A complete guide to designing and building fun games with Qt and Qt Quick using associated toolsets Key Features A step by step guide to learn Qt by building simple yet entertaining games Get acquainted with a small yet powerful addition-Qt Gamepad Module, that enables Qt applications to support the use of gamepad hardware Understand technologies such as QML, OpenGL, and Qt Creator to design intuitive games Book DescriptionQt is the leading cross-platform toolkit for all significant desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms and is becoming popular by the day, especially on mobile and embedded devices. It's a powerful tool that perfectly fits the needs of game developers. This book will help you learn the basics of Qt and will equip you with the necessary toolsets to build apps and games. The book begins by how to create an application and prepare a working environment for both desktop and mobile platforms. You will learn how to use built-in Qt widgets and Form Editor to create a GUI application and then learn the basics of creating graphical interfaces and Qt's core concepts. Further, you'll learn to enrich your games by implementing network connectivity and employing scripting. You will learn about Qt's capabilities for handling strings and files, data storage, and serialization. Moving on, you will learn about the new Qt Gamepad module and how to add it in your game and then delve into OpenGL and Vulcan, and how it can be used in Qt applications to implement hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics. You will then explore various facets of Qt Quick: how it can be used in games to add game logic, add game physics, and build astonishing UIs for your games. By the end of this book, you will have developed the skillset to develop interesting games with Qt. What you will learn Install the latest version of Qt on your system Understand the basic concepts of every Qt game and application Develop 2D object-oriented graphics using Qt Graphics View Build multiplayer games or add a chat function to your games with Qt Network module Script your game with Qt QML Explore the Qt Gamepad module in order to integrate gamepad support in C++ and QML applications Program resolution-independent and fluid UIs using QML and Qt Quick Control your game flow in line with mobile device sensors Test and debug your game easily with Qt Creator and Qt Test Who this book is forIf you want to create great graphical user interfaces and astonishing games with Qt, this book is ideal for you. No previous knowledge of Qt is required; however knowledge of C++ is mandatory.

Design accessible and creative games across genres, platforms, and development realities Key Features Implement the skills and techniques required to work in a professional studio Ace the core principles and processes of level design, world building, and storytelling Design interactive characters that animate the gaming world Book DescriptionIf you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting. What you will learn Define the scope and structure of a game project Conceptualize a game idea and present it to others Design gameplay systems and communicate them clearly and thoroughly Build and validate engaging game mechanics Design successful business models and prepare your games for live operations Master the principles behind level design, worldbuilding and storytelling Improve the quality of a game by playtesting and polishing it Who this book is forWhether you are a student eager to design a game or a junior game designer looking for your first role as a professional, this book will help you with the fundamentals of game design. By focusing on best practices and a pragmatic approach, Practical Game Design provides insights into the arts and crafts from two senior game designers that will interest more seasoned professionals in the game industry.

Learn how to use Unity 2018 by creating your very own 3D game while developing your essential skills Key Features Learn to create immersive 3D games and Virtual Reality experiences with Unity 2018 Build custom scripts to make your game characters interactive Explore and implement AritificiaI Intelligence techniques to bring your game to life Book Description The Unity game engine has revolutionized the gaming industry with its complete set of intuitive tools and rapid workflows, which can be used to create interactive 3D content. With Unity, you can scaffold your way from the basics and make make stunning interactive games. This book will guide you through the entire process of creating a 3D game, from downloading the Unity game engine to publishing your game. It not only gives you a strong foundation, but puts you on the path to game development. Beginning with an overview of the Unity engine and its interface, you will walk through the process of creating a game environment and learn how to use built-in assets, as well as assets created with third-party 3D modeling tools such as Blender. Moving on, you will create custom scripts to control non-player character behaviors and gameplay. You will master exciting concepts such as Heads-Up-Displays, mini-maps, game navigation, sound effects, and lighting effects. Next, you'll learn how to create your first VR experience, right from setting up the project to image effects. You'll be familiarized with all the tools that Unity has to offer to create your own immersive VR experiences. Each section is a stepping stone toward the completion of the final game. By the end of the book, you'll have learned advanced topics such as cross-platform considerations which enable your games to run on multiple platforms. What you will learn Set up your Unity development environment and navigate its tools Import and use custom assets and asset packages to add characters to your game Build a 3D game world with a custom terrain, water, sky, mountains, and trees Animate game characters, using animation controllers, and scripting Apply audio and particle effects to the game Create intuitive game menus and interface elements Customize your game with sound effects, shadows, lighting effects, and rendering options Debug code and provide smooth error handling Who this book is forIf you are an aspiring game developer interested in learning Unity 2018 and becoming familiar with its core features, then this book is for you. No prior knowledge of Unity is required.

