Vintage Game Consoles tells the story of the most influential videogame platforms of all time, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sega Genesis, Sony PlayStation, and many more. It uncovers the details behind the consoles, computers, handhelds, and arcade machines that made videogames possible. Drawing on extensive research and the authors own lifelong experience with videogames, Vintage Game Consoles explores each system s development, history, fan community, its most important games, and information for collectors and emulation enthusiasts. It also features hundreds of exclusive full-color screenshots and images that help bring each system s unique story to life. Vintage Game Consoles is the ideal book for gamers, students, and professionals who want to know the story behind their favorite computers, handhelds, and consoles, without forgetting about why they play in the first place the fun! Bill Loguidice is a critically acclaimed technology author who has worked on over a dozen books, including CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy s Underdog Computer, written with Boisy G. Pitre. He s also the co-founder and Managing Director for the popular Website, Armchair Arcade. A noted videogame and computer historian and subject matter expert, Bill personally owns and maintains well over 400 different systems from the 1970s to the present day, including a large volume of associated materials. Matt Barton is an associate professor of English at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where he lives with his wife Elizabeth. He s the producer of the "Matt Chat," a weekly YouTube series featuring in-depth interviews with notable game developers. In addition to the original Vintage Games, which he co-authored with Bill, he s author of Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games and Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great

Corona SDK is one of the most powerful tools used to create games and apps for mobile devices. The market requires speed; new developers need to operate quickly and efficiently. Create 2D Mobile Games with Corona SDK gives you the tools needed to master Corona - even within the framework of professional constraints. A must-read guide, this book gives you fast, accurate tips to learn the programming language necessary to create games. Read it sequentially or as an FAQ and you will have the tools you need to create any base game before moving on to advanced topics. The tutorial-based format: Contains step-by-step directions complete with coding and screenshots Is filled with tutorials, tips, and links to useful online resources Includes a comprehensive companion website featuring online exercise files to practice coding, full build samples from the text, additional book details, and more!

This book is written by a professional instructor and founder of CartoonSmart.com, a company specializing in new media tutorials for nearly a decade. The book is a start-to-finish guide for anyone looking to begin iOS development using Cocos2d and Xcode and submit their finished app to Apple. Even if you haven't read code before, you can begin with this book. This book is a handy reference guide, with easy to look-up sections of code snippets, pictures and links to video examples. Features: Code Video examples 5 hours of tutorial videos on Box2d, which can take the reader even further beyond what they learned in the book

The Essential Guide to Game Audio: The Theory and Practice of Sound for Games is a first of its kind textbook and must-have reference guide for everything you ever wanted to know about sound for games. This book provides a basic overview of game audio, how it has developed over time, and how you can make a career in this industry. Each chapter gives you the background and context you will need to understand the unique workflow associated with interactive media. The practical, easy to understand interactive examples provide hands-on experience applying the concepts in real world situations.

Holistic Mobile Game Development with Unity: An All-In-One Guide to Implementing Mechanics, Art Design and Programming for iOS and Android Games Master mobile game design and development in this all-in-one guide to creating iOS and Android games in the cutting-edge game engine, Unity. By using Penny de Byl s holistic method, you will learn about the principles of art, design, and code and gain multidisciplinary skills needed to succeed in the independent mobile games industry. In addition, hands-on exercises will help you throughout the process from design to publication in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Over 70 practical step-by-step exercises recreating the game mechanics of contemporary mobile games, including Angry Birds, Temple Run, Year Walk, Minecraft, Curiosity Cube, Fruit Ninja, and more. Design principles, art, and programming in unison the one-stop shop for indie developers requiring interdisciplinary skills in their small teams. An introduction to essential two- and three-dimensional mathematics, geometry and physics concepts. A portfolio of royalty free reusable game mechanics and assets. Accompanying website, www.holistic3d.com, features project source code, instructional videos, art assets, author blog, and teaching resources. Challenge questions and lesson plans are available online for an enhanced learning experience.

