- This topic has 15 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 20 years, 7 months ago by
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There’s a very good book that I read out there called Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames by Steven Poole that I got last year. It’s interesting as it talks both about the history of the industry, as well as a deep look into the various genres that there are out there.
I thought it was excellent, and you can pick it up on Amazon, I bought my copy in Easons but I’m not sure if they still have it in stock.
Anyone else have any recommendations?
Jamie
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For game programming, http://www.flipcode.com/rotd/ is a pretty good list. From a general game programming perspective, the ‘gems’ series stand out.
For graphics programming, you can’t do much better than ‘Real-time Rendering- second edition’ (http://www.realtimerendering.com/).
Eoin.
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I came accross a site a while back dedicated to pointing out the errors in LaMothes’ books. It was quite a large site! Can’t seem to find it at the moment.
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Who cares?
The fact is they are exceptionally easy to read.
If you are doing things right, you should be able to see what the errors are and not just presume everything yuo read is true. Playing with the coding examples is the most important thing that you can do. -
I agree. I should have pointed out that I have nothing against the books. I just thought it was interesting.
Eoin.
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Not directly games related, but there are plenty of general programming books out there worth checking out.
It’s definitely worth reading all of Steve McConnell’s stuff for general coding and project management techniques. ‘Code Complete’ and ‘Rapid Development’ are the two main ones, and should be read by every developer IMHO.
Steve Maguire also has some good programming books: ‘Writing Solid Code’ and ‘Debugging the Development Process’
On the gaming side, ‘Game Architecture and Design’ by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris is very good.
Another excellent resource is Erasmatazz. Pretty much everything written by Chris Crawford is worth reading, and he has some great ideas on interactivity.
Then there are the comp.games.development.* newsgroups which can contain the occasional nugget of information whenever eep shuts up.
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Developing Online Games (Mulligan, Patrovsky) is a good read. Slightly padded in some places, but worth it for nuggets of advice and anecdotes relating to Everquest, Asherons Call et al.
Not least given Star Wars Galaxies DECIDELY uncertain launch!
Recommended. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592730000/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-0084357-2789238
Lewis
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Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design.
It’s their new one. I just got it yesterday and it looks good. Some very engouraging words for the newcomers to the industry.
Shane
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Some other useful books include,
o Effective C++ (second edition)
o Physics for Game Developers
o C++ for Game Programmersxunil
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I’ve read the Andre LaMothe’s first games series book.
“Tricks of the windows game programming gurus”
[what a title eh?]and its really good, so good in fact that i’ve bought and am working through vol II, advanced 3D graphics and rasterization.
i like his style of writing, and he seems capable of explaining things both well and logically.
I was just wondering, if i’m applying to a games developing company,
is it worth mentioning that i have/am reading/using/have covered these books on my cv?i have no formal triaining in games as such, i have a physics degree and a postgrad in computing.
i imagine the reaction to seeing i have read the books would be one of the following:
1) that’s nice son, but i’ve never heard of those books.
2) oh, good for you i’m impressed.
3) so?heh!
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Like yourself McI I have no training in games, or programming for that matter, and am currently working my way through the first LaMothe book.
Obviously telling employers you’ve read the books isn’t enough. They want to see what you’ve learnt from them and there’s only one way to do this – show them. Everything I’ve seen on how to get into the industry keeps coming back to two things.
1) Have a portfolio of work together to show an employer.
2) Specialise – so if you want to be a designer for instance spend most of your time doing mods rather than say programming complex physics engines.
Hope this helps.
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Again, not directly related to game design or even computing, but I find books on evolution are very inspirational when it comes to thinking about game concepts. They tend to be full of descriptions of different types of behaviour and as such, tend to prompt wonderful ideas for AI, gameplay and interactivity. The best one by far that I’ve seen was The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Smith. Many scientists who study evolution also have a major interest in game theory (as in Nash Equilibrium and the like) so it’s never too difficult to make the leap from what they’re saying to a game design.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever done this but the Web makes it pretty easy to locate the authors of these books by simply using search engines. I once finished a book I was quite impressed with (also on evolution) and located the author’s email address. He was more than happy to provide me with more information and when I told him I was involved with game design he gladly pointed me towards what he felt were the more games-related aspects of his current resesarch. I remember he sent me information on Californian lizards who play Rock-Paper-Scissors by changing the colours of their scales to decide all arguments within their social groups.
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For graphics, I would second Real-time Rendering. I would also highly recommend Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice (Foley, Van Dam, Feiner, Hughes). It’s part of IBM’s systems programming series of books, and it’s considered by many to be the best reference. I’ve not read right through it myself (yet), but certainly it is very detailed, and very comprehensive – excellent if you want to know what’s really going on behind the API. A good linear algebra book wouldn’t go amiss either.
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