Learn to design and create video games using the Java programming language and the LibGDX software library. Working through the examples in this book, you will create 12 game prototypes in a variety of popular genres, from collection-based and shoot-em-up arcade games to side-scrolling platformers and sword-fighting adventure games. With the flexibility provided by LibGDX, specialized genres such as card games, rhythm games, and visual novels are also covered in this book. Major updates in this edition include chapters covering advanced topics such as alternative sources of user input, procedural content generation, and advanced graphics. Appendices containing examples for game design documentation and a complete JavaDoc style listing of the extension classes developed in the book have also been added. What You Will Learn Create 12 complete video game projects Master advanced Java programming concepts, including data structures, encapsulation, inheritance, and algorithms, in the context of game development Gain practical experience with game design topics, including user interface design, gameplay balancing, and randomized content Integrate third-party components into projects, such as particle effects, tilemaps, and gamepad controllers Who This Book Is For The target audience has a desire to make video games, and an introductory level knowledge of basic Java programming. In particular, the reader need only be familiar with: variables, conditional statements, loops, and be able to write methods to accomplish simple tasks and classes to store related data.

Good or bad level design can make or break any game, so it is surprising how little reference material exists for level designers. Beginning level designers have a limited understanding of the tools and techniques they can use to achieve their goals, or even define them. This book is the first to use a conceptual and theoretical foundation to build such a set of practical tools and techniques. It is tied to no particular technology or genre, so it will be a useful reference for many years to come. Kremers covers many concepts universal to level design, such as interactivity, world building, immersion, sensory perception, pace, and more, and he shows how to apply these concepts in practical ways, with many examples from real games.

Break into the most lucrative platform in the world by adding HTML5 game development to your current skillset. Zarrar Chishti has trained developers from a wide range of programming disciplines to cross over into HTML5 game development. Whatever your vocation, whether it be an Application Databases Systems developer or a Professional Web developer, with this book you will learn to evolve your current coding skills to become eligible for the biggest gaming platform in the world. From the first chapter you will see encouraging results immediately as you power through a challenging and fun project that has been uniquely designed and developed for this book. With the relentless backing of the giants of the industry including Apple and Google, HTML5 is rapidly becoming the leading technology for game development. Furthermore nearly every mobile device, tablet and PC system offer full support to the latest games developed in HTML5. Never before has there been such a widely accepted platform by literally every manufacturer and operating system. This in turn has convinced marketing departments to move away from traditional platforms, such as dedicated mobile apps, for the more widely accepted HTML5 format. There has never been a better time for a seasoned IT programmer to crossover and capitalize in this lucrative market with their much sought after talents and experience. Take the skills you already have and expand your career into HTML5 development with this book. What You'll Learn Quickly identify the core similarities and differences between HTML5 and other coding standards Follow a large scale game development project to experience the full lifecycle of an HTML5 game development project Download graphics and media to use in sample projects throughout the book Who This Book Is For Professional developers working in application and database development. These seasoned coders, having secured a wealth of knowledge, can transfer that expertise to the growing HTML5 game development market. This book will instantly appeal to this audience as it will not attempt to teach the basics of programming; instead it will simply point out the differences in how to develop with HTML5.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2017, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in December 2017. The 16 revised regular papers presented together with 6 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers cover topics such as games in education and training; games for health and special children; augmented and virtual reality; methods and tools (for desing and development); and poster abstracts.

Discover all the new features and changes in Java 9, including module systems-JPMS or Project Jigsaw. This book covers the whole Java application development life cycle. You'll review all the important concepts, including module descriptor, unnamed module, automatic module, and command line tools. Exploring Java 9 also serves as a practical guide for migration to module systems. Code samples from real-world scenarios solidify a foundation for learning and development and allow you to apply best practices in actual development. Additionally, you'll learn about concurrency, ECMAScript 6 features in Nashorn and Parser API, stack-walking API, Stream and Optional, utilities classes, and I/O. And it's now possible to build modularized applications in Java. You'll see how JPMS affects not only the JDK itself, but also applications that are developed upon it. What You'll Learn * Build modularized applications in Java * Migrate to module systems * Master enhanced method handles Who This Book Is ForJava developers with basic development skills