Whether trying to land that first big gig or working to perfect the necessary skills to fill a game world with sound, Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio 3rd edition will teach the reader everything they need to know about the audio side of the multi-million dollar video game industry. This book builds upon the success of the second edition with even more expert advice from masters in the field and notes current changes within the growing video game industry. The tools of the trade excerpts will showcase what professionals, like Marty O'Donnell, Richard Jacques and Tom Salta, use to create their work and to help newcomers in the field prepare their own sound studios. Sample contracts are reviewed within the text as well as helpful advice about contractual terms and negotiable points. These sample contracts can also be found as a downloadable zip for the reader's convenience. Aaron Marks also explores how to set your financial terms and network efficiently along with examples of how projects can go completely awry and achieving the best results in often complicated situations. Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio serves as the ultimate survival guide to navigating an audio career in the video game industry. Key Features New, full color edition with a complete update of information. Added and expanded coverage of field recording for games, creating voiceovers, adaptive and interactive audio and other cutting edge sound creation and implementation techniques used within games. Update/Replacement of interviews. Include interviews/features on international game audio professionals New and expanded interview features from game composers and sound designers of every experience level such as Keith Arem, Bradley Meyer, Christopher Tin and Rodney Gates including many international professionals like Pasi Pitkanen, Henning Nugel and Christos Panayides. Expanded and updated game console coverage of the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4. Includes new scripting and middleware concepts and techniques and review of powerful tools such as FMOD and Wwise.

Artists and programmers often work together on complex projects in stressful environments and things don't always go smoothly. Miscommunication and misunderstandings are common as these two disciplines often use the same words to mean different things when they talk to each other. Unintentional slights can turn into long-held grudges and productivity grinds to a crawl. This is a "flip book" that contains two narratives in one. Turn the book one way and read one perspective; turn the book over and upside down and read the other perspective. The narratives can be read separately, one after the other, or in alternating chapters. Talking to Artists / Talking to Programmers can help anyone who wants to improve communication with artists and programmers. It's set up like a foreign language dictionary, so it addresses the cultural norms, attitudes and customs surrounding the words each group uses, so you'll know not just what the words in the glossary mean, you'll know why they're used that way and how to get communication flowing again. It addresses common reasons for communication problems between these two groups and provides specific suggestions for solutions. The unusual format allows for each side to be given equal weight - learn how to talk to artists starting on one side of the book, turn it over and learn how to talk to programmers. The whole book stresses the things artists and programmers have in common. Focused primarily on videogame developers, it also applies to other fields where tech and art have to work together, including web developers and teams building mobile apps. Anyone who wants to communicate better with programmers or artists - this book can help Features Lists of common problems and strategies for solving them Specific ideas for building bridges between departments Case studies from real teams Glossary of terms causing the most confusion Explanations for common friction points Approaches for fostering goodwill Solutions for team dynamics problems Specific suggestions for providing feedback Ideas for holding successful meetings

The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the latest version of Unity and its workflow by guiding readers through various prototypes. These range from 2D to 3D game concepts for PC and mobile, will allow readers to get acquainted with several important concepts and allow them to become competent Unity developers able to learn at their own pace. The book starts by introducing Unity and proceeds in building a basic understanding of its main components by developing a first, simple 2D game before proceeding in developing a full casual game to development of a simple but immersive 3D game concept to be tested first on PC before exploring how to port it for mobile VR.using Google Cardboard.

More than any other entertainment medium, video games offer the chance for us to participate in a world beyond the ordinary. Whether you are playing as a supersonic hedgehog, an athletic archeologist, or a moustachioed Italian plumber, video games allow their players to inhabit spaces where the usual parameters of existence do not apply. The medium's history is chronicled through the individual stories of 151 of the most iconic video games. Beginning in the early 1970s, the book charts five decades of the pixel revolution. The story of each game is accompanied by trivia and quotations, and illustrated with photographs, screenshots and artwork. This celebratory reference, and up-to-date history, will enthral any video games aficionado. - Chronicles the history of gaming through an analysis of151 of the world's most-iconic and best-loved games - Expert analysis of the story of each game, accompanied . by fascinating trivia, memorable quotes, and information on the year of publication and where the game can be played today - Includes titles across all platforms, including arcade, console, PC, online and handheld games - Charts five decades of video game evolution, from Computer Space to Fortnite - Compulsively illustrated with over 1000 action screenshots, game artworks and photographs

The first significant collection of research in videogame linguistics, Approaches to Videogame Discourse features an international array of scholars in linguistics and communication studies exploring lexis, interaction and textuality in digital games. In the first section, "Lexicology, Localisation and Variation," chapters cover productive processes surrounding gamer slang (ludolects), creativity and borrowing across languages, as well as industry-, genre-, game- and player-specific issues relating to localization, legal jargon and slang. "Player Interactions" moves on to examine communicative patterns between videogame players, focusing in particular on (un)collaborative language, functions and negotiations of impoliteness and issues of power in player discourse. In the final section, "Beyond the 'Text'," scholars grapple with issues of multimodality, paratextuality and transmediality in videogames in order to develop and enrich multimodal theory, drawing on key concepts from ludonarratology, language ideology, immersion and transmedia studies. With implications for meaningful game design and communication theory, Approaches to Videogame Discourse examines in detail how video games function as means and objects of communication; how they give rise to new vocabularies, textual genres and discourse practices; and how they serve as rich vehicles of ideological signification and social engagement.

