Designing Games – A well-written, comprehensive guide to video game engineering – #bookreview

Designing Games
A Guide to Engineering Experiences
Tynan Sylvester
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

If you design video games, if you hope to become a game creator, or if you work for a company whose lifeblood is creating and maintaining successful video games, you need to read this excellent book.

 Tynan Sylvester provides a comprehensive overview of the design processes that are the heart of successful games. And he describes the day-to-day actions necessary to keep game projects on track to completion.

“A game can’t just generate any old string of events, because most events aren’t worth caring about,” Sylvester contends. He is a veteran designer who has worked on everything from independently produced games to big-studio blockbuster games. “For a game to hold attention, those events must provoke blood-pumping human emotion. When the generated events provoke pride, hilarity, awe, or terror, the game works.”

Unlike screenwriters, novelists, or choreographers, game designers do not focus on creating events, Sylvester explains. “Instead of authoring events,  we design mechanics [the rules for how a game works]. Those mechanics then generate events during play.”

In his view, “The hard part of game design is not physically implementing the game. It is inventing and refining knowledge about the design.” And successful game creation involves “inventing mechanics, fiction, art, and technology that interconnect into a powerful engine of experience.”

His 405-page book also shows why you should not try to spell out everything up front before beginning work on a new game. It is too easy to overplan, he emphasizes. But it is also easy to underplan. So you should aim for a process in the middle: iteration, “the practice of making short-range plans, implementing them, testing them, and repeating.” And that loop-like process is applied not just to the overall game. “We can iterate on a level, a tool, or an interface. On larger teams, there should be many different iteration loops running at the same time.”

According to news accounts emerging from the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, much of the video game creation business is now gravitating toward independent developers and game companies with 10 or fewer employees. And the main focus within that movement is on creating games for tablet computers and smartphones–platforms with lower barriers to entry. But powerful new video game consoles are expected to appear soon, and they likely will drive the creation of new games, as well as upgrades for some successful existing games.

Whether you work alone, in a small shop, or on intercontinental game-development teams within big companies, you can learn important insights, processes, and skills from Tynan Sylvester’s Designing Games.  And if you are now in the process of trying to find a design job somewhere in the video game industry, you definitely need to read it.

– Si Dunn

Python for Kids – A fun & efficient how-to book that even grownups can enjoy – #programming #bookreview

Python for Kids
Jason R. Briggs
(No Starch Press – paperback, Kindle)

Subtitled “A Playful Introduction to Programming,” Python for Kids is recommended “for kids aged 10+ (and their parents).”

But what if your kids are grown or you don’t have any kids? Should you ignore this book while learning Python? Absolutely not.

I’ve recently taken two Python 3 classes, and I wish I had had many of the explanations and illustrations in Python for Kids available to help me grasp some of the concepts. I’m keeping this book handy on my shelf for quick reference, right next to works such as Head First Python and Think Python.

Yeah, it contains plenty of silliness for kids, such as a wizard’s shopping list that includes “bear burp” and “slug butter,” and using if and elif statements to create jokes such as “What did the green grape say to the blue grape? Breathe! Breathe!” (I have grandchildren who consider this stuff uproariously funny.)

But Python for Kids also covers a lot of serious topics in its 316 pages and shows—simply and clearly—how to handle many major and minor aspects of the Python programming language. NOTE: This book is for the newer 3.X versions of Python, not older 2.X versions that are still in use and still a focus of some books for beginners.

One Python class I took didn’t introduce tuples until the 7^th week of lectures. Python for Kids, however, has the reader using tuples on page 38, right after six pages of learning how to work with strings and lists. And the explanations and examples for these elements are clearer than what I got in a college-level course. (Of course, it helps when exercises involve “bear burp” and “gorilla belly-button lint” rather than boring generics such as “Mary has 3 oranges” and “Jack has 6 pencils.”)