Master the most important skills and techniques you need to know for professional HTML5 and JavaScript 2D game development. This book delves into many of the great classic techniques of video game design. You'll discover how to develop games and game levels using Tiled Editor, how to implement tile-based collision, how to design advanced pathfinding and enemy AI systems, the fundamentals of broad-phase collision, and how to make isometric games. All the techniques and supporting code are explained in an easy-to-understand manner and written in a general way so that they can be applied to any game engine or technology that you're comfortable using. You'll find detailed working examples, with dozens of illustrations and many concepts you can freely apply to your own projects. All the math and programming techniques are elaborately explained and examples are open-ended to encourage you to think of original ways to use these techniques in your own games. You can use what you learn in this book as the basis for making games for desktops, mobile phones, tablets, or the Web. The Advanced Game Developer's Toolkit is a great next step if you already have some JavaScript game-making- experience, or a great continuation if you've already read Advanced Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript by the same author. What You'll Learn Work with advanced tile-based design techniques for puzzle, platform and maze games Use Tiled Editor to build game worlds Build path-finding and AI systems using Line of Sight and A* (A-Star) Make isometric games Manage complexity to build games of any size that scale seamlessly Who This Book Is For Video game developers with some experience who want to learn the essential techniques they need to know to take their skills to the next level and for readers who want to understand and fine-tune every line of code they write, without resorting to quick fixes.

Build your next game on a bigger scale with Pro HTML5 Games. This essential book teaches you to master advanced game programming in HTML5. You'll learn techniques that you can transfer to any area of HTML5 game development to make your own professional HTML5 games. Led by an expert game programmer, you'll build two complete games in HTML5: a strategy puzzle game based on the Box2d physics engine and in the style of Angry Birds and a real-time strategy (RTS) game complete with units, buildings, path-finding, artificial intelligence, and multiplayer support. This new and fully updated second edition now includes chapters on mobile game development and an essential game developer's toolkit. Understand how to develop complex, bolder games and become an HTML5 games pro using Pro HTML5 Games today. What You'll Learn Create realistic physics in your game by incorporating the Box2d physics engine Design large worlds with lots of characters and let users interact with them Use sprite sheets, panning, parallax scrolling, and sound effects to build a more polished game Incorporate pathfinding and steering to help characters navigate through your world Create challenging levels with intelligent enemies by using decision trees, state machines, and scripted events Add multiplayer in your games using Node.js and the WebSocket API

Benefit from the latest rendering tech developments, currently covered only in papers and talks from Siggraph, in a way any developer or technical artist using Unity can take advantage of. This book starts by introducing how shader programming works in general, the common principles of different platforms (OpenGL, Vulkan, and DirectX), and the shading languages Unity uses: Cg, GLSL, and ShaderLab. Physically Based Shader Development for Unity 2017 discusses artistic choices, presenting various techniques (such as translucency and subsurface scattering) and BRDFs (Oren-Nayar, Cook-Torrance, and Ashikhmin-Shirley), and what they can be used for. Finally you'll cover the importance of optimizing your code by developing approximations, which achieve similar end results, but are computationally cheaper. By the end of your journey you'll be able to develop the look of your game or Unity-rendered animated short so that it looks both unique and impressively realistic, thanks to your own custom lighting system. What You Will Learn Master shader programming Gain all you need to know about physically based shading Take almost full control of the shader subsystem Discover what you can achieve with that control Implement a custom physically based lighting system and examine the logic behind every choice Who This Book Is For Most game developers (both indie and AA) that use Unity and technical artists who are responsible for the final look of a game.

Design and create video games using Construct 2. No prior experience is required.Game Development with Construct 2 teaches you to create 12 different game projects from a variety of genres, including car racing and tower defense to platformer and action-adventure. The software is user friendly and powerful, and the games you create can be exported to run on the web, desktop computers, and smartphones. What You'll Learn Create complete functional games using the Construct 2 game engine Understand general logical structures underlying video game programs Use practical game design advice (such as visual feedback and gameplay balancing) Understand programming concepts useful throughout computer science Who This Book Is For Middle school and high school students with no prior programming knowledge, and only minimal mathematical knowledge (graphing (x,y) coordinates, measuring angles, and applying formulas)

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second Joint International Conference on Serious Games, JCSG 2016, held in Brisbane, QLD, Australia, in September 2016. This conference bundles the activities of the International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications, SGDA, and the Conference on Serious Games, GameDays. The total of 36 full papers and 5 short papers was carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections named: health, well-being and accessibility; education, learning and training; science, nature and heritage; design, development and analysis; poster papers; exhibits.

Learn the fundamental elements of the new Swift 3 programming language as applied to game development for new iOS 10. In Part 1 of this book, you'll start with a basic 2D game idea and build the game throughout the book introducing each SpriteKit topic as you add new functionality to the game. By the end of the book, you'll have experience with all the important SpriteKit topics and have a fully functional game as a result. In Part 2, you'll learn 3D game development using Apple's SceneKit framework and the Swift programming language, following the same pattern used for Part 1. Game apps are one of the most popular categories in the Apple iTunes App Store. In response, James Goodwill and Wesley Matlock bring you Beginning Swift Games Development for iOS, Third Edition an update to their best-selling work. After reading and using this book, you'll have the skills and the code to build your first 2D and then 3D game app that you can run on any iOS-enabled device. What you'll learn Discover what's in the new Swift 3 programming language Apply Swift 3 to iOS 10 and 9 game development Build a 2D game app using SpriteKit and Swift Build a 3D game from 2D using SceneKit and Swift Who this book is for iOS app developers new to Swift or for those thinking of trying iOS game app development for the very first time.

