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Books > Computing & IT > Computer programming > General
You're part of a new venture, an independent gaming company, and you are about to undertake your first development project. The client wants a serious game, one with instructional goals and assessment metrics. Or you may be in a position to green light such a project yourself, believing that it can advance your organization's mission and goals. This book provides a proven process to take an independent game project from start to finish. In order to build a successful game, you need to wear many hats. There are graphic artists, software engineers, designers, producers, marketers - all take part in the process at various (coordinated) stages, and the end result is hopefully a successful game. Veteran game producers and writers (Iuppa and Borst) cover all of these areas for you, with step by step instructions and checklists to get the work done. The final section of the book offers a series of case studies from REAL indy games that have been developed and launched succesfully, and show exactly how the principles outlined in the book can be applied to real world products. The book's associated author web site offers ancillary materials & references as well as serious game demos and presentations.
Throughout successive generations of information technology, the importance of the performance evaluation of software, computer architectures, and computer networks endures. For example, the performance issues of transaction processing systems and redundant arrays of independent disks replace the virtual memory and input-output problems of the 70s. ATM performance issues supercede those associated with electronic telephony of the 70s. As performance issues evolve with the technologies, so must our approach to evaluation. In System Performance Evaluation: Methodologies and Applications, top academic and industrial experts review the major issues now faced in this arena. In a series of structured, focused chapters, they present the state-of-the-art in performance methodologies and applications. They address developments in analytical modeling and its interaction with detailed analysis of measurement data. They also discuss performance evaluation methodologies for large-scale software systems - in general and in the context of critical applications, such as nuclear reactor control and air transportation systems. With its particular emphasis on network performance for wireless networks, the Internet, and ATM networking, System Performance Evaluation becomes the ideal vehicle for professionals in computer architecture, networking, and software engineering to stay up-to-date and proficient in this essential aspect of information technology.
Your database is the foundation of your application. Many programmers assume it's also the bottleneck of productive software development, but with the right techniques, this doesn't have to be true. SQL Antipatterns illustrates some of the most common misconceptions and pitfalls software developers face using relational databases. This book helps you to use a database to produce the most efficient results, and turn sluggish, inflexible code and thankless late-night hours into high-quality, reliable solutions and a job well done. The SQL database programming language is the core of most software in the world, but if you're like most software developers, you're self-taught in SQL, and you know just enough to get by. As a result, you might design fragile databases that cannot scale as the business grows, write queries that produce incorrect results and not know why, or deploy applications that are vulnerable to hackers. Don't reinvent the wheel to solve problems SQL was designed to solve--this book will teach you new SQL techniques for getting your job done. Whatever platform or programming language you use, whether you're a junior programmer or a Ph.D., SQL Antipatterns will show you how to design and build databases, how to write better database queries, and how to integrate SQL programming with your application like an expert. You'll also learn the best and most current technology for full-text search, how to design code that is resistant to SQL injection attacks, and other techniques for success.
Game Dev Stories: Interviews About Game Development and Culture Volumes 1 and 2 are a collection of interviews from renowned author David L. Craddock as he explores all corners of the video game industry. Collected from the author's archives, Game Dev Stories gathers conversations with individuals from all corners of the industry: Who they are, the paths they paved, and their contributions to this multibillion-dollar industry. This text offers viewpoints from well-known individuals like John Romero, Tom Hall, and Matt Householder. From artists and writers to programmers and designers, Game Dev Stories offers amazing insights and understanding to what occurs behind the screens of your favorite games and may help inspire future game developers in pursuing their dreams.