It was over a decade ago that experimental psychologists and media-effects researchers declared the debate on the effects of violent video gaming as "essentially over," referring to the way violence in videogames increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors in players. Despite the decisive tone of this statement, neither the presence nor popularity of digital games has since diminished, with games continuing to attract new generations of players to experience its technological advancements in the narration of violence and its techniques of depiction. Drawing on new insights achieved from research located at an intersection between humanities, social and computer sciences, Gareth Schott's addition to the Approaches in Digital Game Studies series interrogates the nature and meaning of the "violence" encountered and experienced by game players. In focusing on the various ways "violence" is mediated by both the rule system and the semiotic layer of games, the aim is to draw out the distinctiveness of games' exploitation of violence or violent themes. An important if not canonical text in the debates about video games and violence, Violent Games constitutes an essential book for those wishing to make sense of the experience offered by games as technological, aesthetic, and communicational phenomena in the context of issues of media regulation and the classification of game content "as" violence.

An example-based practical guide to get you up and running with Unity 5.x About This Book * The most updated resource on Unity 5.x with comprehensive discussion on all the new features of Unity 5.x * Understand the core concepts surrounding Unity5 game development with this power-packed hands-on guide * Brush up your existing game development skills and create games that have a brilliant gameplay using the excellent examples from this book Who This Book Is For The ideal target audience for this book would be game developers. They need not have previous experience with Unity since this book will cover all the basics about game development with unity. This would also be a very good resource for Unity developers who want to brush up their basic Unity skills and also get up and running with creating interesting games with Unity 5.x. What You Will Learn * Understand core Unity concepts, such as game objects, components, and scenes * Learn level design techniques for building immersive and interesting worlds * Learn to make functional games with C# scripting * Use the toolset creatively to build games of different themes and styles * Learn to handle player controls and input functionality * Dive into the process of working with terrains and world-creation tools * Import custom content into Unity from third-party tools, such as Maya and Blender * Get to grips with making both 2D and 3D games In Detail Unity is an exciting and popular engine in the game industry. Throughout this book, you'll learn how to use Unity by making four fun game projects, from shooters and platformers to exploration and adventure games. Unity 5 By Example is an easy-to-follow guide for quickly learning how to use Unity in practical context, step by step, by making real-world game projects. Even if you have no previous experience of Unity, this book will help you understand the toolset in depth. You'll learn how to create a time-critical collection game, a twin-stick space shooter, a platformer, and an action-fest game with intelligent enemies. In clear and accessible prose, this book will present you with step-by-step tutorials for making four interesting games in Unity 5 and explain all the fundamental concepts along the way. Starting from the ground up and moving toward an intermediate level, this book will help you establish a strong foundation in making games with Unity 5. Style and approach This book would be a very unique resource for any game developer who wants to get up and running with Unity. The unique example based approach will take you through the most basic games towards the more complex ones and will gradually build your skill level.

Do you like video games? Do you buy video games for your children, or maybe for yourself? Do wonder why it is that these games cost so much when you go to your favorite "big box" store? Do you wish there was a cheaper way to get these games? If so, this book, "How to Get Video Games Cheaply," is for you. A video game fan for many years of his life, author Paul J. Blom Jr. breaks down the leg work for you, and explains why getting games at the "big box" retailers is the worst possible thing you can do. No endless pages to read, no endless amount of details. This book cuts straight to the chase and explains how getting games on the Internet will save you a fistful dollars, regardless of what device you own, whether it is old, new, or brand new. "How to Get Video Games Cheaply," available both in paperback and on Kindle.

Master a series of performance-enhancing coding techniques and methods that help them improve the performance of their Unity3D applications About This Book * Discover features and techniques to optimize Unity Engine's CPU cycles, memory usage, and the GPU throughput of any application * Explore multiple techniques to solve performance issues with your VR projects * Learn the best practices for project organization to save time through an improved workflow Who This Book Is For This book is intended for intermediate and advanced Unity developers who have experience with most of Unity's feature-set, and who want to maximize the performance of their game. Familiarity with the C# language will be needed. What You Will Learn * Use the Unity Profiler to find bottlenecks anywhere in your application, and discover how to resolve them * Implement best practices for C# scripting to avoid common pitfalls * Develop a solid understanding of the rendering pipeline, and maximize its performance by reducing draw calls and avoiding fill rate bottlenecks * Enhance shaders in a way that is accessible to most developers, optimizing them through subtle yet effective performance tweaks * Keep your scenes as dynamic as possible by making the most of the Physics engine * Organize, filter, and compress your art assets to maximize performance while maintaining high quality * Discover different kinds of performance problems that are critical for VR projects and how to tackle them * Use the Mono Framework and C# to implement low-level enhancements that maximize memory usage and avoid garbage collection * Get to know the best practices for project organization to save time through an improved workflow In Detail Unity is an awesome game development engine. Through its massive feature-set and ease-of-use, Unity helps put some of the best processing and rendering technology in the hands of hobbyists and professionals alike. This book shows you how to make your games fly with the recent version of Unity 2017, and demonstrates that high performance does not need to be limited to games with the biggest teams and budgets. Since nothing turns gamers away from a game faster than a poor user-experience, the book starts by explaining how to use the Unity Profiler to detect problems. You will learn how to use stopwatches, timers and logging methods to diagnose the problem. You will then explore techniques to improve performance through better programming practices. Moving on, you will then learn about Unity's built-in batching processes; when they can be used to improve performance, and their limitations. Next, you will import your art assets using minimal space, CPU and memory at runtime, and discover some underused features and approaches for managing asset data. You will also improve graphics, particle system and shader performance with a series of tips and tricks to make the most of GPU parallel processing. You will then delve into the fundamental layers of the Unity3D engine to discuss some issues that may be difficult to understand without a strong knowledge of its inner-workings. The book also introduces you to the critical performance problems for VR projects and how to tackle them. By the end of the book, you will have learned to improve the development workflow by properly organizing assets and ways to instantiate assets as quickly and waste-free as possible via object pooling. Style and approach This practical book will help readers understand the essentials of the Unity3D engine and how to build games while improving the performance of their applications.

