This book takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a playable 3D character using 3DS Max. Offering a complete overview of the 3D real-time character asset creation pipeline. Yancey Clinton will take you through the five major subjects used in the asset pipeline: 1. 3D modeling, including techniques specifically for both the body and head. 2. Unwrapping a model, which is one of the most misunderstood processes. 3. An overview of creating textures for your Unwrapped chararacter using Photoshop. 4. Rigging or Skinning a Character, using the industry standard Character Studio 4. 5. 'How to make your character move' with an overview of game animation and deeper into Character Studio. But it doesn't end there! Yancey also shows you the final step; how to actually put the model into the Unreal editor and compile it for play in Unreal Tournament.

Leverage the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Viva Connections as an employee experience platform to build a gateway to your digital workplace. This book helps you set up Microsoft Viva connections via easy-to-follow steps and extend it to target your business scenarios. The book starts with an introduction to Microsoft Viva and its modules and it discusses Viva Connections for desktop and mobile users. You will learn about the intranet landing experience with SharePoint where you will plan, build, and launch a home site. You will know how to use the app bar and global navigation in Viva Connections and understand the importance of the dashboard and dashboard cards. You will learn how to enable Viva Connections in MS Teams and define a rollout strategy. You will gain experience with Viva Connections on mobile devices and go through end-user guidance. And you will learn to extend Viva Connections with the SharePoint Framework and deploy SPFx solutions. After reading this book, you will be able to set up Microsoft Viva Connections for your digital workplace and empower your employees to search and discover relevant news, information, content, and sites from across the organization. What Will You Learn Understand the modern experience in SharePoint with Microsoft Viva Connect Know best practices for your home site in SharePoint Get your content ready for feed with SharePoint and Yammer Build Adaptive Card Extensions (ACEs) with SPFx Define governance for Viva Connections Who This Book Is For Microsoft professionals and business users who want to leverage the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Viva Connections

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.

In the world of web design, if one wants to create a successful web site, one needs an effective content strategy. Return on Engagement shows web designers and developers how to implement an effective content strategy and how to stay ahead in the rapidly changing industry of web design. It presents best practices in terms of web design through a marketing function: content strategy, SEO, social media marketing, and success measurement to help web designers implement a strategy that ensures success for the site they are building. Return on Engagement shows web designers and developers how to not just design an aesthetically pleasing, functional website. This book shows those professionals how to implement marketing strategies and analysis into their website, thus ensuring its success. Nearly 3 years since the previous edition published, new best practices have been formed. Tools in which web developers use to analyze website metrics have advanced. New social media networks and communities have cropped up. New research in how audiences read and receive content has been done, subsequently refining best digital marketing practices. Return on Engagement features a step-by-step breakdown of how to use new tools, techniques, and technologies. The new edition also includes updated case studies of industry leaders who implement best practices on projects. Return on Engagement also features a regularly updated companion site that offers readers sample content, easy sharing tools, and web-based resources to help measure marketing viability of web properties.

A beginning coder's resource for learning the most popular coding language With Java All-in-One For Dummies, you get 8 books in one, for the most well-rounded Java knowledge on the market. Updated for Java 19, this book includes all the major changes to the programming language, so you won't fall behind. Start by learning the basics of Java--you can do it, even if you've never written a line of code in your life. Then go in-depth, with all the info you need on object-oriented programming, Java FX, Java web development, and beyond. Grab a hot cup of java and settle in to learn some Java, with friendly For Dummies guidance! Learn the basics of computer programming and get started with the Java language Master strings, arrays, and collections Discover the most recent Java updates and the latest in programming techniques Launch or further your career as a coder with easy-to-follow instruction This is the go-to Dummies guide for future and current coders who need an all-inclusive guide Java to take their knowledge to the next level.

Boost your iOS developer career by learning from real-life examples and start writing code for one of the most successful platforms ever. No matter if you're an experienced developer or just a beginner, you'll find something new and something useful for your future projects here. All of the recipes in this book are taken from real-life commercial projects that have been approved by Apple and published on the App Store. You won't write "Hello, world!" and similar programs. Instead you'll see how to parse different data formats; run JavaScript code right inside your iOS app; and enhance storyboard editor with several simple extensions. You'll make beautiful modern-looking dialogs with blurs, shadows and rounded corners using only a few lines of code, and safely convert data after analyzing text strings. Go on to animate your layout and get your app shored up to crash as little as possible Each recipe offers a code snippet to copy and paste to your project as a tool to boost your knowledge, as well as, create plug-and-play features. Each of recipe shows the description for each line of code while explaining the logic of it, contains references to documentation, and gives you an opportunity to modify or write something similar that fits your project better. A good piece of code should not work but also be short, clear, and stable. And that combo will be our priority in these code recipes. Well-written code snippets must run in any environment and be easily transferrable from one project to another. Most of the provided recipes will migrate from one project to another with little to no changes at all, and with years of real-world application have proven themselves to be useful and stable. Dive into the world of iOS development and write clear, functioning, and safe Swift code! What You'll Learn Parse, convert, and print Swift data Develop stunning UIs quickly Write effective and portable Swift extensions Make your code cleaner and safer Who This Book Is For Beginners in iOS development who want to improve their skills with real-life examples. Developers switching to mobile development from other areas. All iOS developers looking for code recipes.

