Fully detailed game projects from scratch. Beginners can do the steps and create games right away. No coding experience is necessary. Numerous examples take a raw beginner towards professional coding proficiency in C# and Unity. Includes a thorough introduction to Unity 2020 All required software is professional quality and completely free to use for any purpose including commercial applications and games.

This volume describes the status of fractal imaging research and looks to future directions. It will be useful to researchers in the areas of fractal image compression, analysis, and synthesis, iterated function systems, and fractals in education. In particular it includes a vision for the future of these areas. It aims to provide an efficient means by which researchers can look back over the last decade at what has been achieved, and look forward towards second-generation fractal imaging. The articles in themselves are not meant to be detailed reviews or expositions, but to serve as signposts to the state of the art in their areas. What is important is what they mention and what tools and ideas are seen now to be relevant to the future. The contributors, a number of whom have been involved since the start, are active in fractal imaging, and provide a well-informed viewpoint on both the status and the future. Most were invited participants at a meeting on Fractals in Multimedia held at the IMA in January 2001. Some goals of the mini-symposium, shared with this volume, were to demonstrate that the fractal viewpoint leads to a broad collection of useful mathematical tools, common themes, new ways of looking at and thinking about existing algorithms and applications in multimedia, and to consider future developments. This book should be useful to commercial and university researchers in the rapidly evolving field of digital imaging, specifically, chief information officers, professors, software engineers, and graduate students in the mathematical sciences. While much of the content is quite technical, it contains pointers to the state-of-the-art and the future in fractal imaging.

The realistic generation of virtual doubles of real-world actors has been the focus of computer graphics research for many years. However, some problems still remain unsolved: it is still time-consuming to generate character animations using the traditional skeleton-based pipeline, passive performance capture of human actors wearing arbitrary everyday apparel is still challenging, and until now, there is only a limited amount of techniques for processing and modifying mesh animations, in contrast to the huge amount of skeleton-based techniques. In this thesis, we propose algorithmic solutions to each of these problems. First, two efficient mesh-based alternatives to simplify the overall character animation process are proposed. Although abandoning the concept of a kinematic skeleton, both techniques can be directly integrated in the traditional pipeline, generating animations with realistic body deformations. Thereafter, three passive performance capture methods are presented which employ a deformable model as underlying scene representation. The techniques are able to jointly reconstruct spatio-temporally coherent time-varying geometry, motion, and textural surface appearance of subjects wearing loose and everyday apparel. Moreover, the acquired high-quality reconstructions enable us to render realistic 3D Videos. At the end, two novel algorithms for processing mesh animations are described. The first one enables the fully-automatic conversion of a mesh animation into a skeletonbased animation and the second one automatically converts a mesh animation into an animation collage, a new artistic style for rendering animations. The methods described in the thesis can be regarded as solutions to specific problems or important building blocks for a larger application. As a whole, they form a powerful system to accurately capture, manipulate and realistically render realworld human performances, exceeding the capabilities of many related capture techniques. By this means, we are able to correctly capture the motion, the timevarying details and the texture information of a real human performing, and transform it into a fully-rigged character animation, that can be directly used by an animator, or use it to realistically display the actor from arbitrary viewpoints.

This book explores the most recent Edge and Distributed Cloud computing research and industrial advances, settling the basis for Advanced Swarm Computing developments. It features the Swarm computing concepts and realizes it as an Ad-hoc Edge Cloud architecture. Unlike current techniques in Edge and Cloud computing that solely view IoT connected devices as sources of data, Swarm computing aims at using the compute capabilities of IoT connected devices in coordination with current Edge and Cloud computing innovations. In addition to being more widely available, IoT-connected devices are also quickly becoming more sophisticated in terms of their ability to carry considerable compute and storage resources. Swarm computing and Ad-hoc Edge Cloud take full advantage of this trend to create on-demand, autonomic and decentralized self-managed computing infrastructures. Focusing on cognitive resource and service management, the book examines the specific research challenges of the Swarm computing approach, related to the characteristics of IoT connected devices that form the infrastructure. It also offers academics and practitioners insights for future research in the fields of Edge and Swarm computing.

