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You should probably get the DirectX11 version when it is available, not because it's newer, not because DirectX10 is obsolete (it's not yet), but because the new DirectX11 book has a chapter on animation.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.

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

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!

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.
  

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!

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.

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.

I think the best way to spend a solitary birthday would look like this:

Wake up whenever the hell you want, but try for no later than 10AM, you want to enjoy the day after all! Make yourself your favorite breakfast even if it is just a bowl of cereal. While eating, watch your favorite show or movie. I would pre-schedule a massage! Massage envy has a special rate for first time guests (I am pretty sure) or look into a nearby massage school - you can generally get a 1-hour massage for about 20-30 dollars. Then snag a Jamba Juice to tie you over till dinner. Depending on if you are a home body or not this could then go one of two ways; either go home and play your favorite video game uninterrupted or go see a movie! If nothing is playing that day, then gift yourself some Fandango tickets to a showing later on in November. Several awesome looking movies are coming out in Nov. Then I would suggest ordering in for dinner, have a pizza delivered or chinese, whatever you prefer or if you are comfortable, go out and treat yourself to something awesome. After that, probably more video games or a new movie you haven't seen yet or maybe just some time on reddit, relaxing. You could also read a comic, manga, or book with some scented candles and a beer or glass of wine.

I think it would be awesome to gift yourself this book. I have looked at it and it is crazy awesome!

I hope those are good ideas! I hope you have a wonderful birthday!! :D

Holkan Turns 24 !! :D

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!

> 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.

Yeah, lots! Some of my old technique books were found in the library of a now-defunct printing school in NYC and thus will be very difficult to find again, but a few good ones that you shouldn't have trouble finding are:

– The Universal Penman is a collection of some of George Bickham's most beautiful calligraphic pieces. It's a lovely book for inspiration and general style (not so much technique but rather seeing how the letters are shaped and spaced, etc.).

– Spencerian Penmanship is a good technique for learning the basics of Spencerian letterforms. I purchased the version without the five extra copy-books on Amazon but I'm not seeing it there right now (just the version with the copy books, which could be useful).

– JA Cavanaugh's Lettering & Alphabets is a good place to learn the basics of a few different lettering styles, particularly loose script lettering for advertising layouts and some Roman + Caslon styles.

– Leslie Cabarga's Logo, Font, & Lettering Bible has some extremely helpful tips for digitizing your lettering work as well as other general design tips. It is, ironically enough, a horrendously designed and dated book but the methods are still instrumental.

– Finally, Colt Bowden's How To Paint Signs and Influence People zine is a really lovely modern take on lettering techniques. Though it is geared for signwriters, the techniques taught for building up letterforms has followed me through to my pen-and-ink work as well. Plus, it's a really fun little series and your money is going to a very talented and passionate dude.

Hope this was helpful!

I've been on a total typography book binge recently!

• Letter Fountain - This book is AMAZING! It's comprehensive, gorgeous and heavy. Note: There's a lot of overlapping information in all these recommendations, so if you buy just one book on typography from my list, make it this one.
  
• Designing Type by Karen Cheng - This book is a great one to get if you are designing a typeface yourself. It takes a close look at all of the letters and characters (serif and sans-serif) describing their key features, comparing and contrasting notable variations of significant typefaces and basically serving as an excellent reference.
  
• Logo Font & Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga - This one is a lot of fun, with a focus on practical tips, ie: software tips and tricks. If you're interested in illustration or decorative typefaces, this is the one to get. (I know if you judge this one by its cover and Amazon's 'look inside' preview it may not look the best, but the actual printed volume is attractive, dense and a joy to browse.) [EDIT: The paperback has a much nicer cover! This is the one I have.]
  
• Book Design by Andrew Haslam - Everything you might want to know about book design, naturally! I haven't read much else on this subject, but this seemed excellent to me. A great mix of history and practical advice for designing all kinds of book.
  
• Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works by by Erik Spiekermann and E.M Ginger - Smaller, but full of good information. This was one of the first 'proper' books on typography I read and I think it serves as a great introduction to the subject. If you only have a passing interest in the type, try this book. It reads like an opinionated personal essay. Perhaps skip it if you are looking to get hands-on quickly.
  
  Finally, I strongly don't recommend Type Matters! If you see it in the store you may be tempted - it's a very attractive leather-bound book with sexy black and red illustrations - but I found it to be overly simplistic. It also looks like there's quite a lot of reading to be had, but the vast majority of the text in there is all repeated sample copypasta. (And if I wasn't disappointed enough in the book, the elastic came loose on my copy!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Entrepreneur Reading List

1. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
   
2. The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
   
3. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
   
4. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
   
5. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
   
6. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
   
7. Ikigai
   
8. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
   
9. Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch
   
10. The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time
    
11. Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web
    
12. The Web Startup Success Guide
    
13. The Best of Guerrilla Marketing: Guerrilla Marketing Remix
    
14. From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product
    
15. This Little Program Went to Market: Create, Deploy, Distribute, Market, and Sell Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You
    