Numerical and Analytical Methods with MATLAB? presents extensive coverage of the MATLAB programming language for engineers. It demonstrates how the built-in functions of MATLAB can be used to solve systems of linear equations, ODEs, roots of transcendental equations, statistical problems, optimization problems, control systems problems, and stress analysis problems. These built-in functions are essentially black boxes to students. By combining MATLAB with basic numerical and analytical techniques, the mystery of what these black boxes might contain is somewhat alleviated. This classroom-tested text first reviews the essentials involved in writing computer programs as well as fundamental aspects of MATLAB. It next explains how matrices can solve problems of linear equations, how to obtain the roots of algebraic and transcendental equations, how to evaluate integrals, and how to solve various ODEs. After exploring the features of Simulink, the book discusses curve fitting, optimization problems, and PDE problems, such as the vibrating string, unsteady heat conduction, and sound waves. The focus then shifts to the solution of engineering problems via iteration procedures, differential equations via Laplace transforms, and stress analysis problems via the finite element method. The final chapter examines control systems theory, including the design of single-input single-output (SISO) systems. Two Courses in One Textbook
Logic is now widely recognized as one of the foundational disciplines of computing, and its applications reach almost every aspect of the subject, from software engineering and hardware to programming languages and AI. The Handbook of Logic in Computer Science is a multi-volume work covering all the major areas of application of logic to theoretical computer science. The handbook comprises six volumes, each containing five or six chapters giving an in-depth overview of one of the major topics in field. It is the result of many years of cooperative effort by some of the most eminent frontline researchers in the field, and will no doubt be the standard reference work in logic and theoretical computer science for years to come. Volume 3: Semantic Structures covers all the fundamental topics of semantics in logic and computation. The extensive chapters are the result of several years of coordinated research, and each have a thematic perspective. Together, they offer the reader the latest in research work, and the book will be indispensable to anyone seriously involved in the subject.
This book is for Visual Basic developers who want to learn how to develop professional web applications with Microsoft's ASP.NET 3.5. The first 4 chapters present a quick-start course that works both for beginners and for experienced web developers who are new to ASP.NET. Then, the next four sections present (1) the skills you need for any business application, (2) the skills you need for database applications, (3) the skills you need for e-commerce applications, and (4) the skills you need for developing code that can be reused in other web applications. Along the way, you will learn about .NET 3.5 enhancements that streamline web development, like the ListView and DataPager controls, LINQ, and AJAX.
In the rapidly-changing world of the Internet and the Web, theory and research struggle to keep up with technological, social, and economic developments. In education in particular, a proliferation of novel practices, applications, and forms -- from bulletin boards to Webcasts, from online educational games to open educational resources -- have come to be addressed under the rubric of «e-learning. In response to these phenomena, Re-thinking E-Learning Research introduces a number of research frameworks and methodologies relevant to e-learning. The book outlines methods for the analysis of content, narrative, genre, discourse, hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation, and critical and historical inquiry. It provides examples of pairings of method and subject matter that include narrative research into the adaptation of blogs in a classroom setting; the discursive-psychological analysis of student conversations with artificially intelligent agents; a genre analysis of an online discussion; and a phenomeno-logical study of online mathematics puzzles. Introducing practical applications and spanning a wide range of the possibilities for e-learning, this book will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers in e-learning.
