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.

The heart of any system that simulates the physical interaction between objects is collision detection-the ability to detect when two objects have come into contact. This system is also one of the most difficult aspects of a physical simulation to implement correctly, and invariably it is the main consumer of CPU cycles. Practitioners, new to the field or otherwise, quickly discover that the attempt to build a fast, accurate, and robust collision detection system takes them down a long path fraught with perils and pitfalls unlike most they have ever encountered. Without in-depth knowledge and understanding of the issues associated with engineering a collision detection system, the end of that path is an abyss that has swallowed many a good programmer!
Gino van den Bergen's new book is the story of his successful journey down that path. The outcome is his well-known collision detection system, the SOftware Library for Interference Detection (SOLID). Along the way, he covers the topics of vector algebra and geometry, the various geometric primitives of interest in a collision system, the powerful method of separating axes for the purposes of intersection testing, and the equally powerful Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi (GJK) algorithm for computing the distance between convex objects. But this book provides much more than a good compendium of the ideas that go into building a collision system. The curse of practical computational geometry is floating-point arithmetic. Algorithms with straightforward implementations when using exact arithmetic can have catastrophic failures in a floating-point system. Specifically, intersection and distance algorithms implemented in a floating-point systemtend to fail exactly in the most important case in a collision system-when two objects are just touching. Great care must be taken to properly handle floating-point round off errors. Gino's ultimate accomplishment in this book is his presentation on how to correctly implement the GJK distance algorithm in the presence of single-precision floating-point arithmetic. And what better way to illustrate this than with a case study, the final chapter on the design and implementation of SOLID.
About the CD-ROM
The companion CD-ROM includes the full C++ source code of SOLID 3.5 as well as API documentation in HTML and PDF formats. Both single (32bit) and double (64bit) precision versions of the SOLID SDK plus example programs can be compiled for Linux platforms using GNU g++ version 2.95 to 3.3 and for Win32 platforms using Microsoft Visual C++ version 6.0 to 7.1. Use of the SOLID source code is governed by the terms of either the GNU GPL or the Trolltech QPL (see CD-ROM documentation for details).
About the Author
Gino van den Bergen is a game developer living and working in The Netherlands. He is the creator of SOLID and holds a Ph.D. in computing science from Eindhoven University of Technology. Gino implemented collision detection and physics in NaN Technologies' Blender, a creation suite for interactive 3D content.
*Explains the fundamental geometric and numerical concepts that underlie the key algorithms of collision detection.
*CD-ROM includes the full C++ source code of SOLID, a well-known library for collision detection, plus binaries and example programs for Win32.
*Discusses algorithms for commonly used primitive types, such as spheres, boxes, cylinders, cones, triangles, rays, and convex polyhedra.
*Presents techniques for accelerating collision detection for complex models and scenes.

Written as a collection of notes in Damon Baird's journal, 'The Survivor's Log' will expand on declassified testimony and other facets of the game and serve as an in-universe artefact within the timeline of the series. This firsthand account will chronicle the soldier's experience in a riveting and beautifully illustrated oral history-the events he witnessed and the deterioration of COG society, his decision to take his unit rogue, and stories from the other embers of his cohort.

The ultimate football adventure story from the world's greatest football duo, The F2 When the evil Galaxico aliens steal the game of football from planet Earth, it's up to Jez and Billy (and the help of their trusty time machines) to assemble the greatest team to have ever played the beautiful game in the hope of stealing it back! From the 1958 World Cup Final, to the year 3000, The F2 travel through time and call upon some of heroes of footballs past, present and future to help in their quest to reinstate the joys of playing the game. With cameos from Pele, Steven Gerrard, Cristiano Ronaldo (and his granddaughter from the future, Julia Ronaldo!), this is a wonderful football story of good vs evil!