Jason R. Brigg’s new book also shows how to draw shapes and patterns and create simple games and animations—topics not covered in some other beginning Python books I have used.

Another cool feature of this excellent how-to book is an afterword titled “Where to Go from Here.” It provides suggestions and gives links for those who want to learn more about games and graphics programming or take up other programming languages such as Ruby, PHP or JavaScript.

Bottom line, Python for Kids offers education and entertainment for children, their parents, and almost anyone else serious about having some fun while learning Python 3.

– Si Dunn

LEGO Bonanza — Stack ‘em up: 3 hot new books for LEGO builders – #bookreview

No Starch Press recently has released three new books aimed at the world’s millions of LEGO™ builders:

• The Unofficial LEGO™ Builder’s Guide, 2^nd Edition
• The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1
• The Unofficial LEGO™ Technic Builder’s Guide.

Here are short reviews of each.

The Unofficial LEGO™ Builder’s Guide, 2^nd Edition
Allan Bedford
(No Starch, paperback – Kindle)

Allan Bedford’s popular how-to guide has been updated, and all photographs and illustrations are now in color.

The well-written 221-page book starts at the absolute beginner’s level, showing and explaining the various LEGO pieces, which range from “bricks” to “plates” to “slopes” to “tiles” and numerous others. From there, it shows the best ways to connect pieces for successful construction.  Then it delves into three different, progressively larger, sizes of LEGO constructions –minifig, miniland, and jumbo – before briefly going smaller, to microscale.

Bedford explains how to design and build structures and characters from LEGO elements and also shows how to put together several projects, including a train station, a space shuttle, a mosaic, a game board, and a sculpture of the Sphinx.

His book’s Appendix A offers a helpful “Brickopedia” that contains “a selection of more than 275 elements, from basic bricks, slopes, and plates, to specialized elements, arches, and even decorative elements.

The pieces included represent the most common and most reusable elements in the LEGO system,” Bedford notes. The parts’ specifications are given, and helpful notes are included, as well.

Appendix B, meanwhile, shows how to download and use design grids to plan complex LEGO projects before you build them.

The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1
Megan Rothrock
(No Starch, hardback - Kindle)

Megan Rothrock’s book is the debut volume in the new “The LEGO™ Adventure Book series” from No Starch Press.

Subtitled “Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More!”, Volume 1 presents excellent color photographs of nearly 200 intriguing models crafted by LEGO builders around the world. Ms. Rothrock’s 200-page book also features “brick-by-brick breakdowns” of 25 models that range from a medieval village to T. Rex and a British Railways steam engine.

The constructions are shown step by step in close-up, so even inexperienced builders can duplicate them. Some are simple, such as a small bridge “that can be added to any scene” in eight steps. And others are more involved, such as a mecha named “Counterblast” that is well-armed with big guns that requires more than 50 steps to complete.

Megan Rothrock is well-known in LEGO builder circles. She is a former set designer for the LEGO Group, and her models have been widely displayed, including at ComicCon and LEGO events in Europe. She is now a freelance toy designer in Denmark.

LEGO builders frequently claim that they can build models of “almost anything” with LEGO parts. With books such as The LEGO™ Adventure Book, Vol. 1 helping guide and train you, you definitely can learn to build lots of different types of models.

The Unofficial LEGO™ Technic Builder’s Guide
Paweł “Sariel” Kmieć
(No Starch, paperback – Kindle)

The LEGO™ Technic system lets you build LEGO models that move. The system includes motors, gears, pneumatics, pulleys, linkages, and other devices designed for LEGO constructions. But working with Technic can be complex at times.

Fortunately, Paweł “Sariel” Kmieć has excellent credentials for showing and explaining how to construct Technic models and make them operate. He is described as “YouTube’s most popular LEGO Technic builder, a guest blogger for the official LEGO Technic blog, and a 2012 LEGO Ambassador.”