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

The main goal of this book is to help organizations improve their effort estimates and effort estimation processes by providing a step-by-step methodology that takes them through the creation and validation of models that are based on their own knowledge and experience. Such models, once validated, can then be used to obtain predictions, carry out risk analyses, enhance their estimation processes for new projects and generally advance them as learning organizations.

Emilia Mendes presents the Expert-Based Knowledge Engineering of Bayesian Networks (EKEBNs) methodology, which she has used and adapted during the course of several industry collaborations with different companies world-wide over more than 6 years. The book itself consists of two major parts: first, the methodology's foundations in knowledge management, effort estimation (with special emphasis on the intricacies of software and Web development) and Bayesian networks are detailed; then six industry case studies are presented which illustrate the practical use of EKEBNs. Domain experts from each company participated in the elicitation of the bespoke models for effort estimation and all models were built employing the widely-used Netica tool. This part is rounded off with a chapter summarizing the experiences with the methodology and the derived models.

Practitioners working on software project management, software process qualityor effort estimation and risk analysis in general will find a thorough introduction into an industry-proven methodology as well as numerous experiences, tips and possible pitfalls invaluable for their daily work."

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

Understand Video Games as Works of Science Fiction and Interactive Stories Science Fiction Video Games focuses on games that are part of the science fiction genre, rather than set in magical milieux or exaggerated versions of our own world. Unlike many existing books and websites that cover some of the same material, this book emphasizes critical analysis, especially the analysis of narrative. The author analyzes narrative via an original categorization of story forms in games. He also discusses video games as works of science fiction, including their characteristic themes and the links between them and other forms of science fiction. Delve into a Collection of Science Fiction GamesThe beginning chapters explore game design and the history of science-fictional video games. The majority of the text deals with individual science-fictional games and the histories and natures of their various forms, such as the puzzle-based adventure and the more exploratory and immediate computer role-playing game (RPG).

Written by a pioneer of game development in academia, Introduction to Game Physics with Box2D covers the theory and practice of 2D game physics in a relaxed and entertaining yet instructional style. It offers a cohesive treatment of the topics and code involved in programming the physics for 2D video games. Focusing on writing elementary game physics code, the first half of the book helps you grasp the challenges of programming game physics from scratch, without libraries or outside help. It examines the mathematical foundation of game physics and illustrates how it is applied in practice through coding examples. The second half of the book shows you how to use Box2D, a popular open source 2D game physics engine. A companion website provides supplementary material, including source code and videos. This book helps you become a capable 2D game physics programmer through its presentation of both the theory and applications of 2D game physics. After reading the book and experimenting with the code samples, you will understand the basics of 2D game physics and know how to use Box2D to make a 2D physics-based game.

Why purchase expensive add-on cards or bus interfaces when you can develop effective and economical data acquisition and process controls using C programs? Using the under-employed printer adapter (that is, the parallel port of your PC), you can turn your computer into a powerful tool for developing microprocessor applications. Learn how to build a complete data acquisition system and such varied applications as a CCD camera controller, a photometer interface, and a wave form generator. The book also covers the enhanced parallel port (EPP), the extended capabilities port (ECP), interfacing analog-to-digital converters, and data acquisition under Linux. This extraordinary software approach to interfacing through the parallel port will be especially appealing to programmers involved in control systems design and device development, as well as to those who work with real-time and embedded systems. ;

Virtual environments such as games and animated and "real" movies require realistic sound effects that can be integrated by computer synthesis. The book emphasizes physical modeling of sound and focuses on real-world interactive sound effects. It is intended for game developers, graphics programmers, developers of virtual reality systems and training simulators, and others who want to learn about computational sound. It is written at an introductory level with mathematical foundations provided in appendices. Links to code examples and sound files can be found on the Downloads/Updates tab.