The rapid advances in performance and miniaturisation in microtechnology are constantly opening up new markets for the programmable logic controller (PLC). Specially designed controller hardware or PC-based controllers, extended by hardware and software with real-time capability, now control highly complex automation processes. This has been extended by the new subject of "safe- related controllers," aimed at preventing injury by machines during the production process. The different types of PLC cover a wide task spectrum - ranging from small network node computers and distributed compact units right up to modular, fau- tolerant, high-performance PLCs. They differ in performance characteristics such as processing speed, networking ability or the selection of I/O modules they support. Throughout this book, the term PLC is used to refer to the technology as a whole, both hardware and software, and not merely to the hardware architecture. The IEC61131 programming languages can be used for programming classical PLCs, embedded controllers, industrial PCs and even standard PCs, if suitable hardware (e.g. fieldbus board) for connecting sensors and actors is available.

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

Key Features: This work aims to be the most approachable book about UX. Many books on the topic are highly specialized and are not easy to read for people who just want to understand it better. This book is easy to read and aims to popularize the UX mindset while debunking its main misconceptions. Small format size makes it easy to carry around. Includes content relatable and meaningful to the readers by taking many examples from everyday life with a conversational and light writing style. It tackles the psychology, design, research, process, strategy, and ethics behind offering the best experience with products, systems, or services. Includes a glossary.

This book is an important collection for scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of digital games, and will be of interest across several disciplines including game studies, game design and development, internet studies, visual studies, cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies, as well as disability studies The book explores the opportunities and challenges people with disabilities experience in the context of digital games from the perspective of three related areas: representation, access and inclusion, and community Drawing on key concerns in disability media studies, the book brings together scholars from disability studies and game studies, alongside game developers, educators, and disability rights activists, to reflect upon the increasing visibility of disabled characters in digital games Chapters explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability on platforms such as Twitch, Minecraft, and Tingyou, while also addressing future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities within gaming given the rise of virtual reality applications, and augmented games such as Pokemon Go The book also asks how game developers can attempt to represent diverse abilities, taking games such as BlindSide and Overwatch as examples

This book presents established and new approaches to perform calculations of electrostatic interactions at the nanoscale, with particular focus on molecular biology applications. It is based on the proceedings of the Computational Electrostatics for Biological Applications international meeting, which brought together researchers in computational disciplines to discuss and explore diverse methods to improve electrostatic calculations. Fostering an interdisciplinary approach to the description of complex physical and biological problems, this book encompasses contributions originating in the fields of geometry processing, shape modeling, applied mathematics, and computational biology and chemistry. The main topics covered are theoretical and numerical aspects of the solution of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation, surveys and comparison among geometric approaches to the modelling of molecular surfaces and related discretization and computational issues. It also includes a number of contributions addressing applications in biology, biophysics and nanotechnology. The book is primarily intended as a reference for researchers in the computational molecular biology and chemistry fields. As such, it also aims at becoming a key source of information for a wide range of scientists who need to know how modeling and computing at the molecular level may influence the design and interpretation of their experiments.

With a primary focus on examples and applications of relevance to computational scientists, this brilliantly useful book shows computational scientists how to develop tailored, flexible, and human-efficient working environments built from small scripts written in the easy-to-learn, high-level Python language. All the tools and examples in this book are open source codes. This third edition features lots of new material. It is also released after a comprehensive reorganization of the text. The author has inserted improved examples and tools and updated information, as well as correcting any errors that crept in to the first imprint.

Modern electrical power systems are facing complex challenges, arising from distributed generation and intermittent renewable energy. Fuzzy logic is one approach to meeting this challenge and providing reliability and power quality. The book is about fuzzy logic control and its applications in managing, controlling and operating electrical energy systems. It provides a comprehensive overview of fuzzy logic concepts and techniques required for designing fuzzy logic controllers, and then discusses several applications to control and management in energy systems. The book incorporates a novel fuzzy logic controller design approach in both Matlab (R) and in Matlab Simulink (R) so that the user can study every step of the fuzzy logic processor, with the ability to modify the code. Fuzzy Logic Control in Energy Systems is an important read for researchers and practicing engineers in energy engineering and control, as well as advanced students involved with power system research and operation.