Improving Business Agility with EDA Going beyond SOA, enterprises can gain even greater agility by implementing event-driven architectures (EDAs) that automatically detect and react to significant business events. However, EDA planning and deployment is complex, and even experienced SOA architects and developers need expert guidance. In Event-Driven Architecture, four leading IT innovators present both the theory of EDA and practical, step-by-step guidance to implementing it successfully. The authors first establish a thorough and workable definition of EDA and explore how EDA can help solve many of today's most difficult business and IT challenges. You'll learn how EDAs work, what they can do today, and what they might be able to do as they mature. You'll learn how to determine whether an EDA approach makes sense in your environment and how to overcome the difficult interoperability and integration issues associated with successful deployment. Finally, the authors present chapter-length case studies demonstrating how both full and partial EDA implementations can deliver exceptional business value. Coverage includes How SOA and Web services can power event-driven architectures The role of SOA infrastructure, governance, and security in EDA environments EDA core components: event consumers and producers, message backbones, Web service transport, and more EDA patterns, including simple event processing, event stream processing, and complex event processing Designing flexible stateless events that can respond to unpredictable customers, suppliers, and business partners Addressing technical and business challenges such as project management and communication EDA at work: real-world applications across multiple verticals Hugh Taylor is a social software evangelist for IBM Lotus Software. He coauthored Understanding Enterprise SOA and has written extensively on Web services and SOA. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. Angela Yochem is an executive in a multinational technology company and is a recognized thought leader in architecture and large-scale technology management. Les Phillips, VP, enterprise architecture, at SunTrust Banks Inc., is responsible for defining the strategic and business IT foundation for many areas of the enterprise. Frank Martinez, EVP, product strategy, at SOA Software, is a recognized expert on distributed, enterprise application, and infrastructure platforms. He has served as senior operating executive for several venture-backed firms and helped build Intershop Communications into a multibillion-dollar public company. Foreword xi Preface xii Introduction 1 Event-Driven Architecture: A Working Definition 1 The "New" Era of Interoperability Dawns 6 The ETA for Your EDA 9 Endnotes 9 PART I THE THEORY OF EDA Chapter 1 EDA: Opportunities and Obstacles 13 The Vortex 13 EDA: A Working Systemic Definition 14 The (Not So Smooth) Path to EDA 24 Defining Interoperability 26 Drivers of Interoperability 28 Application Integration: A Means to Interoperate 29 Interoperation and Business Process Management 31 Is There a Diet for All This Spaghetti? 35 How Architecture Promotes Integration 37 Management and Governance 39 Chapter Summary 43 Endnote 45 Chapter 2 SOA: The Building Blocks of EDA 47 Making You an Offer You Can't Understand 47 SOA: The Big Picture 48 Defining Service 49 Service-Based Integration 50 Web Services 51 What Is SOA? 59 Loose Coupling in the SOA 60 Chapter Summary 61 Chapter 3 Characteristics of EDA 63 Firing Up the Corporate Neurons 63 Revisiting the Enterprise Nervous System 63 The Ideal EDA 78 BAM--A Related Concept 86 Chapter Summary 87 Endnotes 89 Chapter 4 The Potential of EDA 91 Introduction 91 EDA's Potential in Enterprise Computing 91 EDA and Enterprise Agility 100 EDA and Society's Computing Needs 102 EDA and Compliance 107 Chapter Summary 108 Chapter 5 The SOA-EDA Connection 111 Getting Real 111 Event Services 112 The Service Network 114 Implementing the SOA and Service Network 116 How to Design an SOA 122 The Real "Bottom Line" 134 Chapter Summary 137 PART II EDA IN PRACTICE Chapter 6 Thinking EDA 141 A Novel Mind-Set 141 Reducing Central Control 142 Thinking about EDA Implementation 148 When EDA Is Not the Answer 151 An EDA Product Examined 153 Chapter Summary 157 Endnotes 158 Chapter 7 Case Study: Airline Flight Control 159 Learning Objectives 160 Business Context: Airline Crunch Time 160 The Ideal Airline Flight Control EDA 167 What FEDA Might Look Like in Real Life 176 Program Success 197 Chapter Summary 206 Endnotes 207 Chapter 8 Case Study: Anti-Money Laundering 209 Learning Objectives 210 Cracking a Trillion Dollar, Global Crime Wave 210 IT Aspects of Anti-Money Laundering 216 EDA as a Weapon in the War on Money Laundering 221 Chapter Summary 259 Endnotes 260 Chapter 9 Case Study: Event-Driven Productivity Infrastructure 261 Learning Objectives 262 The Often Inadequate Human Link in the EDA 262 Overview of Productivity Infrastructure 264 The Potential Benefits of EDA-PI Integration 267 ProdCo, an EDA-PI Integration Scenario 273 Chapter Summary 293 Endnotes 294
In depth investigation into a famous series of video games In just three episodes, the Bioshock series managed to score some big points amongst players' hearts. Spiritual successor of System Shock 2, the first Bioshock was an Irrational Games' game, lead by Ken Levine. Set in the 50's ambiance, with Art Deco levels, progression in Bioshock is possible through open and smart game mechanics, inciting the player to be creative and to use its environment. The saga is also filled with many profound and philosophical themes, while involving the player in every one of its aspects, many things granting the triptych of an iconic saga.
