fire. :)

Do you know what kind/platform/genre of game you're making, and what size the team is?

u/megazver · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Buy Challenges for Game Designers or Game Design Workshop, Second Edition. Or both. Do the stuff in them. Basically, both of these books teach you to actually design games, instead of programming, by designing in pen&paper first. It's a good approach.

A few other books there are also a good read for you guys.

u/luckless · 3 pointsr/gamedev

Not Level Design but I really enjoy Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design.

u/ZeitlosEisen · 2 pointsr/gaming

This is coming from a student in the game design program at DigiPen, a game development college where the teams behind Portal and Portal 2 both graduated.

Start by introducing yourself to game history. Learn about the different types of game families: racetrack games, war games, positional games, mancala games, dice games, card games. There are thousands of different non-digital games and you should start getting to know them.

I recommend Board and Table Games by R.C. Bell as a handy guide. http://www.amazon.com/Board-Table-Games-Many-Civilizations/dp/0486238555

Learn the mechanics of paper games. A board game is essentially a level in a digital game. Card games are about information. Learn about the probability curves used in dice games. And above all, design games. When you design games, ask yourself WTF: What's this for? If it's useless or adds nothing, scrap it. Never be afraid to kill a rule or even an entire idea if it's not working right. In the industry, they refer to this as being able to kill your baby.

Some great books on design:

Challenges for Game Designers

An excellent read and it has a ton of great exercises for non-digital design.
http://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300163628&sr=1-1

Game Design Workshop

Another great read.
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Second-Playcentric/dp/0240809742/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300163687&sr=1-1

If you're young enough to be in public school, why not try out DigiPen's K-12 Game Design summer program?
https://projectfun.digipen.edu/workshops/courses/game-design/

RPG Maker is a good start, but don't get stuck with it. Try out GameMaker, Unreal Engine, Unity3D, Flash and ActionScript 3.0. You'll need to be able to code or at least script if you want any chance in the industry.

WATCH THIS VIDEO! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2443-So-You-Want-to-be-a-Game-Designer It is paramount to what it means to be a designer.

u/kulanah · 4 pointsr/ludology

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965

I really enjoyed this book, there's an associated flash card app that has all the lenses he talks about and cliff notes for them as well.

u/petajc · 7 pointsr/gamedev

I few game dev friends of mine like to wax poetic about this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interactive-Technology/dp/1558607323/

u/SharpSides · 2 pointsr/pcmasterrace

Our very own E-Book HERE has a lot of helpful stuff on getting started!

I'd also recommend the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965/

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/

u/nakiki · 5 pointsr/gamedev

I was laughing so hard at this one.

I am reading this book at the moment and it gave some good insights about the game industry.

Can't give any good advice because I'm also a student at the moment.

u/bigblueboo · 1 pointr/processing

Once you get over the initial hump of the weirdness of programming, I'd suggest Generative Design as your second book. It has the most expressive/interesting/coolest examples and will inspire you even as it invites you to mess with its examples.

It's one of the best tech books I've ever bought. Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Generative-Design-Visualize-Program-Processing/dp/1616890770

u/smithincanton · 2 pointsr/Maya

Stop Staring is an excellent face rigging book.

How to Cheat in Maya is another good one.

Maya Studio Projects Texturing and Lighting is another sold book.

That should get ya started!

u/wiseman_softworks · 1 pointr/gamedev

I would recommend to learn the ropes first...

Read a few good books about the game design.
First one I would advice:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965

u/guywithknife · 1 pointr/gamedev

I recently picked up this book: https://www.amazon.com/Video-Game-Storytelling-Developer-Techniques/dp/0385345828

Haven't read it yet, it only arrived two days ago and I haven't had the time yet, so I'm unsure if its any good, but I've read much of what was available on the Amazon "look inside" and it seemed pretty good. The first few pages talked about how conflicts (but not necessarily earth shattering epic conflicts, they're largely done to death) are necessary to drive a story and I found it insightful enough to pick up a copy. You could give it a look.

u/zemo · 1 pointr/processing

read this book. It's one of the best introductory programming books I've read in any language.

u/johsko · 2 pointsr/gamedev

Note that Game Engine Architecture != 3D Game Engine Architecture. They are different books with similar names. While both are worth looking at, the former is my favorite (and the one OP mentioned).

u/DragoonDM · 3 pointsr/cscareerquestions

Game Engine Architecture provides an excellent overview of how game engines work, from the ground up, in a way that's fairly accessible—that is, I understood most of what I was reading despite not having any experience programming at that level.

Also good:

Real Time Rendering

Real Time Collision Detection

u/JadekMenaheim · 5 pointsr/Eve

You should consider picking up a copy of The Art of New Eden. This is just a sample of the beautiful art inside.

u/seifd · 3 pointsr/nintendo

Nintendo 64 Anthology has an excellent section on the history of the N64.

u/BazookaRaccoon · 1 pointr/gamedev

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965

This is a great design book by Jesse Schell.
I also recently read the Spelunky book by Derek Yu and was inspired by it, but it's not as much of a coffee table book.

https://bossfightbooks.com/products/spelunky-by-derek-yu

u/Broxxar · 2 pointsr/gamedesign

There's more than likely a happy medium here. Does floaty feel too floaty and inhibit the players ability to aim? Do tight controls feel to rigid and break the feeling of being a spaceship in free-flight?

You just need to nail down the feel. Flying should feel like flying but also still give the player all the control they need.

u/jutstrab · 1 pointr/tabletopgamedesign

Really really good game design book (a lot of university game design teacher use this one as main core of their courses)
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965

u/ShiftedClock · 3 pointsr/truegaming

There is a book called Game Feel (which I thought your post title was referring to). It's well regarded in the game design community. It goes into elaborate detail on all the points you brought up. Just if you're curious about going down this rabbit hole a bit further.

u/McTeaCup · 8 pointsr/titanfall

If you want more information about the aircrafts check out "The art of Titanfall" and "The art of Titanfall 2". There are entire chapters about spaceships and more. I have them both and I really recommend them!

The art of Titanfall: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Titanfall-Andy-McVittie/dp/178329194X

The art of Titanfall 2: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Titanfall-2-Andy-McVittie/dp/1785653695

u/doanian · 1 pointr/gamedev

To answer question 2: I think you would enjoy The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses by Jesse Schell http://www.amazon.com/dp/0123694965/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_WIdotb0YD3MBP

u/MrZeroInterviewer · 8 pointsr/Games

So what changed with Nintendo since then? I've been reading a coffee table book on the N64, and it makes the case that Nintendo put a lot of faith into the Western market and third parties in the fifth generation: Silicon Graphics and Rareware as particularly public examples. When their own apprehension of using CDs lost them their Japanese partners, they swung back the other direction. I'm not sure I fully agree with this narrative but it's an interesting theory, and with this video I can see some of the pieces clearer.