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Tap into the Internet of Things (IoT) with innovative projects! The Internet of Things:Do-It-Yourself at Home Projects for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone Black gets you started working with the most popular processing platforms and wireless communication technologies to connect devices and systems to the Internet using sensors. You'll learn the basics of object-oriented programming and relational databases so you can complete your projects with ease. Each project features a list of required tools and components, how-to explanations with photos and illustrations, and complete programming code. Take advantage of the power and versatility of the IoT with help from this practical, easy-to-follow guide. Inventive DIY projects include: Home temperature monitoring system Raspberry Pi home weather station Webcam and Raspberry Pi camera Internet-enabled, Arduino-powered garage door opener Arduino irrigation control system Arduino lighting controller BeagleBone Black message controller BeagleBone Black temperature sensor with cloud service Machine-to-Machine communications Software downloads for the book are available at www.mhprofessional.com/iot

Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms, a comprehensive work on the most popular optimization algorithms based on nature, starts with an overview of optimization going from the classical to the latest swarm intelligence algorithm. Nature has a rich abundance of flora and fauna that inspired the development of optimization techniques, providing us with simple solutions to complex problems in an effective and adaptive manner. The study of the intelligent survival strategies of animals, birds, and insects in a hostile and ever-changing environment has led to the development of techniques emulating their behavior. This book is a lucid description of fifteen important existing optimization algorithms based on swarm intelligence and superior in performance. It is a valuable resource for engineers, researchers, faculty, and students who are devising optimum solutions to any type of problem ranging from computer science to economics and covering diverse areas that require maximizing output and minimizing resources. This is the crux of all optimization algorithms. Features: Detailed description of the algorithms along with pseudocode and flowchart Easy translation to program code that is also readily available in Mathworks website for some of the algorithms Simple examples demonstrating the optimization strategies are provided to enhance understanding Standard applications and benchmark datasets for testing and validating the algorithms are included This book is a reference for undergraduate and post-graduate students. It will be useful to faculty members teaching optimization. It is also a comprehensive guide for researchers who are looking for optimizing resources in attaining the best solution to a problem. The nature-inspired optimization algorithms are unconventional, and this makes them more efficient than their traditional counterparts.

This open access book summarizes knowledge about several file systems and file formats commonly used in mobile devices. In addition to the fundamental description of the formats, there are hints about the forensic value of possible artefacts, along with an outline of tools that can decode the relevant data. The book is organized into two distinct parts: Part I describes several different file systems that are commonly used in mobile devices. * APFS is the file system that is used in all modern Apple devices including iPhones, iPads, and even Apple Computers, like the MacBook series. * Ext4 is very common in Android devices and is the successor of the Ext2 and Ext3 file systems that were commonly used on Linux-based computers. * The Flash-Friendly File System (F2FS) is a Linux system designed explicitly for NAND Flash memory, common in removable storage devices and mobile devices, which Samsung Electronics developed in 2012. * The QNX6 file system is present in Smartphones delivered by Blackberry (e.g. devices that are using Blackberry 10) and modern vehicle infotainment systems that use QNX as their operating system. Part II describes five different file formats that are commonly used on mobile devices. * SQLite is nearly omnipresent in mobile devices with an overwhelming majority of all mobile applications storing their data in such databases. * The second leading file format in the mobile world are Property Lists, which are predominantly found on Apple devices. * Java Serialization is a popular technique for storing object states in the Java programming language. Mobile application (app) developers very often resort to this technique to make their application state persistent. * The Realm database format has emerged over recent years as a possible successor to the now ageing SQLite format and has begun to appear as part of some modern applications on mobile devices. * Protocol Buffers provide a format for taking compiled data and serializing it by turning it into bytes represented in decimal values, which is a technique commonly used in mobile devices. The aim of this book is to act as a knowledge base and reference guide for digital forensic practitioners who need knowledge about a specific file system or file format. It is also hoped to provide useful insight and knowledge for students or other aspiring professionals who want to work within the field of digital forensics. The book is written with the assumption that the reader will have some existing knowledge and understanding about computers, mobile devices, file systems and file formats.

Terraform has become a key player in the DevOps world for defining, launching, and managing infrastructure as code (IaC) across a variety of cloud and virtualization platforms, including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and more. This hands-on third edition, expanded and thoroughly updated for version 1.0 and beyond, shows you the fastest way to get up and running with Terraform. Gruntwork cofounder Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman walks you through code examples that demonstrate Terraform's simple, declarative programming language for deploying and managing infrastructure with a few commands. Veteran sysadmins, DevOps engineers, and novice developers will quickly go from Terraform basics to running a full stack that can support a massive amount of traffic and a large team of developers. Compare Terraform with Chef, Puppet, Ansible, CloudFormation, Docker, and Packer Deploy servers, load balancers, and databases Create reusable infrastructure with Terraform modules Test your Terraform modules with static analysis, unit tests, and integration tests Configure CI/CD pipelines for both your apps and infrastructure code Use advanced Terraform syntax for loops, conditionals, and zero-downtime deployment New to the third edition: Get up to speed on Terraform 0.13 to 1.0 and beyond Manage secrets (passwords, API keys) with Terraform Work with multiple clouds and providers (including Kubernetes!)