This book includes a variety of articles which look critically
and judiciously at Google and its products, with a focus on Google
Scholar and Google Book Search. It also examines their usefulness
in a public service context. Its ultimate aim is to assess the use
of Google as a major information resource. Its subject matter deals
with online megasearch engines and their influence on reference
librarianship, the impact of Google on information seeking,
librarianship and the development of book digitization projects in
which Google Book Search plays its part. This book will be of interest to librarians across all
educational sectors, library science scholars and publishers. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Library Administration.
This comprehensive work provides the fundamentals of computer facial animation and brings into sharper focus techniques that are becoming mainstream in the industry. Over the past decade, since the publication of the first edition, there have been significant developments by academic research groups and in the film and games industries leading to the development of morphable face models, performance driven animation, as well as increasingly detailed lip-synchronization and hair modeling techniques. These topics are described in the context of existing facial animation principles. The second edition provides an up-to-date source for professionals and academic researchers working in the field of facial animation.
The networking capabilities of the Java platform have been extended
considerably since the first edition of the book. This new edition
covers version 1.5-1.7, the most current iterations, as well as
making the following improvements:
The last decade has witnessed the rise of big data in game development as the increasing proliferation of Internet-enabled gaming devices has made it easier than ever before to collect large amounts of player-related data. At the same time, the emergence of new business models and the diversification of the player base have exposed a broader potential audience, which attaches great importance to being able to tailor game experiences to a wide range of preferences and skill levels. This, in turn, has led to a growing interest in data mining techniques, as they offer new opportunities for deriving actionable insights to inform game design, to ensure customer satisfaction, to maximize revenues, and to drive technical innovation. By now, data mining and analytics have become vital components of game development. The amount of work being done in this area nowadays makes this an ideal time to put together a book on this subject. Data Analytics Applications in Gaming and Entertainment seeks to provide a cross section of current data analytics applications in game production. It is intended as a companion for practitioners, academic researchers, and students seeking knowledge on the latest practices in game data mining. The chapters have been chosen in such a way as to cover a wide range of topics and to provide readers with a glimpse at the variety of applications of data mining in gaming. A total of 25 authors from industry and academia have contributed 12 chapters covering topics such as player profiling, approaches for analyzing player communities and their social structures, matchmaking, churn prediction and customer lifetime value estimation, communication of analytical results, and visual approaches to game analytics. This book's perspectives and concepts will spark heightened interest in game analytics and foment innovative ideas that will advance the exciting field of online gaming and entertainment.
Need to solve problems quickly to develop creative projects to time and to budget? Want to hone your Flash skills so you can concentrate on your animation? Then How to Cheat in Flash is for you! Chris Georgenes shows how to work from the problem to the solution - from the viewpoint of an animator who has been commissioned to create a job and is working to a deadline and to a budget. With his in-depth knowledge of the little-known secrets used by the pros to produce creative, professional animations, Chris is the go-to guru for designers and animators who want to create great animation, applications or motion design with Flash. Fully updated for CS5, How to Cheat in Flash CS5, is a goldmine of artistic inspiration, timesaving practical tips, tricks and step-by-step workthroughs that you'll wonder how you survived without it. Each techniques is designed as a double-page spread so you can prop the book up behind your keyboard or next to your monitor as a visual reference while working alongside it. Many of these workthroughs are real-world client projects, with the source files supplied for you to open and explore. With these real-life professional projects you'll discover how to: bring objects to life with cool motion effects, make it rain, snow or set your world ablaze, develop flash mobile applications and many more tips and tricks not found anywhere else!