Here is a grand review of the home video games that entertained the nation, and much of the world, during the 1970s and 1980s. In over 1000 color photographs, many of the video games for the extremely popular Atari, Colecovision, and Intellivision systems are displayed, ranging from Asteroids and Donkey Kong to Pac-Man and Zaxxon. Games from less familiar systems, such as Bally's Astrocade, GCE's Vectrex, Magnavox's Odyssey, and RCA's Studio II, are featured as well. Also included are examples of each system for which games are displayed, a wide variety of hand-held, table-top, and stand-alone games, video game memorabilia, an engaging text, and current market values both in the captions and listings in the back of the book.

In just 24 lessons of one hour or less, Coding with Roblox Lua in 24 Hours: The Official Roblox Guide helps you learn all the skills and techniques you'll need to code your own Roblox experiences. Perfect for beginners, each short and easy lesson builds upon everything that's come before, helping you quickly master the essentials of Lua programming. Step-by-step instructions walk you through common questions, issues, and tasks; Q&As, Quizzes, and Exercises build and test your knowledge; "Did You Know?" tips offer insider advice and shortcuts; and "Watch Out!" alerts help you avoid pitfalls. Learn how to... * Code with properties, variables, functions, if/then statements, and loops * Organize information using arrays and dictionaries * Work with events to make things move, explode, count down, and do whatever you can imagine * Keep your code manageable with abstractions and object-oriented programming * Store data permanently to create leaderboards, inventories, and custom currency * Use raycasting to allow visitors to place their own objects, such as furniture and props, within your world

Imagine a time in the not too distant future when not only game companies but also the human resources, marketing and product development divisions of major corporations are hiring game designers. The time is coming when companies large and small, creative agencies, school systems, museums, libraries and public and governmental institutions will employ game designers to engage employees, customers, students and volunteers to generate new audiences and deepen commitments. The skills that a game designer brings, organizing and presenting a body of information in the most appropriate and entertaining way, are the ones needed by the twenty-first century organization. Designing Gamified Systems is a practical guide for practicing and aspiring game designers to put their unique and valuable skills to work to drive engagement, build motivation, and facilitate positive behavior.

Rather than the overused ideas of pervasive games or "gamification," this book uniquely focuses first and foremost on the partnership between the content expert or client and the game designer. It assumes that game systems are one more meaningful tool that can now be used to help organizations and individuals encourage people to care about them and support them. Providing a solid introduction to the fundamental principles of the game layer, it also offers a practical set of tools and activities to contextualize the practice within a variety of different scenarios. It includes interviews with industry leaders, content experts, game designers, museum professionals, and educators who are all using game practices and ideas in new and innovative ways. Catching a snapshot of this exciting moment while delivering enduring fundamentals, the book can be used in the classroom or can be read as a trade book, and will appeal to industry professionals, game designers and game design students."

Game AI Pro2: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals presents cutting-edge tips, tricks, and techniques for artificial intelligence (AI) in games, drawn from developers of shipped commercial games as well as some of the best-known academics in the field. It contains knowledge, advice, hard-earned wisdom, and insights gathered from across the community of developers and researchers who have devoted themselves to game AI. In this book, 47 expert developers and researchers have come together to bring you their newest advances in game AI, along with twists on proven techniques that have shipped in some of the most successful commercial games of the last few years. The book provides a toolbox of proven techniques that can be applied to many common and not-so-common situations. It is written to be accessible to a broad range of readers. Beginners will find good general coverage of game AI techniques and a number of comprehensive overviews, while intermediate to expert professional game developers will find focused, deeply technical chapters on specific topics of interest to them. Covers a wide range of AI in games, with topics applicable to almost any game Touches on most, if not all, of the topics necessary to get started in game AI Provides real-life case studies of game AI in published commercial games Gives in-depth, technical solutions from some of the industry's best-known games Includes downloadable demos and/or source code, available at http://www.gameaipro.com