Utilize proven solutions to solve common problems in game development About This Book * Untangle your game development workflow, make cleaner code, and create structurally solid games * Implement key programming patterns that will enable you to make efficient AI and remove duplication * Optimize your game using memory management techniques Who This Book Is For If you are a game developer who wants to solve commonly-encountered issues or have some way to communicate to other developers in a standardized format, then this book is for you. Knowledge of basic game programming principles and C++ programming is assumed. What You Will Learn * Learn what design patterns are and why you would want to use them * Reduce the maintenance burden with well-tested, cleaner code * Employ the singleton pattern effectively to reduce your compiler workload * Use the factory pattern to help you create different objects with the same creation logic and reduce coding time * Improve game performance with Object Pools * Allow game play to interact with physics or graphics in an abstract way * Refractor your code to remove common code smells In Detail You've learned how to program, and you've probably created some simple games at some point, but now you want to build larger projects and find out how to resolve your problems. So instead of a coder, you might now want to think like a game developer or software engineer. To organize your code well, you need certain tools to do so, and that's what this book is all about. You will learn techniques to code quickly and correctly, while ensuring your code is modular and easily understandable. To begin, we will start with the core game programming patterns, but not the usual way. We will take the use case strategy with this book. We will take an AAA standard game and show you the hurdles at multiple stages of development. Similarly, various use cases are used to showcase other patterns such as the adapter pattern, prototype pattern, flyweight pattern, and observer pattern. Lastly, we'll go over some tips and tricks on how to refactor your code to remove common code smells and make it easier for others to work with you. By the end of the book you will be proficient in using the most popular and frequently used patterns with the best practices. Style and approach This book takes a step-by-step real-life case studies approach. Every pattern is first explained using a bottleneck. We will show you a problem in your everyday workflow, and then introduce you to the pattern, and show you how the pattern will resolve the situation.

Build rich, high production value mobile games and distribute them across different platforms with Buildbox About This Book * Create captivating 2D & 2.5D (isometric) video games for all platforms * Leverage Buildbox to monetize and prepare your games for distribution * This step-by-step tutorial will get you generating complex and media rich games with no coding experience Who This Book Is For This book caters to those who have an interest or desire to create their own mobile games either as a hobbyist or who are looking to enhance their skills as a professional games developer. No coding experience is required. What You Will Learn * Create the illusion of a 3D background in your game using parallax * Add advanced controls and obstacles to our first world * Develop assets (graphic and audio) for the Buildbox engine * Design games based on the capabilities and limitations of Buildbox and their target platforms * Compile and distribute video games on various channels such as Steam, iOS store, Android stores, and the Mac App Store * Optimize your games to get the absolute best quality within platform restrictions * Conquer common issues experienced with Buildbox development In Detail Buildbox is an "any skill level" development platform to develop video games with no coding experience. It also exports these games to be compiled for any platform (from Windows to Mac to iOS to Android and Blackberry) all using the same graphic user interface. Using an example as a tutorial, we will relate the driving principles and you'll see how you can implement these principles to develop any games on the platform. We begin by setting expectations and providing a brief overview of the software. But it's not long before you "dive in" to creating your first video game. You will actually have a playable level ("world") by the end of the second chapter. Later on, you'll learn everything from basic graphics creation to advanced world design while you refine your first game, called "Ramblin' Rover." All along the way, you will see how certain functions could be used in tandem to create other types of games; hoping to spark imagination. We will follow the principles and process of monetization through ads and in-game rewards. Lastly, we will go through the process of exporting, compiling, and preparing your storefront to sell the games you will eventually create. Style and approach This book follows a tutorial-based approach that teaches through examples, while also providing the necessary principles to enable you to abstract these principles into any game you want to make.