This book presents the most up-to-date coverage of procedural content generation (PCG) for games, specifically the procedural generation of levels, landscapes, items, rules, quests, or other types of content. Each chapter explains an algorithm type or domain, including fractal methods, grammar-based methods, search-based and evolutionary methods, constraint-based methods, and narrative, terrain, and dungeon generation. The authors are active academic researchers and game developers, and the book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of courses on games and creativity; game developers who want to learn new methods for content generation; and researchers in related areas of artificial intelligence and computational intelligence.
Role-play as a Heritage Practice is the first book to examine physically performed role-enactments, such as live-action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and hobbyist historical reenactment (RH), from a combined game studies and heritage studies perspective. Demonstrating that non-digital role-plays, such as TRPG and LARP, share many features with RH, the book contends that all three may be considered as heritage practices. Studying these role-plays as three distinct genres of playful, participatory and performative forms of engagement with cultural heritage, Mochocki demonstrates how an exploration of the affordances of each genre can be valuable. Showing that a player's engagement with history or heritage material is always multi-layered, the book clarifies that the layers may be conceptualised simultaneously as types of heritage authenticity and as types of in-game immersion. It is also made clear that RH, TRPG and LARP share commonalities with a multitude of other media, including video games, historical fiction and film. Existing within, and contributing to, the fiction and non-fiction mediasphere, these role-enactments are shaped by the same large-scale narratives and discourses that persons, families, communities, and nations use to build memory and identity. Role-play as a Heritage Practice will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, memory, nostalgia, role-playing, historical games, performance, fans and transmedia narratology.
All You Need to Know, and Nothing You Don't, About Core Tools for Software Development Three of the core tools needed for modern software development are the Unix command line, a text editor, and version control with Git. But you don't need to learn "everything" about them, just how to use them efficiently to solve real problems. In Learn Enough Developer Tools to Be Dangerous, renowned instructor Michael Hartl teaches the specific concepts, skills, and approaches you need so you can learn to write apps, get hired, collaborate, and maybe even launch your own company. Even if you've never used (or even heard of) these tools before, Hartl helps you quickly build technical sophistication and master the lore you need to succeed. Focused exercises help you internalize what matters, without wasting time on details pros don't care about. Soon, it'll be like you were born knowing this stuff--and you'll be suddenly, seriously dangerous. Learn enough about . . . Running a terminal, entering and editing commands, and using man pages Manipulating and inspecting files: from basic copying to finding patterns Organizing files with directories Learning Minimum Viable Vim Basic and advanced editing techniques with editors like Atom and VS Code Using the human-readable Markdown language for writing quick documentation Formatting source code and writing executable scripts Getting started with Git and GitHub Using key Git workflows: commit, push, branch, merge, and more Collaborating on Git projects and resolving code conflicts Setting up dev environments: macOS, Linux, Windows, and cloud Michael Hartl's Learn Enough series includes books and video courses that focus on the most important parts of each subject, so you don't have to learn everything to get started--you just have to learn enough to be dangerous and solve technical problems yourself. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.
This book mainly reflects the recent research works in evolutionary computation technologies and mobile sustainable networks with a specific focus on computational intelligence and communication technologies that widely ranges from theoretical foundations to practical applications in enhancing the sustainability of mobile networks. Today, network sustainability has become a significant research domain in both academia and industries present across the globe. Also, the network sustainability paradigm has generated a solution for existing optimization challenges in mobile communication networks. Recently, the research advances in evolutionary computing technologies including swarm intelligence algorithms and other evolutionary algorithm paradigms are considered as the widely accepted descriptors for mobile sustainable networks virtualization, optimization, and automation. To deal with the emerging impacts on mobile communication networks, this book discusses about the state-of-the research works on developing a sustainable design and their implementation in mobile networks. With the advent of evolutionary computation algorithms, this book contributes varied research chapters to develop a new perspective on mobile sustainable networks.