16. The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
    
17. The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
    
18. Startups Open Sourced: Stories to Inspire and Educate
    
19. In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters
    
20. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
    
21. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
    
22. Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed
    
23. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
    
24. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
    
25. Eric Sink on the Business of Software
    
26. Words that Sell: More than 6000 Entries to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas
    
27. Anything You Want
    
28. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
    
29. The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business
    
30. Tao Te Ching
    
31. Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
    
32. The Tao of Programming
    
33. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
    
34. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
    
    

    Computer Science Grad School Reading List
    

    
    

35. All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School
    
36. Introductory Linear Algebra: An Applied First Course
    
37. Introduction to Probability
    
38. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    
39. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society
    
40. Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery
    
41. What Is This Thing Called Science?
    
42. The Art of Computer Programming
    
43. The Little Schemer
    
44. The Seasoned Schemer
    
45. Data Structures Using C and C++
    
46. Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
    
47. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
    
48. Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
    
49. How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing
    
50. A Science of Operations: Machines, Logic and the Invention of Programming
    
51. Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences: Computer Science and Computational Biology
    
52. The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
    
53. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine
    
54. Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory
    
55. How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
    
56. Types and Programming Languages
    
57. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Elementary Algorithms
    
58. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Mathematical Methods
    
59. Commonsense Reasoning
    
60. Using Language
    
61. Computer Vision
    
62. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    
63. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
    
    

    Video Game Development Reading List
    

    
    

64. Game Programming Gems - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    
65. AI Game Programming Wisdom - 1 2 3 4
    
66. Making Games with Python and Pygame
    
67. Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python
    
68. Bit by Bit

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

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

• Game Programming Gems series -- (8 books currently) Lots of snippets and articles contributed from developers across the game industry.
  http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Gems-Adam-Lake/dp/1584507020/
  
  
  
• Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory -- Great intro to the details of how game engines are built. It's a good balance for detail and readability for a beginner. Even for someone just using engines such as UDK or Unity3d I would recommend this to understand what is going on under the hood.
  www.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Architecture-Jason-Gregory/dp/1568814135/
  
  
  
• 3D Game Engine Design -- More technical and detailed descripting of designing and developing a game engine, but not as noob friendly as Game Engine Architecture
  http://www.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Design-Second-Edition/dp/0122290631/
  
  
  
• 3D Game Engine Architecture -- Follow up to 3D Game Engine Design that goes in to lower level detail and general updates.
  http://www.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Architecture-Engineering-Applications/dp/012229064X/
  
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence for Games by Millington / Funge -- I believe this is the current "must read" for game AI. The only book I've seen that goes in to Behavior Trees and other modern concepts.
  http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Second-Edition/dp/0123747317/
  
  
  
• AI Programming Wisdom series -- 4 books, like Game Programming Gems but for AI. Not a must have but I'd recommend them. They seem to be out of print though, so good luck finding them.
  http://www.amazon.com/AI-Game-Programming-Wisdom-CD-ROM/dp/1584500778/
  
  
  
• Real Time Rendering -- One of the better books on rendering. I'm not a big render guy but this is the book that everyone recommends to me.
  http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Rendering-Third-Edition-Akenine-Moller/
  
  
  
• Real Time Cameras -- THE book on how to implement cameras well, written by THE guy when it comes to video game camera systems.
  http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Cameras-Mark-Haigh-Hutchinson/dp/0123116341/
  
  
  
• Code Complete -- The only book not game related I'm listing, it's basic stuff to help you learn to write better code. There are parts that I (and many others) disagree with but in general it's a lot of good advice.
  http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/
  
  
  There are many others, but looking at my shelf these are the big ones that stick out for recommendations.

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.

I had the same problem. I ride the subway every day and have a ton of time to read, so I've been trying to collect similar resources.

Here are some resources I found really helpful:

1. Beginners book on Unity - http://www.amazon.com/Development-Essentials-Community-Experience-Distilled/dp/1849691444
   
   This is a VERY basic (think: learn how to code!) introduction to Unity. I personally found it too elementary, having coded in a few different languages, but it might be a good place to start as it explains basic Unity design concepts like Components, Materials, Colliders, etc.
   
   
2. Your first Unity project (helps to have Unity accessible to follow alone) - Building a 2D RPG in Unity: http://pixelnest.io/tutorials/2d-game-unity/
   
   This is by fast the best 'getting started' tutorial I've found. It walks you through creating a really basic project from scratch using Unity basics and scripts. This is what I based most of my code off of when I first started my project.
   
   
3. REALLY great book on game design/physics and AI - http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Example-Wordware-Developers-Library/dp/1556220782
   
   This has been the most helpful resource for me. It's not Unity specific but will teach you A TON of great fundamentals for things like how to move a character, common patterns like StateMachines, how to handle AI, etc.... All of these concepts will be relevant and many are already in place in Unity so you'll recognize them right away.
   