The definitive guide to more effective and personally fulfilling game development with Agile Methods-now revamped to reflect ten more years of experience and improvements Game development is in crisis-facing bloated budgets, impossible schedules, unmanageable complexity, and death-march overtime. It's no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Agile and Lean methods have revolutionized development in the game development industry. In Agile Game Development, long-time game developer and consultant Clinton Keith shows exactly how these methods have been successfully applied to the unique challenges of modern game development. Clint has spent more than 25 years developing games and training and coaching hundreds of game development teams. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use the practices of Scrum and Kanban, customized to game development, to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time. Contains several new chapters on live games, leadership, and coaching, including an all-new section on Agile for large teams of up to 1000 developers Updates to all chapters to reflect a decade of experience with more than 200 studios Now covering Kanban and other Agile approaches alongside Scrum Understanding Agile goals, roles, and practices in the context of game development Discovering how Agile benefits every specialty in game development from art to QA Communicating and planning your game's vision, features, and progress Game developers and leaders are recognizing the modern challenges of gaming. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development gives them that-and brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development.

Starting with the basics of game creation and the artistic skills necessary to get started, this book provides the inside track on how to forge a career in the world of video game art. Included are detailed breakdowns of the training and portfolio samples you'll need to make these jobs your own. It features interviews with video game art professionals who've worked for top gaming companies. In How to Become a Video Game Artist, veteran video game designer Sam R. Kennedy provides the inside track on everything you need to forge a career in the world of video game art. Starting with the basics of game creation and a look at the artistic skills necessary to get started, Kennedy spotlights specific, key roles for creators - from concept artists to character animators to marketing artists and beyond. Each chapter features screenshots from popular video games like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and World of Warcraft; interviews with video game art professionals who've worked for top gaming companies like BioWare, Blizzard, and Ubisoft; step-by-step examples of actual game art; and detailed breakdowns of the training and portfolio samples you'll need to make these jobs your own.

Unlock the secrets to creating random mazes! Whether you're a game developer, an algorithm connoisseur, or simply in search of a new puzzle, you're about to level up. Learn algorithms to randomly generate mazes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and dimensions. Bend them into Moebius strips, fold them into cubes, and wrap them around spheres. Stretch them into other dimensions, squeeze them into arbitrary outlines, and tile them in a dizzying variety of ways. From twelve little algorithms, you'll discover a vast reservoir of ideas and inspiration. From video games to movies, mazes are ubiquitous. Explore a dozen algorithms for generating these puzzles randomly, from Binary Tree to Eller's, each copiously illustrated and accompanied by working implementations in Ruby. You'll learn their pros and cons, and how to choose the right one for the job. You'll start by learning six maze algorithms and transition from making mazes on paper to writing programs that generate and draw them. You'll be introduced to Dijkstra's algorithm and see how it can help solve, analyze, and visualize mazes. Part 2 shows you how to constrain your mazes to different shapes and outlines, such as text, circles, hex and triangle grids, and more. You'll learn techniques for culling dead-ends, and for making your passages weave over and under each other. Part 3 looks at six more algorithms, taking it all to the next level. You'll learn how to build your mazes in multiple dimensions, and even on curved surfaces. Through it all, you'll discover yourself brimming with ideas, the best medicine for programmer's block, burn-out, and the grayest of days. By the time you're done, you'll be energized and full of maze-related possibilities! What You Need: The example code requires version 2 of the Ruby programming language. Some examples depend on the ChunkyPNG library to generate PNG images, and one chapter uses POV-Ray version 3.7 to render 3D graphics

The Assassin's Creed Escape Room Puzzle Book is an exciting journey through history in which you must solve a series of puzzles and mysteries to save humanity. You are Joey, a museum worker who comes across a mysterious blade that sets in motion a chain of events that completely upends your life. Drawn into the world of the Assassins, you must tour through time and space - from 5th century BCE Greece to the catacombs of medieval Venice - in order to foil a malevolent Isu plot. Featuring characters and locations familiar to fans of the Assassin's Creed franchise and written by an experienced real-life escape-room creator, this immersive escape-room experience is both visually exciting and a difficult puzzle quest. Can you solve the conundrums and reveal the Isu plan in time to save the world?