His 333-page book is packed with illustrations, photographs, explanations, and tips on everything from simple “pins” (which “keep bricks and beams together”) to wheeled suspension systems and using a subtractor to get better steering of a tracked LEGO vehicle that has two motors and is radio-controlled.

While most of the focus is on details of how to use specifics Technic parts, he also shows some amazing and inspiring powered models that he has built from LEGO pieces and LEGO Technic devices.

Whether you are new to Technic or an old hand, you likely will want to build many things that move, once you have this book. 

– Si Dunn

Enterprise Games – How to build a better 21st-century business with game mechanics – #business #bookreview

Enterprise Games: Using Game Mechanics to Build a Better Business
Michael Hugos
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

Can 21^st-century games and gamers attack and destroy the top-down, assembly-line thinking that still keeps many businesses firmly rooted in the previous century?

 Michael Hugos’ compelling new book makes a solid case that they can. Game mechanics, he argues, can reshape how workers work, how organizations are managed, and how business goals get accomplished in today’s volatile global economy.

“Games and the associated technology we currently refer to as video games offer us more than just a diversion and escape from difficult times,” contends Hugos. “They offer us field-tested models to use for organizing companies and performing complex and creative tasks. They offer clear and compelling examples for how people can work together, build their careers, and earn a living in rapidly changing and unpredictable environments.”

Hugos, principal at the Center for Systems Innovation, offers his well-written views in a 199-page book “loosely divided into three parts.”

Part One focuses on “ideas and case studies to illustrate how games can provide operating models to follow for redesigning work.”

Part Two presents “a discussion of games and game mechanics that are relevant to the way work is done.” He includes “specific examples, pictures, and case studies to show how game techniques and technologies can be applied to the design of new business systems and workflows.”

Part Three “describes business and social impacts of combining technology from video games with in-house corporate systems, consumer technology, and cloud computing. The book concludes with a discussion about where this is all going and what it might mean for the future of work.”

During the coming months, Enterprise Games may spur many discussions and arguments at all levels of enterprise. And these may lead to some business-model reorganizations not only in Corporate America but elsewhere in the interconnected global economy.

For these changes to happen, however, many company leaders will have to stop thinking “top down” and learn to adapt ”the four traits of a game…goal, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation” to how they to structure and operate a business.

“We all have a sense of what a game is,” Hugos notes. But most of us also have been taught that “play” is not “work.” Enterprise Games shows how the two concepts can be brought together in ways that can make companies more competitive and more profitable in these uncertain times.

– Si Dunn

Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV – ‘Seeing’ with Python – #programming #bookreview

Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV
Kurt Demaagd, Anthony Oliver, Nathan Oostendorp, and Katherine Scott
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

SimpleCV, or Simple Computer Vision, is “an easy-to-use Python framework that bundles together open source computer vision libraries and algorithms for solving problems,” according to the authors of this useful and informative how-to book.

The subtitle is “Making Computers See in Python,” and the codes examples require Python 2.7.

Why learn computer vision? “As cameras are becoming standard PC hardware and a required feature of mobile devices, computer vision is moving from a niche tool to an increasingly common tool for a diverse range of applications,” the authors note.

Indeed, cameras and computer vision now are being used in everything from facial recognition systems and video games to automobile safety, industrial automation, medicine, planetary exploration, and even agriculture.

“The SimpleCV framework has compiled installers for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux, but it can be used on any system on which Python and OpenCV can be built,” the authors state.

Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV shows how to use the framework and simple application examples to get started toward building your own computer vision applications. The 240-page book has 10 chapters:

• Introduction
• Getting to Know the SimpleCV Framework
• Image Sources
• Pixels and Images
• The Impact of Light
• Image Arithmetic
• Drawing on Images
• Basic Feature Detection
• FeatureSet Manipulation
• Advanced Features (focuses on optical flow)

The book also has three appendices: Advanced Shell Tips, Cameras and Lenses; and Advanced Features (deals with advanced segmentation and feature extraction tools).