   Advanced: Game Programming Patterns - http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/
   
   This is a book (online/pdf/epub) that teaches the more advanced patterns you'll be applying in your code. I'd suggest this once you finish with the above resources and have been working through your game for a bit.
   

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.

Hey man, Ashterothi from Hydrostatic, we provide good digestion of the information, but we are not a primary source material.

Here is a priority list for your study:

Lore Survival Guide by friend of the show Mark 726 - man he is amazing

Hydrostatic Know Your Lore for any topic you're interested in.

Hydrostatic Lore Panels - each is 2 hours of lore with some of the top lore experts in EVE. The first one is mostly background, and the following are processing the information as we got it.

EVE Source - an EXCELLENT Lore bible from CCP

EVE Chronicles - Over a decade of EVE narrative

Empyrean Age and Templar One - although many in the lore community have their reservations about Tony G. These are pretty fun romps through the EVE universe.

The Burning Life - Glorified fanfiction that takes a tour of EVE Online, honestly the above resources replace any value from this book.

EVE Wiki, past news items - Unfortunately time has rotted these resources (not inaccurate, but plenty of dead links and false trails)

This list is in order of how much effort vs. information you gain. Most of all I would recommend joining the Tweetfleet slack and come to the #lore channel. I literally knew nothing about the lore when the Drifters attacked. Like the rest of EVE, it isn't that hard to learn the lore as long as you put some energy into it.

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.

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?

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.

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:

• Ogre - http://www.ogre3d.org/
  
• Godot - https://godotengine.org
  
  Here's a list of good books to get you started:
  
  
• Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory
  
• 3D Game Engine Design by David Eberly
  
• Mathematics for 3D Game Programming by Eric Lengyel
  
• Game Physics by David Eberly
  
  The Reddit /r/gamedev wiki has a great list of resources:
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/wiki/resources
  
  There are lots of great videos on YouTube featuring Carmack's gamedev talks, so I highly recommend watching those too.
  

A while back these were produced in limited quantities and sold for ridiculous amounts on eBay, but they have been re-issued due to popular demand by Dark Horse.

The boxed set features 3 books full of Yoshitaka Amano's concept art spanning from FF to FFX. These books are HUGE, and have a lot of art I've never seen before. If you are a fan of Amano's artwork, this is a MUST BUY, great addition to any FF collection. The pages are high quality and it makes the art look better than ever before. And the best part of all, it is only $56.30 on amazon.

Mine just came in the mail today. So worth it.

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.

Anthropology and The Witcher? Fascinating! I love Anthropology, folklore, history, and mythology. Another thing you could discuss are the culture ideas of certain monster contracts, like In the Heart of the Woods, how the Leshen can either be acknowledged as a protective forest spirit or a malicious beast killing whoever it can that enters its territory.

Religion could also be discussed as it is also very important to cultures both in real life and in the world of the Witcher...speaking of which, I highly recommend you acquire this book: https://www.amazon.com/World-Witcher-Video-Game-Compendium/dp/1616554827/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I bought it several months ago and it's been a great and fascinating read and may help you a great deal! Good luck on the Path.

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

This is a list of books that was suggest to me by John Langdon (An internationally known typographer for his ambigram used in The DaVinci Code) while I was taking his class in College:

Type Directors Club Annuals: I just recently picked up the latest issue of this (32 I believe) and it shows current works of typography across a broad spectrum of mediums. These are great because they feature only current work and many of the featured designs are extremely creative and pushing the envelope in terms of readability and style.

Logo Lounge Master Library Vol. 1: I do not have a copy of this book but I have thumbed through it briefly and it features tons of logos that mainly deal with letter forms. This is certainly on my personal list of books I would like.

Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1: I recently purchased this book as well and I have to say it is a MASSIVE collection of vintage typography and ornaments from type founders all over the world. The majority of the samples in this book are from before the 1900's so you are almost guaranteed to not recognize anything in it. Excellent resource for inspiration!

Logo, Font & Lettering Bible: This is another book on my list. Covers a broad spectrum of lettering and is also good for learning fundementals.

Some other books he has suggested to me but I have not personally look through or read are: Type & Typography, Fonts & Logos, and finally John Langdon's book: Wordplay.

I hope this helps!

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.

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.

Well, it looks like the Link on the mug is also in the style of Wind Waker's Link, so I still vote for that if it came down to these two options :)

You could get her an ocarina. Or you could pre-order Hyrule Historia. It won't come out until January, but it should be a great gift for any fan--it's a book with art and trivia about Zelda. Or perhaps a Zelda T-shirt. There's also this shirt with hearts. I personally love this shirt as well.

Or you could get Zelda-themed jewelry or a tote bag. Here's one bag, and here are some Triforce earrings.

Hope that helps!

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.

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.

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.

