Create 'AAA' quality game audio with new features and tools built for Unity About This Book * Explore the basics of audio development in Unity to create spatial sound, mixing, effects, composition, adaptive audio and more. * Leverage the Audio Mixer of Unity 5.x to create blockbuster sound and music for your game. * Learn about developing professional audio for games with FMOD Studio and composing original music with Reaper. * Build amazing audio synchronized graphic visualizations with Unity. * Understand how real-time character lip syncing can be implemented. Who This Book Is For The ideal target audience for this book will be game developers, both Indie as well as semi pro. No prior knowledge of Unity and audio development is assumed, What You Will Learn * Develop game audio and other audio effects with Unity * Getting familiar with the new Audio Mixer introduced in Unity 5 * Implement dynamic and adaptive audio using various tools and strategies * Explore interesting ways to incorporate audio into a game with sound visualization * Use 3rd party professional audio development tools like FMOD * Compose original music and record vocals * Understand and troubleshoot audio performance issues In Detail Game Audio is one of the key components in making a game successful and it is quite popular in the gaming industry. So if you are a game developer with an eye on capturing the gamer market then this book is the right solution for you. In this book, we will take you through a step by step journey which will teach you to implement original and engaging soundtracks and SFX with Unity 5.x. You will be firstly introduced to the basics of game audio and sound development in Unity. After going through the core topics of audio development: audio sources, spatial sound, mixing, effects, and more; you will then have the option of delving deeper into more advanced topics like dynamic and adaptive audio. You will also learn to develop dynamic and adaptive audio using the Unity Audio Mixer. Further, you will learn how professional third party tools like FMOD are used for audio development in Unity. You will then go through the creation of sound visualization techniques and creating your own original music using the simple yet powerful audio workstation Reaper. Lastly, you will go through tips, techniques and strategies to help you optimize game audio performance or troubleshoot issues. At the end of the book, you'll have gained the skills to implement professional sound and music. Along with a good base knowledge audio and music principles you can apply across a range of other game development tools. Style and approach This book will have a step by step practical approach where downloadable free games will be given with the book and readers will be free to work with them.

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Create enthralling Android games with Unity Faster Than Ever Before About This Book * Develop complex Android games with the help of Unity's advanced features such as artificial intelligence, high-end physics, and GUI transformations. * Create amazing Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) with Unity's new uGUI system * Unravel and deploy exciting games across Android devices Who This Book Is For If you are a Unity 5 developer and want to expand your knowledge of Unity 5 to create high-end complex Android games, then this book is for you. Readers are expected to have a basic understanding of Unity 5, working with its environment, and its basic concepts. What You Will Learn * Develop your own Jetpack Joyride clone game * Explore the advanced features of Unity 5 by building your own Action Fighting game * Develop remarkable Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) with Unity's new uGUI system * Enhance your game by adding stunning particle systems and complex animations * Build pleasing virtual worlds with special effects, lights, sky cube maps, and cameras * Make your game more realistic by providing music and sound effects * Debug and deploy your games on different Android devices In Detail Game engines such as Unity are the power-tools behind the games we know and love. Unity is one of the most widely-used and best loved packages for game development and is used by everyone, from hobbyists to large studios, to create games and interactive experiences for the Web, desktop, mobile, and console. With Unity's intuitive, easy-to-learn toolset and this book, it's never been easier to become a game developer. You will begin with the basic concepts of Android game development, a brief history of Android games, the building blocks of Android games in Unity 5, and the basic flow of games. You will configure an empty project for the Jetpack Joyride Clone Game, add an environment and characters, and control them. Next you will walk through topics such as particle systems, camera management, prefabs, animations, triggers, colliders, and basic GUI systems. You will then cover the basic setup for 3D action fighting games, importing models, textures and controlling them with a virtual on-screen joystick. Later you will set up Scene for 3D Configuration, create basic gameplays, and manage input controls. Next you will learn to create the interface for the main menu, gameplay, game over, achievements, and high score screens. Finally you will polish your game with stats, sounds, and Social Networking, followed by testing the game on Android devices and then publishing it on Google Play, Amazon, and OUYA Stores. Style and approach A step-by-step and detailed guide to developing high-end complex Android games utilizing the advanced concepts of Unity.

America's Digital Army is an ethnographic study of the link between interactive entertainment and military power, drawing on Robertson Allen's fieldwork observing video game developers, military strategists, U.S. Army marketing agencies, and an array of defense contracting companies that worked to produce the official U.S. Army video game, America's Army. Allen uncovers the methods by which gaming technologies such as America's Army, with military funding and themes, engage in a militarization of American society that constructs everyone, even nonplayers of games, as virtual soldiers available for deployment. America's Digital Army examines the army's desire for "talented" soldiers capable of high-tech work; beliefs about America's enemies as reflected in the game's virtual combatants; tensions over best practices in military recruiting; and the sometimes overlapping cultures of gamers, game developers, and soldiers. Allen reveals how binary categorizations such as soldier versus civilian, war versus game, work versus play, and virtual versus real become blurred-if not broken down entirely-through games and interactive media that reflect the U.S. military's ludic imagination of future wars, enemies, and soldiers.