Developing computer games is a perfect way to learn how to program in modern programming languages. This book teaches how to program in C# through the creation of computer games - and without requiring any previous programming experience. Contrary to most programming books, van Toll, Egges, and Fokker do not organize the presentation according to programming language constructs, but instead use the structure and elements of computer games as a framework. For instance, there are chapters on dealing with player input, game objects, game worlds, game states, levels, animation, physics, and intelligence. The reader will be guided through the development of four games showing the various aspects of game development. Starting with a simple shooting game, the authors move on to puzzle games consisting of multiple levels, and conclude the book by developing a full-fledged platform game with animation, game physics, and intelligent enemies. They show a number of commonly used techniques in games, such as drawing layers of sprites, rotating, scaling and animating sprites, dealing with physics, handling interaction between game objects, and creating pleasing visual effects. At the same time, they provide a thorough introduction to C# and object-oriented programming, introducing step by step important programming concepts such as loops, methods, classes, collections, and exception handling. This second edition includes a few notable updates. First of all, the book and all example programs are now based on the library MonoGame 3.6, instead of the obsolete XNA Game Studio. Second, instead of explaining how the example programs work, the text now invites readers to write these programs themselves, with clearly marked reference points throughout the text. Third, the book now makes a clearer distinction between general (C#) programming concepts and concepts that are specific to game development. Fourth, the most important programming concepts are now summarized in convenient "Quick Reference" boxes, which replace the syntax diagrams of the first edition. Finally, the updated exercises are now grouped per chapter and can be found at the end of each chapter, allowing readers to test their knowledge more directly. The book is also designed to be used as a basis for a game-oriented programming course. Supplementary materials for organizing such a course are available on an accompanying web site, which also includes all example programs, game sprites, sounds, and the solutions to all exercises.

Physics is really important to game programmers who need to know how to add physical realism to their games. They need to take into account the laws of physics when creating a simulation or game engine, particularly in 3D computer graphics, for the purpose of making the effects appear more real to the observer or player.The game engine needs to recognize the physical properties of objects that artists create, and combine them with realistic motion. The physics ENGINE is a computer program that you work into your game that simulates Newtonian physics and predict effects under different conditions. In video games, the physics engine uses real-time physics to improve realism. This is the only book in its category to take readers through the process of building a complete game-ready physics engine from scratch. The Cyclone game engine featured in the book was written specifically for this book and has been utilized in iPhone application development and Adobe Flash projects. There is a good deal of master-class level information available, but almost nothing in any format that teaches the basics in a practical way. The second edition includes NEW and/or revised material on collision detection, 2D physics, casual game physics for Flash games, more references, a glossary, and end-of-chapter exercises. The companion website will include the full source code of the Cyclone physics engine, along with example applications that show the physics system in operation.

Python Workout presents 50 exercises designed to deepen the reader's skill with Python. Readers will not only tackle exercises using built-in data structures, but also more advanced techniques, such as functional programming, object-oriented programming, iterators, and generators. With each engaging challenge, readers will practice a new skill and learn how to apply it to everyday coding tasks. Key Features 50 hands-on exercises and solutions Basic Python sequence types Python dictionaries and sets Functional programming in Python Creating your own classes Working with Python objects Generator functions Intended for readers with basic Python skills. About the technology Python is a versatile, elegant, general purpose programming language. Essential for data analysis, web development, artificial intelligence, games, desktop apps, and more, Python skills are a hot commodity. Reuven M. Lerner, an independent consultant for more than two decades, teaches Python, data science, and Git to companies around the world. His Better developers newsletter and blog are read by thousands of Python developers each week. Reuven has written a monthly column, "At the Forge," for Linux Journal since 1996 and is a panellist on the weekly Freelancers Show podcast. Reuven lives with his wife and three children in Modi'in, Israel, and can be reached at https://lerner.co.il/ or on Twitter at @reuvenmlerner.