I am a huge Final Fantasy fan and although my girlfriend is familiar with the series, she is not as passionate about the games as I am. However, for Christmas last year she got me a Final Fantasy Artbook called The Sky. It features breathtaking art that is instantly recognizable to any Final Fantasy fan. You also will not need to know which games are his favorite because the book features artwork from most of the main games in the series. So no matter what he will be happy. I was ecstatic Christmas day last year when my girlfriend got this for me and I'm sure your boyfriend would be as well. If it is too late for you to order online I have seen it in stock at my local Barnes and Noble.


I hope this helps! Good luck!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If you wanted to opt for something extra to go with the lightning deck, I'd suggest the Ultimania Archive books (English translated Volume 2 releases in December). They have tons of behind the scenes info about the games in each volume (Vol. 1 covers games I-VI, Vol. 2 will cover VII-IX, and when Vol. 3 releases next year... X-XIV) a lot of the artwork done by Yoshitaka Amano, concept sketches, maps of the world. For under $20, it's a really great coffee table book to flip through and take a look at all the work that goes into each game.

Or maybe a Lightning plush to go with the deck. lol

If your friend is a little more into Final Fantasy than just XIII though, definitely either one of the Ultimania Archive books or one of Amano's artbooks like "The Sky" or "Illustrations". Best of luck to you!

ok that is a good thing to know lol

so I will pick 80$ and you pick 20$ :D

3DS Game

Book

Card game

that should be about 80$

Thank you for the super gift chance! :D you are the best!

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

I agree with comedian about the unity. It's a great program, free, and it has a bunch of great resources to help you get started. (like this book) You can also examine the code you use while you make things, which was a big help with learning C# for me.

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.

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. =]

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!
  

This is great advice. I've always had high-stress jobs, and currently still do. I look at gaming as my release, but I agree, sometimes I can get a bit overloaded. Not so much by the games themselves, per say, but simply the act of sitting and staring at a screen.

I enjoy playing story-rich games mainly, so I've found what helps break up the "gamer-block" is to immerse myself with the game's lore.

Hell, for Christmas, all I asked for was some uniform items and duty gear for work, and Dishonored: The Dunwall Archives and The World of the Witcher. Both are incredible books btw, and really open up both game worlds, for anyone interested- World of the Witcher most especially.

It's tremendously relaxing to sit down and read- but still be immersing myself into the worlds I have found so much solace in the past few years.

P.S. If anyone is interested in either of those books, PM me, I can send you some pictures of some of the book's pages, you can get a feel for them.

Happy birthday!

1. I'm a terrible cook, but I've been trying to get better. I've been cooking two or three meals a week for her from this website. There's tons of delicious, easy recipes even for someone who is inept (like me!). I made this, this, and this for a picnic for my girlfriend's birthday. We loved it.
   
   
2. My girlfriend. Nothing makes me feel better than when I see her smile. She completes me.
   
   
3. rambopandabear spent all this time writing a book and you're reading the dust jacket? The hell is wrong with you? Flip the page and read!
   
   
4. Here's a green book about a green hero who lives in a green forest who collects green rupees who must save the world from the evil green man.

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!

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.

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.

I'm new to design as well but I just happened to read something that you might find as a valuable critique. Check out this book and "Look Inside" at pages 10 and 11. I think some of the points the author raises about some of those logos -- irregularity of certain features among letters, namely -- will apply to yours as well. For example

• in the logo, the T is slanted but that is not the case in any other design you have
  
  
• the width of the stem of the T and the L and the E are all different
  
  
• it's not clear if there is a reason why the F, E, and R are not specialized but the U, C, and I are not -- it makes the text hard to read
  
• the lack of an F in the forum sig is especially confusing
  
  Personally, I like they style and think it's very creative; but I don't think it serves the function you'd like it as well as you'd like -- I had to read your username in order to initially pick up on your nickname from your design.

If you're feeling generous, I would absolutely LOVE to win this. Thank you for the contest :)

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".

I'm still learning myself so some of these books I'm recommending depend on your skillset and interest I guess. For typedesign and understanding fundamentals: Designing type is a good read, same with Stroke. Free stuff like briem superhandy. As a primer I'd read this before I buy a type design book. For lettering I don't really have books of preference. I generally go googling for info on whatever I may have a doubt in or if I just need inspiration. Like if I were looking at script, I'd look at works by Tony di spigna, tommy thompson, david quay and the like. When I once had a doubt about negative space within letters, I googled and stumbled upon this which helped. so for lettering it's a bit all over the place where I mostly just got info from googling. However if you want a book in lettering for a beginner-intermediate then logo,font & lettering gets you upto speed on a lot of things though he can be a lil old in his methods. Also books by Mortimer Leach and Doyald Young. For calligraphy I think I mostly learnt it from speedball manuals and then just googled but more importantly I did a lot of writing which is why I picked up on it. I think to understand type properly you need to do some calligraphy, once you get a grasp on calligraphy, typedesign makes sense so you go buy type design books, eventually lettering becomes super easy.

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.