"Game Feel" exposes "feel" as a hidden language in game design that no one has fully articulated yet. The language could be compared to the building blocks of music (time signatures, chord progressions, verse) - no matter the instruments, style or time period - these building blocks come into play. Feel and sensation are similar building blocks where game design is concerned. They create the meta-sensation of involvement with a game. The understanding of how game designers create feel, and affect feel are only partially understood by most in the field and tends to be overlooked as a method or course of study, yet a game's feel is central to a game's success. This book brings the subject of feel to light by consolidating existing theories into a cohesive book. The book covers topics like the role of sound, ancillary indicators, the importance of metaphor, how people perceive things, and a brief history of feel in games.The associated web site contains a playset with ready-made tools to design feel in games, six key components to creating virtual sensation. There's a play palette too, so the desiger can first experience the importance of that component by altering variables and feeling the results. The playset allows the reader to experience each of the sensations described in the book, and then allows them to apply them to their own projects. Creating game feel without having to program, essentially. The final version of the playset will have enough flexibility that the reader will be able to use it as a companion to the exercises in the book, working through each one to create the feel described.

Location-based games emerged in the early 2000s following the commercialisation of GPS and artistic experimentation with 'locative media' technologies. Location-based games are played in everyday public spaces using GPS and networked, mobile technologies to track their players' location. This book traces the evolution of location-based gaming, from its emergence as a marginal practice to its recent popularisation through smartphone apps like Pokemon Go and its incorporation into 'smart city' strategies. Drawing on this history and an analysis of the scholarly and mainstream literature on location-based games, Leorke unpacks the key claims made about them. These claims position location-based games as alternately enriching or diminishing their players' engagement with the people and places they encounter through the game. Through rich case studies and interviews with location-based game designers and players, Leorke tests out and challenges these celebratory and pessimistic discourses. He argues for a more grounded approach to researching location-based games and their impact on public space that reflects the ideologies, lived experiences, and institutional imperatives that circulate around their design and performance. By situating location-based games within broader debates about the role of play and digitisation in public life, Location-Based Gaming offers an original and timely account of location-based gaming and its growing prominence.

Higher National Computing 2e is a new edition of this extremely successful course book, updated specifically to cover the compulsory core units of the 2003 BTEC Higher National Computing schemes. Full coverage is given of the four core units for HNC, the two additional core units required at HND, and the Core Specialist Unit 'Quality Systems', common to both certificate and diploma level. Students following the HNC and HND courses will find this book essential reading, as it covers the core material they will be following through the duration of their course. Knowledge-check questions and activities are included throughout, resulting in a clear and straightforward text which encourages independent study. Like the syllabus itself, this book is ideal for students progressing to HNC / HND from GNVQs, as well as A-Level and BTEC National, with content designed to cover the requirements of students following General Computing, Software Engineering and Business IT courses.

The inside story of the booming video game industry from the late 1990s to the present, as told by the Managing Director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment (The Division, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations). At Massive Entertainment, a Ubisoft studio, a key division of one of the largest, most influential companies in gaming, Managing Director Polfeldt has had a hand in some of the biggest video game franchises of today, from Assassin's Creed to Far Cry to Tom Clancy's The Division, the fastest-selling new series this generation which revitalized the Clancy brand in gaming. In The Dream Architects, Polfeldt charts his course through a charmed, idiosyncratic career which began at the dawn of the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox era -- from successfully pitching an Avatar game to James Cameron that will digitally create all of Pandora to enduring a week-long survivalist camp in the Scandinavian forest to better understand the post-apocalyptic future of The Division. Along the way, Polfeldt ruminates on how the video game industry has grown and changed, how and when games became art, and the medium's expanding artistic and storytelling potential. He shares what it's like to manage a creative process that has ballooned from a low-six-figure expense with a team of a half dozen people to a transatlantic production of five hundred employees on a single project with a production budget of over a hundred million dollars. A rare firsthand account of the golden age of game development told in vivid detail, The Dream Architects is a seminal work about the biggest entertainment medium of today.

What exactly is a cloud-native platform? It's certainly a hot topic in IT, as enterprises today assess this option for developing and delivering software quickly and repeatedly. This O'Reilly report explains the capabilities of cloud-native platforms and examines the fundamental changes enterprises need to make in process, organization, and culture if they're to take real advantage of this approach. Author Duncan Winn focuses on the open source platform Cloud Foundry, one of the more prominent cloud-native providers. You'll learn how cloud-native applications are designed to be "infrastructure unaware" so they can thrive and move at will in the highly distributed and constantly evolving cloud environment.With this report, you'll explore: Technical driving forces that are rapidly changing the way organizations develop and deliver software today How key concepts underpinning the Cloud Foundry platform leverage each of the technical forces discussed How cloud-native platforms remove the requirement to perform undifferentiated heavy lifting, such as provisioning VMs, middleware, and databases Why cloud-native platforms enable fast feedback loops as you move from agile development to agile deployment Recommended changes and practical considerations for organizations that want to build cloud-native applications.