Forty original contributions on games and gaming culture What does Pokemon Go tell us about globalization? What does Tetris teach us about rules? Is feminism boosted or bashed by Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? How does BioShock Infinite help us navigate world-building? From arcades to Atari, and phone apps to virtual reality headsets, video games have been at the epicenter of our ever-evolving technological reality. Unlike other media technologies, video games demand engagement like no other, which begs the question-what is the role that video games play in our lives, from our homes, to our phones, and on global culture writ large? How to Play Video Games brings together forty original essays from today's leading scholars on video game culture, writing about the games they know best and what they mean in broader social and cultural contexts. Read about avatars in Grand Theft Auto V, or music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. See how Age of Empires taught a generation about postcolonialism, and how Borderlands exposes the seedy underbelly of capitalism. These essays suggest that understanding video games in a critical context provides a new way to engage in contemporary culture. They are a must read for fans and students of the medium.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2016, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in December 2016. The 27 revised regular papers presented together with 14 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The papers cover topics such as games and sustainability; games for math and programming; games and health; games and soft skills; games and management; games and learning; game development and assessment; and mobile games.

The aim of this book is to collect and to cluster research areas in the field of serious games and entertainment computing. It provides an introduction and gives guidance for the next generation of researchers in this field. The 18 papers presented in this volume, together with an introduction, are the outcome of a GI-Dagstuhl seminar which was held at Schloss Dagstuhl in July 2015.

Gain the skills required to create fun and compelling games using GameMaker: Studio, and its GML programming language. In this full-color book you'll learn 24 practical programming elements that are important when creating any game. Each section includes an introduction to a new programming element, some examples, a worksheet, and mini projects to allow you to test your new knowledge. After completing all elements, you will put into action what you have learned in a classic arcade style game. In Practical GameMaker: Studio, you will create a fully featured game, with guidance and in color, using version 1.4. After each section you'll see how you'll apply what you've learned to the final game, and discover additional projects to try. These mini projects include a separate scoring guide, and a working example for each, which is useful if you're using this book in an educational environment. Similarly, the book also contains a number of assignments, which you may include as part of any associated coursework in your classes. What You Will Learn Use GameMaker: Studio and GameMaker Language (GML) to create games Work with GML variables, conditionals, drawing, keyport I/O, objects, and events Create GML sprites, health/lives, alarms, collisions, and rooms Improve your game with GML backgrounds, sound and music, splash screens and menus, and effects< Include GML random and AI movements in your game Use GML loops, arrays, ds_lists, paths, and scripts Who This Book Is For Experienced game developers new to GameMaker or for those with at least some prior exposure or experience with GameMaker: Studio but who are new to GML.

This compact book introduces the concepts of Java lambdas and parallel streams in a concise form. It begins by introducing new supporting features such as functional interfaces, default methods and more. After this, the author demonstrates how streams can be parallelized in a very simple way-within certain limits, no knowledge about the thread management is needed. Nevertheless, some basic elements in the context of parallelism need to be considered. Here, the book provides a variety of information and best practices. What You Will Learn Master lambdas and streams Work with the default method Harness streams and the stream() function Use Stream and Spliterator Take advantage of parallel streams Work with collectors and concurrency Who This Book Is For Experienced Java programmers and developers. div>

The Year of the Raven reaches new heights on dark wings! With a few years under its collective belt, the Hearthstone team needed to find an edge: sharper and more striking than a corvid's beak. In The Art of Hearthstone, Volume IV: Year of the Raven, the designers, engineers, and artists of the smash-hit digital card game pour their cunning into innovative design changes, remarkable animated art, and all-new transmedia content. From the haunted lands of Gilneas in The Witchwood soaring to the laboratories of Outland in The Boomsday Project and touching down to the lively arena of Rastakhan's Rumble, the Year of the Raven has something unique for everyone. Fly alongside the Hearthstone team's creative genius (or madness?) to learn how it was done!

For the first time, the collected texts from the critically and commercially acclaimed fantasy video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are bound together in three exciting volumes. Lavishly illustrated and produced, these titles are straight out of the world of Skyrim - and a must for any wandering adventurer.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2015, held in Rome, Italy, in December 2015. The 33 revised full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. The papers presented cover a variety of aspects and knowledge fields. They are grouped around the following topics: games for health, games for mobility, pervasive gaming and urban mobility.