Many books on optimization consider only finite dimensional spaces. This volume is unique in its emphasis: the first three chapters develop optimization in spaces without linear structure, and the analog of convex analysis is constructed for this case. Many new results have been proved specially for this publication. In the following chapters optimization in infinite topological and normed vector spaces is considered. The novelty consists in using the drop property for weak well-posedness of linear problems in Banach spaces and in a unified approach (by means of the Dolecki approximation) to necessary conditions of optimality. The method of reduction of constraints for sufficient conditions of optimality is presented. The book contains an introduction to non-differentiable and vector optimization. Audience: This volume will be of interest to mathematicians, engineers, and economists working in mathematical optimization.

Welcome to the Second International IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium on st Cultural Computing (ECS 2010), which was part of the 21 IFIP World Computer Congress, held in Brisbane, Australia during September 21-23, 2010. On behalf of the people who made this conference happen, we wish to welcome you to this inter- tional event. The IFIP World Computer Congress has offered an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to present their findings and research results in several prominent areas of computer science and engineering. In the last World Computer Congress, WCC 2008, held in Milan, Italy in September 2008, IFIP launched a new initiative focused on all the relevant issues concerning computing and entertainment. As a - sult, the two-day technical program of the First Entertainment Computing Symposium (ECS 2008) provided a forum to address, explore and exchange information on the state of the art of computer-based entertainment and allied technologies, their design and use, and their impact on society. Based on the success of ECS 2008, at this Second IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium (ECS 2010), our challenge was to focus on a new area in entertainment computing: cultural computing.

Handbook of tape automated bonding (TAB) is a one-stop guide to the state of the art of TAB technology - including TAB tape, bump, inner lead bonding, encapsulation, testing, burn-in, outer lead bonding, inspection, rework, thermal management and reliability. For professionals active in TAB research and development, those who wish to master TAB problem solving methods, and those who must choose a high-performance and cost-effective packaging technique for their interconnect systems, here's a timely summary of progress in all aspects of this fascinating field.

Topology-based methods are of increasing importance in the analysis and visualization of dataset from a wide variety of scientific domains such as biology, physics, engineering, and medicine. Current challenges of topology-based techniques include the management of time-dependent data, the representation large and complex datasets, the characterization of noise and uncertainty, the effective integration of numerical methods with robust combinatorial algorithms, etc. (see also below for a list of selected issues). While there is an increasing number of high-quality publications in this field, many fundamental questions remain unsolved. New focused efforts are needed in a variety of techniques ranging from the theoretical foundations of topological models, algorithmic issues related to the representation power of computer-based implementations as well as their computational efficiency, user interfaces for presentation of quantitative topological information, and the development of new techniques for systematic mapping of science problems in topological constructs that can be solved computationally. In this forum the editors have brought together the most prominent and best recognized researchers in the field of topology-based data analysis and visualization for a joint discussion and scientific exchange of the latest results in the field. The 2009 workshop in Snowbird, Utah, follows the two successful workshops in 2005 (Budmerice, Slovakia) and 2007 (Leipzig, Germany).