A host of digital affordances, including reduced cost production tools, open distribution platforms, and ubiquitous connectivity, have engendered the growth of indie games among makers and users, forcing critics to reconsider the question of who makes games and why. Taking seriously this new mode of cultural produciton compells analysts to reconsider the blurred boundaries and relations of makers, users and texts as well as their respective relationship to cultural power and hierarchy. The contributions to Indie Games in the Digital Age consider these questions and examine a series of firms, makers, games and scenes, ranging from giants like Nintendo and Microsoft to grassroots games like Cards Against Humanity and Stardew Valley, to chart more precisely the productive and instructive disruption that this new site of cultural production offers.

- The first book dedicated to exploring key video games from the 1970s to present day. - Provides a highly accessible overview of the history of video games from PONG, Pac-Man and Tetris to Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Assassin's Creed. - The selection covers a range of historical periods and platforms, genres, commercial impact, artistic choices, contexts of play, typical and atypical representations, uses of games for specific purposes, uses of materials or techniques, specific subcultures, repurposing, transgressive aesthetics, interfaces, moral or ethical impacts, and more.

Today a multinational video game developer, Sega was the first to break Nintendo's grip on the gaming industry, expanding from primarily an arcade game company to become the dominant game console manufacturer in North America. A major part of that success came from the hard work and innovation of its subsidiary, Sega of America, who in a little more than a decade wrested the majority market share from Nintendo and revolutionized how games were made. Drawing on interviews with nearly 100 Sega alumni, this book traces the company's development, revealing previously undocumented areas of game-making history, including Sega's relationship with Tonka, the creation of its internal studios, and major breakthroughs like the Sega Channel and HEAT Network. More than 40 of the company's most influential games are explored in detail.

The Art of Titanfall will take readers on a no-holds barred look at Respawn Entertainment's hugely anticipated multiplayer shooter - featuring exclusive concept and development art, showcasing the all-out warfare between the agile pilots and lethal Titans of the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation and the M-COR militia, as well as the war-torn battlefields found throughout the game.

The Art of Game Design guides you through the design process step-by-step, helping you to develop new and innovative games that will be played again and again. It explains the fundamental principles of game design and demonstrates how tactics used in classic board, card and athletic games also work in top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible, and award-winning author Jesse Schell presents over 100 sets of questions to ask yourself as you build, play and change your game until you finalise your design. This latest third edition includes examples from new VR and AR platforms as well as from modern games such as Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us, Free to Play games, hybrid games, transformational games, and more. Whatever your role in video game development an understanding of the principles of game design will make you better at what you do. For over 10 years this book has provided inspiration and guidance to budding and experienced game designers - helping to make better games faster.

Choose your faction, pick your weapon, and prepare for an astonishing vision of the world of Azeroth like you've never seen before! Built by best-selling paper engineer Matthew Reinhardt, the World of Warcraft Pop-Up Book brings the most well-loved locations of Warcraft to life, from the classic faction hubs of Ogrimmar and Stormwind, to the battle-scarred lands of Lordaeron and Teldrassil, and even the new capital cities of Kul Tiras and Zandalar! Each page unfolds into an eye-popping treat, depicting iconic locations with brand new art and interactive pieces that you've never seen before. Unfold each individual spread to form a map of Azeroth!

In the age of digital media, superheroes are no longer confined to comic books and graphic novels. Their stories are now featured in films, video games, digital comics, television programs, and more. In a single year alone, films featuring Batman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers have appeared on the big screen. Popular media no longer exists in isolation, but converges into complex multidimensional entities. As a result, traditional ideas about the relationship between varying media have come under striking revision. Although this convergence is apparent in many genres, perhaps nowhere is it more persistent, more creative, or more varied than in the superhero genre. Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital explores this developing relationship between superheroes and various forms of media, examining how the superhero genre, which was once limited primarily to a single medium, has been developed into so many more. Essays in this volume engage with several of the most iconic heroes including Batman, Hulk, and Iron Man through a variety of academic disciplines such as industry studies, gender studies, and aesthetic analysis to develop an expansive view of the genre s potency. The contributors to this volume engage cinema, comics, video games, and even live stage shows to instill readers with new ways of looking at, thinking about, and experiencing some of contemporary media s most popular texts. This unique approach to the examination of digital media and superhero studies provides new and valuable readings of well-known texts and practices. Intended for both academics and fans of the superhero genre, this anthology introduces the innovative and growing synergy between traditional comic books and digital media."