Learn the psychological constrictions of attention, perception, memory, disposition, motivation, and social influence that determine whether customers will be receptive to your digital innovations. Bottlenecks: Aligning UX Design with User Psychology fills a need for entrepreneurs, designers, and marketing professionals in the application of foundational psychology to user-experience design. The first generation of books on the topic focused on web pages and cognitive psychology. This book covers apps, social media, in-car infotainment, and multiplayer video games, and it explores the crucial roles played by behaviorism, development, personality, and social psychology. Author David Evans is an experimental psychology Ph.D. and senior manager of consumer research at Microsoft who recounts high-stakes case studies in which behavioral theory aligned digital designs with the bottlenecks in human nature to the benefit of users and businesses alike. Innova tors in design and students of psychology will learn: The psychological processes determining users' perception of, engagement with, and recommendation of digital innovations Examples of interfaces before and after simple psychological alignments that vastly enhanced their effectiveness Strategies for marketing and product development in an age of social media and behavioral targeting Hypotheses for research that both academics and enterprises can perform to better meet users' needs Who This Book Is For Designers and entrepreneurs will use this book to give their innovations an edge on what are increasingly competitive platforms such as apps, bots, in-car apps, augmented reality content. Usability researchers and market researchers will leverage it to enhance their consulting and reporting. Students and lecturers in psychology departments will want it to help land employment in the private sector. Praise "Bottlenecks' is a tight and eminently actionable read for business leaders in startups and enterprises alike. Evans gives us a rich sense of key psychological processes and even richer examples of them in action." - Nir Eyal, Author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products "Clients frequently ask our UX researchers and designers for deeper truths about why certain designs work and others fail. Bottlenecks offers practical explanations and evidence based on the idea that human cognition did not begin with the digital age." - John Dirks, UX Director and Partner, Blink UX "Bottlenecks brings together two very important aspects of user experience design: understanding users and translating this into business impact. A must-read for anyone who wants to learn both." - Josh Lamar, Sr. UX Lead, Microsoft Outlook

Do you aspire to become a concept artist in the video game industry but don t know where to start? The Big Bad World of Concept Art for Video Games: An Insider s Guide for Students is a comprehensive book that gives aspiring artists an honest, informative, and concise look at what it takes to do just that. Author Eliott Lilly uses his own student work as a teaching tool along with personal experiences to help you on your journey. From finding the right school and getting the most out of your education, to preparing your portfolio and landing your first job, the advice and strategies Eliott offers are organized for easy reference and review. The book also features an extensive list of resources that students will find useful, as well as interviews with renowned concept artists David Levy, Sparth, Stephan Martiniere, Ben Mauro, and Farzad Varahramyan, all offering their own invaluable advice. With his firsthand knowledge about the ins and outs of the video game industry, Eliott Lilly is an exceptional guide who can help prepare you for the long journey toward realizing your ambitions."

Updated for RPG Maker MV using JavaScript, Make a 2D RPG in a Weekend shows you how to create your very own dungeon crawler game in RPG Maker MV in a single weekend. The entire process, from start to finish, is covered within this book. You will see a variety of dungeon maps and events, all broken down for your convenience.One of the hardest parts of game development is actually finishing a game, but it is also one of the most important steps on the way to becoming a game developer. If you have yet to finish a game, this book will give you the confidence and resources you need to finally be able to create your very own RPG. Once you've completed the game in this book, you'll be able to modify it as much as you like, adding new monsters and quests, and you'll have the skills to go on to create your second game all by yourself. Among the topics covered in this book are: Creating various types of enemy encounters via the use of the eventing system, and JavaScript replacing the old Ruby commands. Creating a special area that allows the player to pick their character of choice instead of being forced to play a particular character. Clever uses of events to create items that allow the player to return to town instantly and summon vehicles to their side. What You'll Learn: Create playable characters that have different attributes and play styles. Create a wide variety of weapons, armors, and items for the player to purchase, find, and use. JavaScript is now used throughout. Design dungeon levels with specific goals in mind. Create treasure chests with random contents or contents based on the player's character. Create doors that require keys or puzzles to unlock. Create a variety of enemy encounters. Who This Book is For: Make a 2D RPG in a Weekend is for anyone who has ever wanted to create a game from scratch. All you need is this book and a copy of RPG Maker MV.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2014, held in Bucharest, Romania, in July 2014. The 15 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions. The papers presented cover a variety of aspects and knowledge fields. They are grouped into four sessions: pedagogy, technology, design, and applications.