You could get this instead of the strategy guide. I own it and can vouch that it has a very well made and detailed beastiery but it is more focused on lore than specifics so idk how useful it would be for playing a tabletop RPG. It also has information about the different kingdoms, religions, and much more. Best part about it is that the whole book is supposed to be written by Dandelion and other characters. The section on Witchers is by Vesemir and the beastiary section by Geralt, etc.

The World of the Witcher: Video Game Compendium https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616554827/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_gVOUBb6GX9K44

Are you looking for something fun or like a home gift? There are some really cool space plates and cups on Amazon, I own them and they’re great.

The Unemployed Philosophers Guild Planet Plates, Planet Plates, One Size https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HWGP9W4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_oQhlDb8M346J3

I actually can’t find the cups I have but these are similar and are cool. Nebula Glass Set with Images from NASA's Spitzer and and Hubble Space Telescopes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y16KQLZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ERhlDb1FVXZQM

If he’s into the Destiny lore my husband owns these and thinks they’re pretty cool - maybe get him the set?
Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Vol I https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945683449/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ZUhlDbWM5VGQ0

"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.

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.

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

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.

> 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!

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

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 :)

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

Others are commenting that Zelda games don't have a great story but the Zelda Universe is actually an intricately woven tapestry. It highlights the neverending struggle between good and evil and the games balance exploration and puzzle-solving really well.

I think you might really benefit from reading The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia. It goes into the lore of each Zelda game and places it in the Zelda timeline. Granted, it'll take away from some of the suspense if you decide to go back and play the older games but their gameplay should hold your interest if you do.

I'd check your local library first - you might be able to check it out for free instead of spending the $30 or so.

Something like this that they did for LoZ BotW would be sweet to have along the way, more like you were saying with concert art, interviews with the creators, storyboards, side stories, behind the scenes, world building, lore, history, mythology, and the like. Then after the show is done, a thick compilation of those books together would be amazing! Kinda like the Goddess Collection for LoZ, lore and history and plot and making of, art and artifacts, everything else you could’ve ever dreamed of

I was given the first Ultimania Archive as a gift recently and I really love it. It's a book full of concept art, development history, and just general information about the first six games of the series. Great gift for any fan and it's fairly cheap too.

You can be the Zelda to my Link. :) Haha.

The Hyrule Historia There is no more awesome Zelda item. I was gifted this and it is the crowning item in my Zelda collection. Purely amazing. :) <3

Link has twinkle toes

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.

Does he enjoy Zelda? Then I highly recommend these two books (unless he already bought them):

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Art-Artifacts/dp/1506703356/

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Hyrule-Historia/dp/1616550414/

Both hardcovers, one gives a detailed history/timeline of most of the Zelda games. The other covers rare artwork of the Zelda series. Any Nintendo or Zelda fan would love these!! The ultimate gift!

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.

The Grimoire is the story of the world of Destiny pre game. It’s actually really cool to read if he’s into books. There’s a few you tubers that’ve carved a career out of reading the Grimoire in videos. If you know he watches creators like MyNameIsByf or MyelinGames then this should be a good choice :)

Grimoire vol 1

Or if he likes playing cards there’s these too

Destiny playing cards

If your friend doesn't have EVE : Source, it can be a nice gift.

Or an Amazon Gift card with which your friend can by PLEX (an in game item used to add 30 days time to an account, or that can be sold in game for in game currency).

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

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

• http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2848/an_architects_perspective_on_.php
  
• http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanTaylor/20130929/196791/Ten_Principles_of_Good_Level_Design_Part_1.php

This, a hundred times this.

Written by one of the (i think) co-founders of Unity, this is how I got started a while back. The book may be a little outdated, but none-the-less, actually kept me engaged and taught me a lot, not as much programming wise though...


Otherwise, I would just go with youtube videos, those can be equally engaging and helpful.

​

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,

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.

Haha, awesome.

I'm very jealous of you playing The Wind Waker, I'd love to play through it again right now, but I'm desperately trying to hold off playing it until the HD release comes in October. Just two months and a bit to gooooo. I can't blimming wait, if you'll excuse my French.

Sounds sad to say, but I've not been into the handheld console lark for a while now, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am walking about London with that kind of kit on display. :P I am tempted though, Nintendo know how to make good handheld games.

The video cable? What do you mean by that? Like the top screen detached or something? That's what happened to mine when it was dropped. But the screen still works, barely- it's just very loose.

Ah man, I'm using the word jealous a lot here. But I'm very jealous that you've got the Collector's Edition on the Gamecube. I'd love that. I suppose they're not that expensive so maybe I'm just being a cheapskate.

Something I'm really considering picking up is the 'The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia'. It makes me fuzzy just thinking about it, and I've heard great things. The last time I looked it was £16 and it's now £21, so I might be better off getting it now rather than later. It would be a perfect Christmas present from someone though, so I'll wait and see, perhaps regrettably. Or maybe I won't, depends how much I'm craving some LoZ next time I think about it.

Oo-er.