America's Digital Army is an ethnographic study of the link between interactive entertainment and military power, drawing on Robertson Allen's fieldwork observing video game developers, military strategists, U.S. Army marketing agencies, and an array of defense contracting companies that worked to produce the official U.S. Army video game, America's Army. Allen uncovers the methods by which gaming technologies such as America's Army, with military funding and themes, engage in a militarization of American society that constructs everyone, even nonplayers of games, as virtual soldiers available for deployment. America's Digital Army examines the army's desire for "talented" soldiers capable of high-tech work; beliefs about America's enemies as reflected in the game's virtual combatants; tensions over best practices in military recruiting; and the sometimes overlapping cultures of gamers, game developers, and soldiers. Allen reveals how binary categorizations such as soldier versus civilian, war versus game, work versus play, and virtual versus real become blurred-if not broken down entirely-through games and interactive media that reflect the U.S. military's ludic imagination of future wars, enemies, and soldiers.

Create and customize your very own Minecraft server using Java and the Spigot API About This Book * Set up a Minecraft server that you control * Use object-oriented programming to modify Minecraft regardless of your level of experience * This interactive guide will help you create a unique experience for you and your friends Who This Book Is For This book is great for anyone who is interested in customizing their Minecraft server. Whether you are new to programming, Java, Bukkit, or even Minecraft itself, this book has you covered. All you need is a valid Minecraft account. If you are interested in programming as a career or hobby, this book will get you started. If you are simply interested in playing Minecraft with your friends, then this book will help you make that experience even more enjoyable. What You Will Learn * Install and run a Spigot server for free on your home PC * Adjust the server settings to customize Minecraft to your liking * Install an IDE and configure a project to write code * Install and test plugins on a Spigot server * Test your plugins through debugging the code * Program in game commands and permissions * Get to know advanced programming concepts such as event-driven programming, configuration files, saving/loading data, and scheduled tasks * Implement configuration files to make your plugins customizable * Save and load your plugin's data to persist across server restarts In Detail Minecraft is a sandbox game that allows you to play it in any way you want. Coupled with a multiplayer server powered by Spigot, you can customize the game even more! Using the Bukkit API, anyone interested in learning how to program can control their Minecraft world by developing server plugins. This book is a great introduction to software development through the wonderful world of Minecraft. We start by instructing you through how to set up your home PC for Minecraft server development. This includes an IDE complete with the required libraries as well as a Spigot server to test on. You will be guided through writing code for several different plugins. Each chapter teaches you new skills to create plugins of increasing complexity, and each plugin adds a new concept of the Bukkit API By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge you need about the API to successfully create any type of plugin. You can then practice and build your Java skills through developing more mods for their server. Style and approach This hands-on guide is filled with interactive examples to help you modify Minecraft. Programming terms and concepts are explained along the way so even those who have never written code before can keep up.

Recent years have seen an increase in public attention to identity and representation in video games, including journalists and bloggers holding the digital game industry accountable for the discrimination routinely endured by female gamers, queer gamers, and gamers of color. Video game developers are responding to these critiques, but scholarly discussion of representation in games has lagged far behind. Gaming Representation examines portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of games, from casuals like Diner Dash, to indies like Journey and The Binding of Isaac, to mainstream games from the Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, Spec Ops, The Last of Us, and Max Payne franchises. Arguing that representation and identity function as systems in games that share a stronger connection to code and platforms than it may first appear, the contributors to this volume push gaming scholarship to new levels of inquiry, theorizing, and imagination.