For the first time in print, step into the fantasy world of The Elder Scrolls Online. Tales of Tamriel - Vol. II: The Lore takes readers on adventure throughout the war-torn landscapes and battlefields of Tamriel, featuring a horde of in-game texts and exclusive artwork. Lavishly bound and produced, this series of books is the definitive guide to lore from the Elder Scrolls Online.

The Game Design Deep Dive series examines specific game systems or mechanics over the course of the history of the industry. This book examines the history of jumping - one of the oldest mechanics in the industry - and how it has evolved and changed over the years. The author looks at the transition from 2D to 3D and multiple elements that make jumping more complicated than it looks from a design perspective. Key Selling Points: The first in a series of books that focus entirely on a singular game design system or mechanic, in this case: jumping. A perfect read for anyone interested in understanding game design, or just curious from a historical standpoint. A must read for anyone interested in building their own platformer or just interested in the history of the game industry's most famous game mechanic. This book is a perfect companion for someone building their first game or as part of a game design classroom. Includes real game examples to highlight the discussed topics and mechanics. Joshua Bycer is a Game Design Critic with more than seven years of experience critically analyzing game design and the industry itself. In that time, through Game-Wisdom, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games. He also strives to raise awareness about the importance of studying game design by giving lectures and presentations; his first book was titled 20 Essential Games to Study.

This book provides insights into the state of the art of digital cultural heritage using computer graphics, image processing, computer vision, visualization and reconstruction, virtual and augmented reality and serious games. It aims at covering the emergent approaches for digitization and preservation of Cultural Heritage, both in its tangible and intangible facets. Advancements in Digital Cultural Heritage research have been abundant in recent years covering a wide assortment of topics, ranging from visual data acquisition, pre-processing, classification, analysis and synthesis, 3D modelling and reconstruction, semantics and symbolic representation, metadata description, repository and archiving, to new forms of interactive and personalized presentation, visualization and immersive experience provision via advanced computer graphics, interactive virtual and augmented environments, serious games and digital storytelling. Different aspects pertaining to visual computing with regard to tangible (books, images, paintings, manuscripts, uniforms, maps, artefacts, archaeological sites, monuments) and intangible (e.g. dance and performing arts, folklore, theatrical performances) cultural heritage preservation, documentation, protection and promotion are covered, including rendering and procedural modelling of cultural heritage assets, keyword spotting in old documents, drone mapping and airborne photogrammetry, underwater recording and reconstruction, gamification, visitor engagement, animated storytelling, analysis of choreographic patterns, and many more. The book brings together and targets researchers from the domains of computing, engineering, archaeology and the arts, and aims at underscoring the potential for cross-fertilization and collaboration among these communities.

Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon's Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon's Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon's Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon's Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.

Do you have creative ideas that you wish you could transform into code? Do you want to boost your problem solving and logic skills? Do you want to enhance your career by adopting an algorithmic mindset? In our increasingly digital world, coding is an essential skill. Communicating an algorithm to a machine to perform a set of tasks is vital. Beginner's Guide to Code Algorithms: Experiments to Enhance Productivity and Solve Problems written by Deepankar Maitra teaches you how to think like a programmer. The author unravels the secret behind writing code - building a good algorithm. Algorithmic thinking leads to asking the right question and enables a shift from issue resolution to value creation. Having this mindset will make you more marketable to employers. This book takes you on a problem-solving journey to expand your mind and increase your willingness to experiment with code. You will: Learn the art of building an algorithm through hands-on exercises Understand how to develop code for inspiring productivity concepts Build a mentality of developing algorithms to solve problems Develop, test, review, and improve code through guided experimentation This book is designed to develop a culture of logical thinking through intellectual stimulation. It will benefit students and teachers of programming, business professionals, as well as experienced users of Microsoft Excel who wish to become proficient with macros.