Successful games merge art and technology in truly unique ways. Fused under tight production deadlines and strict performance requirements, shaped by demanding player expectations, games are among the most complex software projects created today. Game AI Pro: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals covers both the art and the technology of game AI. Nothing covered is theory or guesswork. The book brings together the accumulated wisdom, cutting-edge ideas, and clever tricks and techniques of 54 of today's top game AI professionals. Some chapters present techniques that have been developed and passed down within the community for years while others discuss the most exciting new research and ideas from today's most innovative games. The book includes core algorithms that you'll need to succeed, such as behavior trees, utility theory, spatial representation, path planning, motion control, and tactical reasoning. It also describes tricks and techniques that will truly bring your game to life, including perception systems, social modeling, smart camera systems, player prediction, and even an AI sound designer. Throughout, the book discusses the optimizations and performance enhancements that enable your game to run while maintaining 60 frames per second.

Get ahead of the game with Unity 4. The Unity engine is the tool of choice for many indie and AAA game developers. Unity 4 Fundamentals gives readers a head start on the road to game development by offering beginners a comprehensive, step by step introduction to the latest Unity 4 engine. The author takes a theory-to-practice approach to demonstrate what Unity 4 has to offer which includes: Asset management tools Real-time lighting and lightmapping Particle systems Navigation and pathfinding.

Game Anim teaches the technical and artistic fundamentals of video game animation and goes further to provide practical advice and industry insights to help you become a rounded and successful game animator. Covering every stage of game production from the animator's perspective, it is packed with the lessons learned from working on a variety of game types in both in-game and cinematic roles in animator, lead, and director positions. These have been successful across multiple studios regardless of team, size and culture. The 2nd edition includes a new chapter on 2D and Pixel Art Animation, an enhanced mocap chapter covering the latest developments in Motion Matching, and even more interviews with top professionals in the field. Game Anim provides essential guidance to those looking to break into the industry and successful animators wishing to take the next step in their career. Key Features * 20 Years of Insight: Accumulated knowledge from 2 decades of experience in all areas of game animation. * The 5 Fundamentals: Reinterprets the classic 12 animation principles and sets out 5 new fundamentals for great game animation. * Animator Interviews: Notable game animators offer behind-the-scenes stories, tips, and advice. * Free Animation Rig: Free "AZRI" maya rig, tutorials and other resources on the accompanying website: www.gameanim.com/book

Silent Hill: The Terror Engine, the second of the two inaugural studies in the Landmark Video Games series from series editors Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron situates the games within the survival horror genre, both by looking at the history of the genre and by comparing Silent Hill with such important forerunners as Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil. Taking a transmedia approach and underlining the designer's cinematic and literary influences, he uses the narrative structure; the techniques of imagery, sound, and music employed; the game mechanics; and the fiction, artifact, and gameplay emotions elicited by the games to explore the specific fears survival horror games are designed to provoke and how the experience as a whole has made the Silent Hill series one of the major landmarks of video game history.

Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice is intended for a second course in computer graphics at the undergraduate or graduate level, introducing shader programming in general, but focusing on the GLSL shading language. While teaching how to write programmable shaders, the authors also teach and reinforce the fundamentals of computer graphics. The second edition has been updated to incorporate changes in the OpenGL API (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) and also has a chapter on the new tessellation shaders, including many practical examples.

The book starts with a quick review of the graphics pipeline, emphasizing features that are rarely taught in introductory courses, but are immediately exposed in shader work. It then covers shader-specific theory for vertex, tessellation, geometry, and fragment shaders using the GLSL 4.x0 shading language. The text also introduces the freely available glman tool that enables you to develop, test, and tune shaders separately from the applications that will use them. The authors explore how shaders can be used to support a wide variety of applications and present examples of shaders in 3D geometry, scientific visualization, geometry morphing, algorithmic art, and more.

Features of the Second Edition:

• Written using the most recent specification releases (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) including code examples brought up-to-date with the current standard of the GLSL language.
• More examples and more exercises
• A chapter on tessellation shaders
• An expanded Serious Fun chapter with examples that illustrate using shaders to produce fun effects
• A discussion of how to handle the major changes occurring in the OpenGL standard, and some C++ classes to help you manage that transition

The authors thoroughly explain the concepts, use sample code to describe details of the concepts, and then challenge you to extend the examples. They provide sample source code for many of the book s examples at www.cgeducation.org