Over 60 recipes to help you create professional and exquisite UIs to make your games more immersive About This Book * Design and develop interactive and professional user interfaces (UIs) for games in Unity * Discover how to implement and deal with various in-game UI elements that will impress your players * This practical recipe guide will help you to efficiently create powerful and remarkable UIs using C# code Who This Book Is For If you are a game developer with some experience in Unity and C# and want to create the best interactive experience fast and intuitively, then this book is for you. If you are an intermediate game developer or an expert, these recipes will help you bring out the power of the new UI Unity system. What You Will Learn * Implement different kinds of counters and healthbars * Deal with timers and find out how to format them * Animate and vivify UI elements * Handle runtime customizations * Add complex Head-up displays (HUDs) * Design and implement 3D UIs * Integrate minimaps in the UI In Detail With the increasing interest in game development, it's essential to design and implement a UI that reflects the game settings and shows the right information to the player. The Unity system is used to create complex and aesthetically pleasing user interfaces in order to give a professional look and feel to a game. Although the new Unity UI system is powerful and quite easy to use, by integrating it with C# scripts, it's possible to realize the potential of this system and bring an impressive UI to games. This guide is an invaluable collection of recipes if you are planning to use Unity to develop a game. Starting with the basic concepts of the UI components, we'll take you all the way through to creating complex interfaces by including animations and dynamics elements. Based on real-world problems, these recipes will start by showing you how to make common UI elements such as counters and healthbars. You will then get a walkthrough of how to manage time using timers, and will learn how to format them. You will move on to decorating and animating the UI elements to vivify them and give them a professional touch. Furthermore, you will be guided into the 3D UI world and into HUD scripting. Finally, you will discover how to implement complex minimaps in the interface. Style and approach Interactive, easy-to-follow recipes will help you create and implement UIs that make gaming an exhilarating experience.

Jump into the world of Game AI development About This Book * Move beyond using libraries to create smart game AI, and create your own AI projects from scratch * Implement the latest algorithms for AI development and in-game interaction * Customize your existing game AI and make it better and more efficient to improve your overall game performance Who This Book Is For This book is for game developers with a basic knowledge of game development techniques and some basic programming techniques in C# or C++. What You Will Learn * Get to know the basics of how to create different AI for different type of games * Know what to do when something interferes with the AI choices and how the AI should behave if that happens * Plan the interaction between the AI character and the environment using Smart Zones or Triggering Events * Use animations correctly, blending one animation into another and rather than stopping one animation and starting another * Calculate the best options for the AI to move using Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, Map Preprocess Implementation, and Forced Neighbours * Create Theta algorithms to the AI to find short and realistic looking paths * Add many characters into the same scene and make them behave like a realistic crowd In Detail The book starts with the basics examples of AI for different game genres and directly jumps into defining the probabilities and possibilities of the AI character to determine character movement. Next, you'll learn how AI characters should behave within the environment created. Moving on, you'll explore how to work with animations. You'll also plan and create pruning strategies, and create Theta algorithms to find short and realistic looking game paths. Next, you'll learn how the AI should behave when there is a lot of characters in the same scene. You'll explore which methods and algorithms, such as possibility maps, Forward Chaining Plan, Rete Algorithm, Pruning Strategies, Wall Distances, and Map Preprocess Implementation should be used on different occasions. You'll discover how to overcome some limitations, and how to deliver a better experience to the player. By the end of the book, you think differently about AI. Style and approach The book has a step-by-step tutorial style approach. The algorithms are explained by implementing them in #.

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Design, build, and publish an iOS game from scratch using the stunning features of iOS 9 About This Book * Create storyboards in Xcode from concept to code and design * Chalk out your game's overall navigation and structure * Work with 2D and 3D game development tools Who This Book Is For This book is intended for game developers who wish to develop 2D and 3D games for iPhone and iPad. If you are a developer from another platform, or game engine such as Android or Unity, a current iOS developer wishing to learn more about Swift and the latest features of iOS 9, or even if you are new to game development, then this book is for you. Some prior programming knowledge is recommended, but not required. What You Will Learn * Familiarise yourself with both basic and advanced Swift game development code * Understand the structure and flow of a typical iOS app * Work with the SpriteKit framework to make 2D games, sprites, and overlays * Discover 3D game development with SceneKit * Visually design levels and game assets with XCode 7's latest features * Explore the concept of component-based structuring with iOS 9's Gameplaykit * Beta test and publish your game with iTunes Connect In Detail Game development has always been a combination of programming and art, and mobile game development is no exception to this rule. The iOS platform has been both a staple in the ever-growing mobile game market, as well as a launching point for many game developers (hobby and career-wise). The features and frameworks available in iOS 9 continue to cater to the synergy of design and computer engineering, using tools that allow developers to take a game idea from concept to application in record time. Whether you are new to iOS and game development as a whole, or are an experienced programmer wanting to learn the latest features of the platform, iOS 9 Game Development Essentials will provide you with crucial insight into this widely used platform. Starting with the Swift programming language, this book gets the ball rolling with code concepts and game-centric code samples right from the get-go, giving you get a solid understanding of Apple's cutting-edge programming language. The book takes you through iOS game development concepts and introduces the various frameworks that allow you to develop robust, reusable, and intelligent game components in both 2D and 3D game environments. Style and approach This book is a step-by-step guide into the code and concepts of iOS apps. Each chapter contains diagrams that showcase the features of the platform, along with code samples from Apple and code samples exclusive to this book.