Gain an in-depth overview of reinforcement learning for autonomous agents in game development with Unity. This book starts with an introduction to state-based reinforcement learning algorithms involving Markov models, Bellman equations, and writing custom C# code with the aim of contrasting value and policy-based functions in reinforcement learning. Then, you will move on to path finding and navigation meshes in Unity, setting up the ML Agents Toolkit (including how to install and set up ML agents from the GitHub repository), and installing fundamental machine learning libraries and frameworks (such as Tensorflow). You will learn about: deep learning and work through an introduction to Tensorflow for writing neural networks (including perceptron, convolution, and LSTM networks), Q learning with Unity ML agents, and porting trained neural network models in Unity through the Python-C# API. You will also explore the OpenAI Gym Environment used throughout the book. Deep Reinforcement Learning in Unity provides a walk-through of the core fundamentals of deep reinforcement learning algorithms, especially variants of the value estimation, advantage, and policy gradient algorithms (including the differences between on and off policy algorithms in reinforcement learning). These core algorithms include actor critic, proximal policy, and deep deterministic policy gradients and its variants. And you will be able to write custom neural networks using the Tensorflow and Keras frameworks. Deep learning in games makes the agents learn how they can perform better and collect their rewards in adverse environments without user interference. The book provides a thorough overview of integrating ML Agents with Unity for deep reinforcement learning. What You Will Learn Understand how deep reinforcement learning works in games Grasp the fundamentals of deep reinforcement learning Integrate these fundamentals with the Unity ML Toolkit SDK Gain insights into practical neural networks for training Agent Brain in the context of Unity ML Agents Create different models and perform hyper-parameter tuning Understand the Brain-Academy architecture in Unity ML Agents Understand the Python-C# API interface during real-time training of neural networks Grasp the fundamentals of generic neural networks and their variants using Tensorflow Create simulations and visualize agents playing games in Unity Who This Book Is For Readers with preliminary programming and game development experience in Unity, and those with experience in Python and a general idea of machine learning

Everyone should learn to code. Much like drawing and sketching, playing an instrument, cooking, or taking pictures and shooting videos, coding is a creative endeavor, which means it's a way to actually create stuff, and creating stuff is incredibly rewarding and satisfying. Sure, it's fun to spend hours on your phone looking at what other people have created; but that's nothing compared to the joy and satisfaction of creating things that other people consume and use. Yep, coding is fun!

And if that weren't enough, when you learn to code you develop all sorts of invaluable skills and traits beyond just coding. These include planning, problem solving, communication, logic, empathy, attention to detail, patience, resilience, persistence, and creativity. And it turns out that these skills (especially creativity and creative problem solving) are some of the most in-demand out there. So, coding will help your future career, too, regardless of what that career may be. But, where to start?

Captain Code is a welcoming, engaging, and fun introduction to becoming a coder, designed for the young (ages 10-17) and young-at-heart. Experienced educators and coders Ben & Shmuel Forta will guide you using Python, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. You'll learn by creating games, yes, games, from simple projects to retro text-based adventures to complete graphical arcade style games.

Games Girls Play examines the role that video games play in girls' lives, including how games structure girls' leisure time, how playing video games constitutes different performances of femininity, and what influences girls to play or not play video games. Through interviews, focus groups, and qualitative content analyses, this book analyzes girls' involvement with video games. It also examines different contexts in which discourses of girls and video games occur, including girl-oriented video games, activist efforts to change the video game industry, and informal education programs that teach girls video game design.