Since its initial debut in 2015, this critically acclaimed quick-start guide to programming has taught millions of people all over the world to write clean code, solve problems, and build custom applications in the popular language of Python. The highly anticipated third edition of Python Crash Course has been completely revised with updated code, practices, and projects-making it the ultimate launchpad for beginners to start their engines and code in Python 3!
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of the recent achievements of the hacker movement. This book is the first to examine a different kind of political activism that consists in the development of technology from below.
The Handbook of Logic in Computer Science is a multi-volume work covering all major areas of application of logic to theoretical computer science.
Even though Six Sigma programs have successfully been implemented in practice, many IT departments remain skeptical of the process or are unaware of how the tools can be used to improve system development. Removing the mystique surrounding this technique, Six Sigma Software Development, Second Edition demonstrates how Six Sigma tools and concepts can be used to enhance the system development process. Revised and updated, this second edition clearly explains Six Sigma concepts and their application, maps Six Sigma concepts and tools to all aspects of system development, and proposes the use of Six Sigma tools to evaluate and improve the overall performance of the IT department. In addition to classic Six Sigma, the book introduces Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and illustrates when and how its tools and techniques can be used to increase the robustness and reliability of a new system. It also shows how the judicious application of lean tools can reduce the complexity of IT processes, thus shortening the time needed to translate customer requirements into completed systems and increasing customer satisfaction.
The author takes readers on an in-depth walkthrough of the Torque Game Engine---one of the most popular, powerful, and easy to use game engines available today. With clear explanations of how to use Torque to create your own games and detailed discussions of the engine's inner workings, this book is a must read for any programmer interested in making games for fun or profit. It offers step-by-step examples, detailed system descriptions, in-depth references, practical tips, tricks, and more that provide readers all they need to understand the Torque Game Engine. See the Support page on the author's website for a revision of Chapter 15 (Torque Lighting). Downloadable resources are included with the book.
This second edition of C# Game Programming Cookbook for Unity 3D expounds upon the first with more details and techniques. With a fresh array of chapters, updated C# code and examples, Jeff W. Murray's book will help the reader understand structured game development in Unity unlike ever before. New to this edition is a step-by-step tutorial for building a 2D infinite runner game from the framework and scripts included in the book. The book contains a flexible and reusable framework in C# suitable for all game types. From game state handling to audio mixers to asynchronous scene loading, the focus of this book is building a reusable structure to take care of many of the most used systems. Improve your game's sound in a dedicated audio chapter covering topics such as audio mixers, fading, and audio ducking effects, or dissect a fully featured racing game with car physics, lap counting, artificial intelligence steering behaviors, and game management. Use this book to guide your way through all the required code and framework to build a multi-level arena blaster game. Features Focuses on programming, structure, and an industry-level, C#-based framework Extensive breakdowns of all the important classes Example projects illustrate and break down common and important Unity C# programming concepts, such as coroutines, singletons, static variables, inheritance, and scriptable objects. Three fully playable example games with source code: a 2D infinite runner, an arena blaster, and an isometric racing game The script library includes a base Game Manager, timed and proximity spawning, save profile manager, weapons control, artificial intelligence controllers (path following, target chasing and line-of-sight patrolling behaviors), user interface Canvas management and fading, car physics controllers, and more. Code and screenshots have been updated with the latest versions of Unity. These updates will help illustrate how to create 2D games and 3D games based on the most up-to-date methods and techniques. Experienced C# programmers will discover ways to structure Unity projects for reusability and scalability. The concepts offered within the book are instrumental to mastering C# and Unity. In his game career spanning more than 20 years, Jeff W. Murray has worked with some of the world's largest brands as a Game Designer, Programmer, and Director. A Unity user for over 14 years, he now works as a consultant and freelancer between developing his own VR games and experiments with Unity. |
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