More than ever, learning to program concurrency is critical to creating faster, responsive applications. Speedy and affordable multicore hardware is driving the demand for high-performing applications, and you can leverage the Java platform to bring these applications to life. Concurrency on the Java platform has evolved, from the synchronization model of JDK to software transactional memory (STM) and actor-based concurrency. This book is the first to show you all these concurrency styles so you can compare and choose what works best for your applications. You'll learn the benefits of each of these models, when and how to use them, and what their limitations are. Through hands-on exercises, you'll learn how to avoid shared mutable state and how to write good, elegant, explicit synchronization-free programs so you can create easy and safe concurrent applications. The techniques you learn in this book will take you from dreading concurrency to mastering and enjoying it. Best of all, you can work with Java or a JVM language of your choice - Clojure, JRuby, Groovy, or Scala - to reap the growing power of multicore hardware. If you are a Java programmer, you'd need JDK 1.5 or later and the Akka 1.0 library. In addition, if you program in Scala, Clojure, Groovy or JRuby you'd need the latest version of your preferred language. Groovy programmers will also need GPars.

The influx of computer technology into classrooms during the past decade raises the questions -- how can we teach children to use computers productively and what effect will learning to program computers have on them? During this same period, researchers have investigated novice learning of computer programming. Teaching and Learning Computer Programming unites papers and perspectives by respected researchers of teaching and learning computer science while it summarizes and integrates major theoretical and empirical contributions. It gives a current and concise account of how instructional techniques affect student learning and how learning of programming affects students' cognitive skills. This collection is an ideal supplementary text for students and a valuable reference for professionals and researchers of education, technology and psychology, computer science, communication, developmental psychology, and industrial organization.

A fascinating, forgotten story of the six brilliant women who launched modern computing. As the Cold War began, America's race for tech supremacy was taking off. Experts rushed to complete the top-secret computing research started during World War II, among them six gifted mathematicians: a patriotic Quaker, a Jewish bookworm, a Yugoslav genius, a native Gaelic speaker, a sophomore from the Bronx, and a farmer's daughter from Missouri. Their mission? Programming the world's first and only supercomputer-before any code or programming languages existed. These pioneers triumphed against sexist attitudes and huge technical challenges to invent computer programming, yet their monumental contribution has never been recognised-until now. Over a decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC Programmers and recorded their stories. Here, with a light touch and a serious mind, she exposes the deliberate erasure of their achievements and restores the women to their rightful place as revolutionaries, bringing to life their camaraderie, their determination, and their rapidly changing world. As big tech struggles with gender inequality and momentum builds in restoring women to history, the time has come for this engrossing story to be uncovered and celebrated.

Databases are now an integral part of the internet and many web sites use databases in the background to control their content. MySQL is one of the most commonly used open source database management systems. Due to it’s bundling with PHP, MySQL has proved a popular choice for many sites as it enables a database driven, content managed website to be set up with little or no software costs. This book will show you how to design and use databases for the web using MySQL as a tool to learn SQL. Key Topics Installing and testing MySQL SQL basics, and using SQL to communicate with databases Database design techniques and concepts Using MySQL with PHP, Apache and Perl How to make other products communicate with MySQL Features and Benefits. Gives an insight into how databases work in relation to the web. Introduces general SQL techniques by means of MySQL. Explains the concepts behind a structured query language and how it can be used to communicate with databases. Provides an introduction to database design and how an efficiently designed database can improve the performance of MySQL.

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.

This book illustrates the application of fractional calculus in crowd dynamics via modeling and control groups of pedestrians. Decision-making processes, conservation laws of mass/momentum, and micro-macro models are employed to describe system dynamics while cooperative movements in micro scale, and fractional diffusion in macro scale are studied to control the group of pedestrians. Obtained work is included in the Intelligent Evacuation Systems that is used for modeling and to control crowds of pedestrians. With practical issues considered, this book is of interests to mathematicians, physicists, and engineers.

The complete beginner's guide to Python, for young people who want to start today Adventures in Python is designed for 11-to 15-year olds who want to teach themselves Python programming, but don't know where to start. Even if you have no programming experience at all, this easy to follow format and clear, simple instruction will get you up and running quickly. The book walks you through nine projects that teach you the fundamentals of programming in general, and Python in particular, gradually building your skills until you have the confidence and ability to tackle your own projects. Video clips accompany each chapter to provide even more detailed explanation of important concepts, so you feel supported every step of the way. Python is one of the top programming languages worldwide, with an install base in the millions. It's a favourite language at Google, YouTube, the BBC, and Spotify, and is the primary programming language for the Raspberry Pi. As an open-source language, Python is freely downloadable, with extensive libraries readily available, making it an ideal entry into programming for the beginner. Adventures in Python helps you get started, giving you the foundation you need to follow your curiosity. * Start learning Python at its most basic level * Learn where to acquire Python and how to set it up * Understand Python syntax and interpretation for module programming * Develop the skills that apply to any programming language Python programming skills are invaluable, and developing proficiency gives you a head start in learning other languages like C++, Objective-C, and Java. When learning feels like fun, you won't ever want to stop so get started today with Adventures in Python.