Love that book. I would also reccomend this:



http://www.amazon.com/Last-Us-Poster-Collection/dp/160887379X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421965553&sr=8-2&keywords=the+last+of+us+poster






It's very nice and pretty cheap. The posters are really nice, but I don't want to tear any of them out because it's just such a nice thing to flip through lol

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.

Lmao! Fair enough. As an anime fan I do prefer Nomura's style. But I DEFINITELY appreciate Amano's work & even own The Sky Box set of art books.

To better understand the timeline and the general universe of LoZ I definitely recommend picking up the Hyrule Historia. Its a compilation book done after Skyward Sword and it depicts the original timeline and how it works within each game so far. It even touches on the Hero's Shade in Twilight's Princess. I really love the book and it's so well put together. I have beside me, so if there is any specific questions I can try to answer them that haven't already been touched on so far.

Edit: I forgot to provide a link to the book. Amazon.com

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?

Anything from Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D illustrator, among others). All of the Final Fantasy compilations are good and I would recommend the Art of Metal Gear Solid I-IV book as well.

The Art of Metal Gear Solid I-IV https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506705812/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AlRPDbFCFFRBH

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506706444/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_qMomh98bxFD9h

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506706622/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_LAxO4tBIZrTtg

The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616551607?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

This one is up for pre-order of you like pixel art
FF DOT: The Pixel Art of Final Fantasy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506713521/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_nnRPDbPFQ1KJK

Like others have said, it really depends on what you plan on buying. Besides one or two convention exclusives, I never have a set idea of what I'm buying while I'm on the floor. If something catches my interest, I'll scope out the price and make decision.

As far as how fair the pricing is, I've gotten some moderately generous deals before. I ended up buying The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy from some shady-looking dude on the floor for $10 less than its asking price, a week or so before it hit the market. I've also been able to buy some vintage PS2/GameCube games at half their normal eBay or Amazon costs. Just take a good look at all the smaller, niche booths. You can sometimes find gold.

I'm not sure how to show you what we'd want from Zazzle but I guess if we win you'd contact us individually about it? O_o (for me it's a custom poster)

As for your bf, well....what are some music he likes/movie genres, etc that he likes?

Oh my Zazzle!

EDIT: maybe he might like this?

There are some excellent game development engines these days that let you get from zero code to satisfaction very quickly.

Check out Unity3D. A friend of mine who is a novice programmer picked up the free engine plus this book and had a 3D physics based block smashing demo up within an hour. Impressive stuff.

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.

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".

If he is in to video games there's a good chance he's a Zelda fan. If he also reads, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia would be a great gift.

I'd like to recommend the following:

A great book for foundations (math stuff):

3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development
http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Graphics-Development-Wordware-Library/dp/1556229119
I found this to have really nice clear explanations of Vectors, Matrixes, etc.

For learning OpenGL the "red" book is great!

OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL
http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0321773039/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

I haven't read this one but a lot of people recommend it for Unity.

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials
http://www.amazon.com/Unity-3-x-Game-Development-Essentials/dp/1849691444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334698866&sr=8-1

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Sky-Art-Final-Fantasy-Slipcased/dp/1616551607/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1522189883&sr=8-3&keywords=yoshitaka+amano

is one of the best purchases i have ever made.

Amano is one of my favorite artists. Love his work.

Sweet action, thanks OP!

For anyone interested, here's my usual Nintendo Book recommendations ;).

• Zelda BOTW Collectors
  
  
• Zelda BOTW Regular
  
  
• Art & Artifacts
  
  
• Hyrule Historia
  
  
• Art of Splatoon
  
  
• Art of Fire Emblem Awakening
  
  
• Playing with Power
  
  
• Super Mario Adventures
  
  
• The World of Professor Layton
  
  Would be REAL nice if the Deluxe BOTW guide or the Mario Bros. Encyclopedia would go up right about now as well ;)

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.

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.

I bought a copy off amazon when it released last year. It is really great. Great production value and product.

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 :)

I live in the USA so idk how much this helps you, but here's a link to the one I purchased off Amazon.

It's a direct link from my previous orders "buy it again" option so I can 100% verify it's a solid link, mine was shipped in a timely manner and arrived in perfect condition.

Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Vol I https://www.amazon.com/dp/1945683449?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Again though, idk if you living in Italy will effect its availability, but hey I tried lol

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?

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

That’s a million dollar question, literally. If there were a formula for defining fun, all games (video, board, tabletop) would be fun.

Some games like Minecraft and DnD5e hit just the right marks to make the authors filthily rich, but no one has ever managed to make more than a few hundred rules of thumb to get there.

If you want to dive deeper into this question, there are hundreds of books about game design available. I haven’t followed the field for quite some time now, but my personal favorite is The Art of Game Design. The author made his name by creating rides at Disney Land.

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. :-)

Creating a Champion - Hero's Edition. It includes a map of Hyrule and a Spirit Orb

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild-Creating a Champion Hero's Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506710115/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LgwTCbR55WR0X

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gnomes is a good example. Hmm.