Practical Computer Vision with SimpleCV provides a good overview of computer vision basics and shows, using simple but effective examples, how you can put them to work.

– Si Dunn

WebGL: Up and Running – 3D Web graphics for the beginner, with expert guidance – #bookreview

WebGL: Up and Running
Tony Parisi
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

“WebGL,” Tony Parisi notes, “brings 3D to the browser, providing a JavaScript interface to the graphics hardware on your machine.”

Parisi is co-creator of the VRML and X3D languages which have become ISO standards for networked 3D graphics. So he knows a bit about using WebGL (Web Graphics Library) for low-level 3D renderings on the Web. If you are ready to give Web 3D graphics a try, you need WebGL: Up and Running.

Parisi’s new book is a well-written “quick introduction” to 3D programming. It has 211 pages and numerous code examples and screen shots. And it is organized into eight chapters and an appendix that provides links to several WebGL resources.

The first two chapters offer an overview of the WebGL API and Three.js, the open source JavaScript library that is used in the programming examples.

Chapters 3 through 6 focus on “the details of programming graphics, animation, and interaction” and explore “WebGL’s breakthrough capabilities for integrating 2D and 3D into a seamless user experience.”

Chapters 7 and 8 look at “real-world WebGL production topics, from authoring tools and file formats to building robust and secure WebGL applications.” Also in`Chapter 8, Parisi shows how to build a full WegGL application, a racing game.

You will need some familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Ajax to use this book. But you won’t need prior 3D graphics experience. The author’s goal is to get you up and running well enough that you can start using WebGL and learning as you go.

Still, “even the 3D graphics expert will learn something new” from this how-to guide, promises Ken Russell, the Khronos Group’s WebGL Working Group chair, in the Foreword to WebGL: Up and Running.

– Si Dunn

Super Scratch Programming Adventure – Kids can learn programming without typing code – #bookreview

Super Scratch Programming Adventure
The LEAD Project
(No Starch Press, paperback)

Scratch is widely popular, free educational software for children ages 8 and up. And its simple, graphics-based programming language has a dual mission, says Professor Mitchel Resnick, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Scratch Team. The MIT group helped develop the software in partnership with The Learning through Engineering, Art, and Design (LEAD) Project based in Hong Kong.

“We designed Scratch to help young people prepare for life in today’s fast-changing society,” Prof. Resnick notes in this book’s foreword.

“As young people create Scratch projects, they are not just learning how to write computer programs. They are learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively—essential skills for success and happiness in today’s world.”

Super Scratch Programming Adventure deftly combines comics and programming tasks with the steps necessary to create “projects inspired by classic arcade games that can be programmed (and played!) in an afternoon.” The book covers version 1.4 of the software.

One thing you definitely don’t do in Scratch is go to a command line and key in some code. The book notes: “Scratch was designed to prevent common beginner pitfalls like misspellings and errors in consistency. Instead of typing commands, programming in Scratch is performed by dragging and joining programming blocks.”

And this isn’t just “Hello, world!” stuff. Soon after meeting the program’s graphic characters and seeing how to operate the program, kids start working at the x-y axis level to control movements by Scratchy the Cat. They also learn how to adjust the speed of Scratchy’s maneuvers and save their file.

From there, the book continues forward in 10 chapters that are organized as increasingly challenging stages. And most of the stages involve creating a new, simple game.

For example, in stage 2, the chapter focus is “Learn how to design new costumes and program a sprite’s movements, reactions, and sound effects.” By stage 7, the focus is: “Learn how to design an interactive maze with a guard, booby traps, and treasure!” By stage 10, children have learned how to upload their own Scratch projects to the Scratch website to share with others around the world (with their parents’ permission, of course).

Many kids may be able to pick up this book, open the program, and figure out everything on their own. But the laudable goals of Super Scratch Programming Adventure are best served when teachers and parents stay involved as mentors.