As genetic algorithms (GAs) become increasingly popular, they are applied to difficult problems that may require considerable computations. In such cases, parallel implementations of GAs become necessary to reach high-quality solutions in reasonable times. But, even though their mechanics are simple, parallel GAs are complex non-linear algorithms that are controlled by many parameters, which are not well understood. Efficient and Accurate Parallel Genetic Algorithms is about the design of parallel GAs. It presents theoretical developments that improve our understanding of the effect of the algorithm's parameters on its search for quality and efficiency. These developments are used to formulate guidelines on how to choose the parameter values that minimize the execution time while consistently reaching solutions of high quality. Efficient and Accurate Parallel Genetic Algorithms can be read in several ways, depending on the readers' interests and their previous knowledge about these algorithms. Newcomers to the field will find the background material in each chapter useful to become acquainted with previous work, and to understand the problems that must be faced to design efficient and reliable algorithms. Potential users of parallel GAs that may have doubts about their practicality or reliability may be more confident after reading this book and understanding the algorithms better. Those who are ready to try a parallel GA on their applications may choose to skim through the background material, and use the results directly without following the derivations in detail. These readers will find that using the results can help them to choose the type of parallel GA that best suits their needs, without having to invest the time to implement and test various options. Once that is settled, even the most experienced users dread the long and frustrating experience of configuring their algorithms by trial and error. The guidelines contained herein will shorten dramatically the time spent tweaking the algorithm, although some experimentation may still be needed for fine-tuning. Efficient and Accurate Parallel Genetic Algorithms is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Many-valued logics were developed as an attempt to handle philosophical doubts about the "law of excluded middle" in classical logic. The first many-valued formal systems were developed by J. Lukasiewicz in Poland and E.Post in the U.S.A. in the 1920s, and since then the field has expanded dramatically as the applicability of the systems to other philosophical and semantic problems was recognized. Intuitionisticlogic, for example, arose from deep problems in the foundations of mathematics. Fuzzy logics, approximation logics, and probability logics all address questions that classical logic alone cannot answer. All these interpretations of many-valued calculi motivate specific formal systems thatallow detailed mathematical treatment. In this volume, the authors are concerned with finite-valued logics, and especially with three-valued logical calculi. Matrix constructions, axiomatizations of propositional and predicate calculi, syntax, semantic structures, and methodology are discussed. Separate chapters deal with intuitionistic logic, fuzzy logics, approximation logics, and probability logics. These systems all find application in practice, in automatic inference processes, which have been decisive for the intensive development of these logics. This volume acquaints the reader with theoretical fundamentals of many-valued logics. It is intended to be the first of a two-volume work. The second volume will deal with practical applications and methods of automated reasoning using many-valued logics.

This book introduces selected recent findings on the analysis and control of dynamical behaviors for coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks. It presents novel research ideas and essential definitions concerning coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks, such as passivity, adaptive coupling, spatial diffusion coupling, and the relationship between synchronization and output strict passivity. Further, it gathers research results previously published in many flagship journals, presenting them in a unified form. As such, the book will be of interest to all university researchers and graduate students in Engineering and Mathematics who wish to study the dynamical behaviors of coupled reaction-diffusion neural networks.

The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Techniques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimization problems. A very large number of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry. Essays and Surveys in Metaheuristics goes beyond the recent conference-oriented volumes in Metaheuristics, with its focus on surveys of recent developments of the main metaheuristics. Well-known specialists have written surveys on the following subjects: simulated annealing (E. Aarts and J. Korst, The Netherlands), noising methods (I. Charon and O. Hudry, France), strategies for the parallel implementation of metaheuristics (V.-D. Cung and C. Roucairol, France, and S.L. Martins and C.C. Ribeiro, Brazil), greedy randomized adaptive search procedures (P. Festa, Italy, and M.G.C. Resende, USA), tabu search (M. Gendreau, Canada), variable neighborhood search (P. Hansen and N. Mladenovic, Canada), ant colonies (V. Maniezzo and A. Carbonaro, Italy), and evolutionary algorithms (H. MA1/4hlenbein and Th. Mahnig, Germany). Several further essays address issues or variants of metaheuristics, as well as innovative orsuccessful applications of metaheuristics to classical or new combinatorial optimization problems.

Temporal Data Mining via Unsupervised Ensemble Learning provides the principle knowledge of temporal data mining in association with unsupervised ensemble learning and the fundamental problems of temporal data clustering from different perspectives. By providing three proposed ensemble approaches of temporal data clustering, this book presents a practical focus of fundamental knowledge and techniques, along with a rich blend of theory and practice. Furthermore, the book includes illustrations of the proposed approaches based on data and simulation experiments to demonstrate all methodologies, and is a guide to the proper usage of these methods. As there is nothing universal that can solve all problems, it is important to understand the characteristics of both clustering algorithms and the target temporal data so the correct approach can be selected for a given clustering problem. Scientists, researchers, and data analysts working with machine learning and data mining will benefit from this innovative book, as will undergraduate and graduate students following courses in computer science, engineering, and statistics.