A SUPER popular guide book that came out in 2013 was The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, based on the game's world and history.

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.

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

CONCORD, it's all caps. They're not separate, they're comprised of the four Empires. There's a certain degree of separation, but CONCORD relies entirely on the four Empires sharing the financial burden etc. Think of it as a heavily militarized United Nations.

And yes, capsuleers directly interface with the ships through the hydrostatic capsule, but keep in mind CONCORD has control over all systems we interface with. Trade, comms (chat channels), contracts, station services etc etc etc. Hell, they even print and own all our currency. Our ISK? Entirely artificial, exists only for us and isn't part of the baseliner economy. They can wipe all our money in an instant. Why do you think we can't just bombard whatever planet we want? Why do you think some lunatic hasn't plowed his battleship armada into Dam-Torsad yet? We can't even target these things, exactly because we have these leashes. Which frankly makes perfect sense, because those invisible leashes are just about the only thing that could make these Empires go "Hmm, sure, let's have these mad gods roam our skies in multi-billion ISK warships. What can possibly go wrong?".

As for actual sources for this stuff, it's spread across a lot of places. I highly recommend going through the Fiction Portal , Backstage's Evelopedia backup (limited, as the datadump from Evelopedia lacked a bunch of stuff. It's being slowly but surely rebuilt on the Fiction Portal by volunteer ISDs.) and buying Eve Source at some point.

I'm not going to annotate shitposts on reddit with specific sources, because after over a decade of playing and roleplaying in Eve, devouring all the fiction and lore, it's just too much fuckin' work.

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)

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.

For my nostalgia fix haha

|Say something

Sure, I'll even give you an awesome GIF for free!

The Sky art books on Amazon. They are a collection of concept art by Yoshitaka Imano from the first 10 games. I own this collection and it is really quite spectacular. Hyrule Historia is also a good gift, as it covers all Zelda games from inception through Skyward Sword. Not as much of an art book as it is a general retelling of the franchise and an order of events for the games.

If you husband is somewhat of an audiophile, I would suggest Distant Worlds 1 & 2

This should cover you for whatever birthdays/christmas/anniversaries for like a year.

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.

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.

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/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sky-Fantasy-Slipcased-Edition/dp/1616551607

I bought that for my best friend for his birthday and he about shit himself. It is a beautiful collection. I own one myself as well.

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.

It's mostly just official chronicles and stories that are available elsewhere but I'm still partial to http://www.evereader.org/

Of the three novels, all of them are fairly old and some stuff has been retconned but The Empyrean Age was good, My copy of Templar One seems to be missing a lot of punctuation but I managed to make it through after I adjusted to it.

The Burning Life is very tonally different and I couldn't even force myself to finish it.

More recently, Eve: Source is a dedicated lore/art book released last year but I don't have it so can't comment on it's quality.

And I see someone's already linked True Stories

"Creating a Champion" Hero edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1506710115?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

This probably isn't what you are looking for, but is the closest to what I know might be.

I picked this up a few years ago, The Sky. It is three art books on Amano's art for the Final Fantasy series. Even if you don't have it there is a chance you've seen decent chunk of this. Skimming through it I'm not seeing anything describing his process or interviews. It is largely just concept art for the games.

However, what it does have is a chronological order of his Final Fantasy art from 1987. So you might be able to use it as a collected grouping of his art to see his evolution over the decades. At least as far as Final Fantasy is conerned. n

The NES era, volume 1, looks to be mostly just the occaisonal scene, but mostly the final drawn art pre-Pixel conversion.

Volume 2 is the SNES era. As it progesses it begins including more varied stuff. Some serious drawings, some silly little asides.

Volume 3, the 3D era up to FF10 is different. Less art per game, but looks to be earlier in the process stuff than the previous two volumes. More "drafty" for lack of a better word. Stuff like this where Aerith looks more like Celes. A noticeable amount of pages where the same drawing is shown in different Colors. Three variations of this are in this volume scattered about.

As a layman, it seems the three volumes are:

• Volume 1 - NES finished work before handed off the pixel team, plus a few cinematic scenes.
  
• Volume 2 - Finished work, some concept messing around, and "doodles". It is twice the size of the other two.
  
• Volume 3 - Seems to have the most evolution of character concepts as development progressed.

If this link works:


https://www.amazon.com/World-Witcher-CD-Projekt-Red/dp/1616554827

Hardcover sourcebook that gives a history of the world, characters, magic, religion, bestiary, etc in the Witcher universe.
I collect these types of things for RPGs :)


Really well done with some great artwork. It's the only lore-related book that I could find outside of the 2 short-story books and 5 novels. And the Season of Storms book. There might be some comics too...

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.

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.

Hmm. Official here is a strong word. Ales Kot is the writer of that comic and to my knowledge, he was privy of no additional information than we are. It's more like a well funded Fan comic.


There's the Artbook, The Vinyl, and the boardgame.


If you just want stuff similar to BB I know of a couple.