Besides, you might learn a few new things from Scratch programming, too.

– Si Dunn

Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress – How to build and fight your way into this complex game – #bookreview

Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress
Peter Tyson
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $19.99; Kindle edition, list price $15.99)

Many gamers agree with this book’s tagline, that Dwarf Fortress is “…the most complex video game ever made.”

For that reason, they have avoided taking it up or have tried it, stumbled over its steep learning curve, and walked away.

Peter Tyson, however, has been writing Dwarf Fortress tutorials for gamers since 2009, and his new 230-page how-to-play it guide has been getting some good reviews from players and newcomers.

The game’s “baffling complexity and Dwarf Fortress’s infamous and seemingly impenetrable ASCII graphics can be extremely offputting to new players,” Tyson concedes. But his new book “aims to help you overcome these challenges and to guide, comfort, enlighten, and hopefully inspire the inner Dwarf Fortress player in us all.”

His approach is to focus on the game’s simulation mode and have you first  build an underground dwarf fortress. After you learn how to build and maintain the fortress, you can start tackling numerous other challenging assignments, such as gathering and managing dwarf resources, growing (and defending) crops above ground and below ground, maintaining a healthcare system and justice system (while dealing with a few rogue dwarves who turn out to be vampires!), and creating and training a militar with dwarves and war animals. 

You will also learn how to expand your fortress and protect it with a wild array of traps, machines, and powerful weapons. 

“If there’s one thing all Dwarf Fortress players should be prepared for, it is losing,” Tyson cautions. “You will lose your first few games, and probably quite quickly. But do not fear! There’s a good chance that your losses will be quite amusing.”"

“Once you are familiar with Dwarf Fortress,  you may feel like creating a more challenging world,” Tyson says. “Adjusting the world creating settings to produce a world with higher savagery is the easiest way to increase the difficulty as more locations will have dangerous and aggressive animals and creatures to face. This will necessarily force a change to your embarkation strategy–and traveling equipped for battle is advisable when deploying to a particularly dangerous area.”

Sounds  like a viable strategy, too, for the real world outside Dwarf Fortress. 

– Si Dunn

 

Oh, say can you C? Learning to program with Head First C – #bookreview #in #programming

Head First C
By David Griffiths and Dawn Griffiths
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $49.99)

 Long ago, in a universe now very far away, I was an ABC programmer: assembler, BASIC, and C. I learned C from a book popularly known as “K&R,” after its authors, Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. (Their classic work is now available in an updated second edition.)

But I had no mentors, so I struggled to figure out and apply many of the basic concepts that were not quite spelled out clearly enough or illustrated well enough for me in K&R.

I really wish I had had a book like Head First C, instead. My geeky logical side often is ruled and frequently overruled by my unstructured, illogical artistic side.

For learners like me, O’Reilly’s “Head First” series makes effective and entertaining use of graphics. It also addresses readers with a conversational style that avoids lecturing. And it focuses on trying to make sure you understand and can apply each new element.

Thus, Head First C does not try to be a complete C language reference guide. It shows you how to work with C’s major concepts, and you begin using them right away, so you can start understanding the process of becoming an effective C programmer. After that, if you are motivated to continue, you can push on into other books that do attempt to be complete C reference texts.

This “brain friendly guide” shows how to download free C compilers for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows machines. And, the authors assure: “All the code in this book is intended to run across all these operating systems, and we’ve tried hard not to write anything that will only work on one type of computer.”

Another positive for this book: You don’t have to key in or wade through dozens of lines of code to get to the few lines you are really supposed to be studying. “Most examples in this book are shown within the smallest possible context, so that the part you’re trying to learn is clear and simple.”

And, the book has been given a thorough technical review. So the code examples that are intended to work generally will work.