Not explicitly relevant to Japan Travel, but an English version of FF Ultimania covering FF1-6 was just announced. Hopefully it has some of the content you are looking for

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'

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.

It's also #1 on amazon.ca for the time being.

When I pre-ordered it a few days ago it was already sitting at #2.

Dark Horse is definitely going to be happy they are releasing this in North America if the pre-orders continue this way.

Also interesting of note is that there is still no cover image on any of the amazon sites that I have seen. I have a feeling Dark Horse will be creating one themselves but it will be interesting to see how it differs from the Japanese version.

It's for programming, and "a bit" heavy, but the "game programming gems" book series is pretty good.

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Gems-CD/dp/1584500492

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.

It's the map that comes in the Creating a Champion Hero's Edition. It's amazing!

If you really want to start from the very beginning, read the books first:

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/wiki/index#wiki_books
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/3qm8p9/so_you_want_to_read_the_witcher_books_guide/

There's also the compendium: http://www.amazon.com/World-Witcher-CD-Projekt-Red/dp/1616554827 -- which is chock-full of information to help you navigate the universe and the lore.

But you can play the games first, that's what I did, though I feel like I missed quite a bit of the backstory and the references. I played TW1 in 2014, TW2 in 2015, and just finished TW3 this month after playing for five months. And I started reading the books three months ago. You can jump into any game and enjoy it, but if you want my advice, start with the books and then work through the games. It's worth it.

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. =)

You might already know this but Hyrule Historia is being localized and is coming out Jan 29, 2013. Amazon has them available for pre-order and has a 40% discount on it, an even bigger discount than when I pre-ordered it. So yeah just letting you know if in case you were interested in it.

Link

get him hyrule historia. i suggest this, as one of my friends also loves the zelda games, but doesnt care about CIB or collecting per se. he loved this though.

Definitely FFVII then! If you want something fancier, there are replica Buster swords and Play Arts figures--Cloud and Sephiroth are the anchor characters and probably the safest bets. This art book is gorgeous if you think he might be into that, but it's not FFVII exclusive. This print set is cute, too. Or there's the Static Art Minis of Cloud, Sephiroth, and Tifa.

There's probably a bunch of soundtracks & such out there too, but I'm not too familiar with those.

Will this be a good present for someone who says they love Legend of Zelda? She's only 14.

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 :-)

There's a huge map of Hyrule in the Hero's Edition of the book Creating a Champion.

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Breath-Wild-Creating-Champion/dp/1506710115

Look on Etsy lots of custom made stuff. Hyrule Hystoria is a pretty good book for any fan.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Legend-Zelda-Hyrule-Historia/dp/1616550414

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

It depends how experienced you are. I have found the best resource so far to be the Unity website's official tutorials.

Here's a great one to start with:

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/scripting/translate-and-rotate

If you don't know any C at all, I would recommend this one:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/learning-c-by-developing-games-with-unity-3d-terry-norton/1116543759?cm_mmc=googlepla-_-book_45up-_-q000000633-_-9781849696586&ean=9781849696586&isbn=9781849696586&r=1

It's silly, but it's up to date and doesn't spend too much time dicking around. I would buy the e-book though, I don't know about $50 for this one (then again, I'm broke).

This one is a little out of date but supposedly still relevant, and though I haven't looked at it yet it's widely recommended:

http://www.amazon.com/Development-Essentials-Community-Experience-Distilled/dp/1849691444

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?

This is the best picture I could get. I didn't have much to compare the posters to in my room so I found this. The posters are the same size as the cover, 16 inches. When you click the link scroll over all the way to the right on the images. Hope this helps. Image

You should get Hyrule Historia. My friend gave it to me for my birthday and it's beautiful and informative. Full color, lot's of pictures, timeline, concept art.

It's TLoS art book, pretty cheap on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161655164X there's also a poster book that's quite good http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/160887379X

If anyone wants to start reading The Witcher novels I made a guide over on the "Featured Character" comment section that I'll repost here:

Short stories:

1. [The Last Wish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Wish_(book) - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   
2. Sword of Destiny - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   Novels:
   
   
3. Blood of Elves - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   
4. Time of Contempt - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   
5. [Baptism of Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_of_Fire_(novel) - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   
6. The Tower of the Swallow - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   
7. [The Lady of the Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_the_Lake_(novel) - Amazon US / Amazon UK
   
   Overall:
   
   
8. The Last Wish
   
   
9. Sword of Destiny
   
   
10. Blood of Elves
    
    
11. Time of Contempt
    
    
12. Baptism of Fire
    
    
13. The Tower of the Swallow
    
    
14. The Lady of the Lake
    
    The short stories are a must-read before the novels because they introduce many characters and plot points for the main saga. There is also a prequel story called Season of Storms which hasn't been officially translated into English yet, but there are fan translations if you can't wait. I haven't read it myself, but I hear that it is best read after the others. If you want to know more about The Witcher lore there is always The World of the Witcher^UK which will give you more backstory and details.