The book’s 12 chapters focus on the following topics:

1. Getting Started with C
2. Memory and Pointers
3. Strings
4. Creating Small Tools
5. Using Multiple Source Files
6. Structs, Unions, and Bitfields
7. Data Structures and Dynamic Memory
8. Advanced Functions
9. Static and Dynamic Libraries
10. Processes and System Calls
11. Interprocess Communication
12. Sockets and Networking
13. Threads

About midway through the book, you are presented with your first lab exercise. You write some C code and hook up a few hardware components to create an Arduino-powered plant monitor that lights up an LED and repeatedly sends the string “Feed me!” to your screen if a plant needs to be watered.

In the book’s second lab exercise, you write C code that lets your computer and its web cam act as an intruder detector. You do this with help from OpenCV, “an open source computer vision library. It allows you to take input from your computer camera, process it, and analyze real-time image data and make decisions based on what your computer sees.”

In the third and final lab exercise, you use your new C skills to write a video game called “Blasteroids,” with help from the Allegro open source game development library.

Head First C is a first and foremost a very good book for beginners, especially those who have at least a little bit of programming experience. But it delves into some advanced-level topics, too, such as multithreading and network programming.

If learning C is your goal, Head First C can help you stay focused, stay entertained and happily soak up the things you need to know.

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– Si Dunn is a novelist, screenwriter, freelance book reviewer, and former software technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist. He also is a former newspaper and magazine photojournalist. His latest book is Dark Signals, a Vietnam War memoir. He is the author of an e-book detective novel, Erwin’s Law, now also available in paperback, plus a novella, Jump, and several other books and short stories.

Tap, Move, Shake: Turning Your Game Ideas into iPhone & iPad Apps – #bookreview

Tap, Move, Shake: Turning Your Game Ideas into iPhone & iPad Apps
By Todd Moore
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $29.99; Kindle edition, list price $23.99)

If you have some game ideas and a little coding experience, this well-focused and well-written book can show you how to get started as a developer of iPhone and iPad game apps.

The author notes: “Most games are typically controlled using a directional pad, analog joysticks, and various buttons. The iPhone and iPad give us a new form of input—Multi-touch. We can track up to 5 individual touches on the iPhone and iPod touch screens and up to 11 individual touches on the iPad. This opens up a whole new genre of games that previously did not exist. This is why [in this book] you are going to learn right from the start how to handle multiple touches on the screen.”

Moore’s 254-page book, which includes a foreword by Steve Wozniak, is organized as follows:

• Preface – “Whether you are racking up points hitting a ball with a paddle or fragging your friends in a 3-D immersive world, the overall game elements are the same.”
• Introduction to XCode – How to register at the App Store as an Apple Developer. (Also see App Store chapter at end of book.) How to get the iOS Dev Center program and download the latest version of XCode. How to build a simple game while you learn various aspects of XCode.
• Hello Pong – How to create a Pong-like air hockey game called “Paddles” as you “learn how to implement multi-touch controls, animation, collision detection, and scoring.”
• Graphics – How to create graphics and use them in your game.
• Physics – How to “improve the paddle controls and create a realistic puck animation” for the “Paddles” game.
• Sounds – How to “create realistic sounds for your game.”
• Computer AI – Shows “how to create a computer player that can play a decent game of air hockey” and includes adding a title screen for the “Paddles” game, “so the player can choose to play against the computer or play the two player mode that has already been implemented.”
• App Store – The author walks you “through the process of submitting your application to the App Store.” He also discusses the necessity to take “a lot of different screenshots, making sure to show the unique parts of your game.” The idea ultimately is to “help the customer make a buy decision” for your app.

Todd Moore founded TMSOFT “to create unique smartphone applications and games.” He is one of the few developers who have had “two apps in iTunes’ Top 20 Paid Downloads.”

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– Si Dunn‘s latest book is a detective novel, Erwin’s Law. His other published works include Jump, a novella, and a book of poetry, plus several short stories, including The 7th Mars Cavalry, all available on Kindle. He is a screenwriter, a freelance book reviewer and a former software technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist.