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.

In this book, veteran game developers, academics, journalists, and others provide their processes and experiences with level design. Each provides a unique perspective representing multiple steps of the process for interacting with and creating game levels - experiencing levels, designing levels, constructing levels, and testing levels. These diverse perspectives offer readers a window into the thought processes that result in memorable open game worlds, chilling horror environments, computer-generated levels, evocative soundscapes, and many other types of gamespaces. This collection invites readers into the minds of professional designers as they work and provides evergreen topics on level design and game criticism to inspire both new and veteran designers. Key Features: Learn about the processes of experienced developers and level designers in their own words Discover best-practices for creating levels for persuasive play and designing collaboratively Offers analysis methods for better understanding game worlds and how they function in response to gameplay Find your own preferred method of level design by learning the processes of multiple industry veterans

Provides a clear and concise overview of how AI is used in game development Gives a brief overview of the history of AI in games Considers the different models, techniques and algorithms that are used in creating game AI

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. Author Bio David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of over a dozen nonfiction books about video game development and culture, including the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room, and fiction for young adults, including The Dumpster Club and Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles. Find him online @davidlcraddock on Twitter.

"This book guides you in the journey of 3D modeling from the theory with elegant mathematics to applications with beautiful 3D model pictures. Written in a simple, straightforward, and concise manner, readers will learn the state of the art of 3D reconstruction and modeling." -Professor Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University The computer vision and graphics communities use different terminologies for the same ideas. This book provides a translation, enabling graphics researchers to apply vision concepts, and vice-versa, independence of chapters allows readers to directly jump into a specific chapter of interest, compared to other texts, gives more succinct treatment overall, and focuses primarily on vision geometry. Image-Based Modeling is for graduate students, researchers, and engineers working in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, image processing, robotics, virtual reality, and photogrammetry.

a collection of interviews from renowned author, David L. Craddock

This book describes the detailed concepts of mobile security. The first two chapters provide a deeper perspective on communication networks, while the rest of the book focuses on different aspects of mobile security, wireless networks, and cellular networks. This book also explores issues of mobiles, IoT (Internet of Things) devices for shopping and password management, and threats related to these devices. A few chapters are fully dedicated to the cellular technology wireless network. The management of password for the mobile with the modern technologies that helps on how to create and manage passwords more effectively is also described in full detail. This book also covers aspects of wireless networks and their security mechanisms. The details of the routers and the most commonly used Wi-Fi routers are provided with some step-by-step procedures to configure and secure them more efficiently. This book will offer great benefits to the students of graduate and undergraduate classes, researchers, and also practitioners.

Learn to use JavaScript, the popular scripting language that allows web page authors to develop interactive web pages and sites. Carey/Vodnik's JAVASCRIPT FOR WEB WARRIORS, Seventh Edition introduces a variety of techniques that focus on what you need to know to begin using JavaScript right away. Step-by-step tasks within each chapter highlight particular techniques essential for building actual JavaScript programs. Guided activities reinforce skills and build in complexity as you progress. You also study debugging techniques. Using accompanying MindTap digital resources, you read and immediately practice with embedded JavaScript coding exercises in an authentic integrated development environment (IDE). Learning objectives, summaries, review and key terms highlight major concepts while reinforcement exercises let you further practice new techniques. After completing your course, you will able to use JavaScript to build professional quality web applications.

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!

Focused on practical matters: this book will not cover Shiny concepts, but practical tools and methodologies to use for production. Based on experience: this book will be a formalization of several years of experience building Shiny applications. Original content: this book will present new methodology and tooling, not just do a review of what already exists.

Over time, basic research tends to lead to specialization - increasingly narrow t- ics are addressed by increasingly focussed communities, publishing in increasingly con ned workshops and conferences, discussing increasingly incremental contri- tions. Already the community of programming languages is split into various s- communities addressing different aspects and paradigms (functional, imperative, relational, and object-oriented). Only a few people manage to maintain a broader view, and even fewer step back in order to gain an understanding about the basic principles, their interrelation, and their impact in a larger context. The pattern calculus is the result of a profound re-examination of a 50-year - velopment. It attempts to provide a unifying approach, bridging the gaps between different programming styles and paradigms according to a new slogan - compu- tion is pattern matching. It is the contribution of this book to systematically and elegantly present and evaluate the power of pattern matching as the guiding paradigm of programming. Patterns are dynamically generated, discovered, passed, applied, and automatically adapted, based on pattern matching and rewriting technology, which allows one to elegantly relate things as disparate as functions and data structures. Of course, pattern matching is not new. It underlies term rewriting - it is, for example, inc- porated in, typically functional, programming languages, like Standard ML - but it has never been pursued as the basis of a unifying framework for programming.

This book will be a key contribution to both Gothic and digital game scholarship as it argues for close proximity between Gothic culture and the videogame medium itself This book explores the many ways Gothic literature and media have informed videogame design The book moves beyond the study of generic influences of horror on digital gaming, and focuses in on the Gothic, a less visceral mode tending towards the unsettling, the uncertain and the uncanny The book will have resonance with scholars and students in both Gothic and digital game scholarship, as well as those interested in Gothic novels, media and popular culture, digital games and interactive fiction

This book investigates the narrativity of some of the most popular survival horror video games and the gender politics implicit in their storyworlds. In a thorough analysis of the genre that draws upon detailed comparisons with the mainstream action genre, Andrei Nae places his analysis firmly within a political and social context. In comparing survival horror games to the dominant game design norms of the action genre, the author differentiates between classical and postclassical survival horror games to show how the former reject the norms of the action genre and deliver a critique of the conservative gender politics of action games, while the latter are more heterogeneous in terms of their game design and, implicitly, gender politics. This book will appeal not only to scholars working in game studies, but also to scholars of horror, gender studies, popular culture, visual arts, genre studies and narratology.

a collection of interviews from renowned author, David L. Craddock

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. Author Bio David L. Craddock writes fiction, nonfiction, and grocery lists. He is the author of over a dozen nonfiction books about video game development and culture, including the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Arcade Perfect: How Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, and Other Coin-Op Classics Invaded the Living Room, and fiction for young adults, including The Dumpster Club and Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles. Find him online @davidlcraddock on Twitter.

This book explores the impact of a video game's degree of realism or fictionality on its linguistic dimensions, investigating the challenges and strategies for translating realia and irrealia, the interface of the real world and the game world where culture-specificity manifests itself. The volume outlines the key elements in the translation of video games, such as textual non-linearity, multitextuality, and playability, and introduces the theoretical framework used to determine a game's respective degree of realism or fictionality. Pettini applies an interdisciplinary approach drawing on video game research and Descriptive Translation Studies to the linguistic and translational analysis of in-game dialogs in English-Italian and English-Spanish language pairs from a corpus of three war video games. This approach allows for an in-depth look at the localization challenges posed by the varying degree of realism and fictionality across video games and the different strategies translators employ in response to these challenges. A final chapter offers a comparative analysis of the three games and subsequently avenues for further research on the role of culture-specificity in game localization. This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in game localization, audiovisual translation studies, and video game research.

Developing a successful game in today's market is a challenging endeavor. Thousands of titles are published yearly, all competing for players' time and attention. Game analytics has emerged in the past few years as one of the main resources for ensuring game quality, maximizing success, understanding player behavior and enhancing the quality of the player experience. It has led to a paradigm shift in the development and design strategies of digital games, bringing data-driven intelligence practices into the fray for informing decision making at operational, tactical and strategic levels. Game Analytics - Maximizing the Value of Player Data is the first book on the topic of game analytics; the process of discovering and communicating patterns in data towards evaluating and driving action, improving performance and solving problems in game development and game research. Written by over 50 international experts from industry and research, it covers a comprehensive range of topics across more than 30 chapters, providing an in-depth discussion of game analytics and its practical applications. Topics covered include monetization strategies, design of telemetry systems, analytics for iterative production, game data mining and big data in game development, spatial analytics, visualization and reporting of analysis, player behavior analysis, quantitative user testing and game user research. This state-of-the-art volume is an essential source of reference for game developers and researchers. Key takeaways include: Thorough introduction to game analytics; covering analytics applied to data on players, processes and performance throughout the game lifecycle. In-depth coverage and advice on setting up analytics systems and developing good practices for integrating analytics in game-development and -management. Contributions by leading researchers and experienced professionals from the industry, including Ubisoft, Sony, EA, Bioware, Square Enix, THQ, Volition, and PlayableGames. Interviews with experienced industry professionals on how they use analytics to create hit games.

Within the field of game design, game balance can best be described as a black art. It is the process by which game designers make a game simultaneously fair for players while providing them just the right amount of difficulty to be both exciting and challenging without making the game entirely predictable. This involves a combination of mathematics, psychology, and occasionally other fields such as economics and game theory. Game Balance offers readers a dynamic look into game design and player theory. Throughout the book, relevant topics on the use of spreadsheet programs will be included in each chapter. This book therefore doubles as a useful reference on Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet programs and their uses for game designers. FEATURES The first and only book to explore game balance as a topic in depth Topics range from intermediate to advanced, while written in an accessible style that demystifies even the most challenging mathematical concepts to the point where a novice student of game design can understand and apply them Contains powerful spreadsheet techniques which have been tested with all major spreadsheet programs and battle-tested with real-world game design tasks Provides short-form exercises at the end of each chapter to allow for practice of the techniques discussed therein along with three long-term projects divided into parts throughout the book that involve their creation Written by award-winning designers with decades of experience in the field Ian Schreiber has been in the industry since 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on eight published game titles, training/simulation games for three Fortune 500 companies, and has advised countless student projects. He is the co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest in-person game jam event in the world. Ian has taught game design and development courses at a variety of colleges and universities since 2006. Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist, and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons, and Def Jam franchises.

Field-Programmable Custom Computing Technology: Architectures, Tools, and Applications brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast-moving area. In seven selected chapters, the book describes the latest advances in architectures, design methods, and applications of field-programmable devices for high-performance reconfigurable systems. The contributors to this work were selected from the leading researchers and practitioners in the field. It will be valuable to anyone working or researching in the field of custom computing technology. It serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging issues being examined today.

Have you ever thought of creating beautiful, blazing-fast native apps for iOS and Android from a single codebase? Have you dreamt of taking your native apps to the web and desktop without it costing a fortune? If so, Pragmatic Flutter: Building Cross-Platform Mobile Apps for Android, iOS, Web & Desktop is the right place to start your journey to developing cross-platform apps. Google's Flutter is the brand-new way for developing beautiful, fluid, and blazing-fast cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, web, and desktops (macOS, Linux, Windows). Google's new Fuchsia OS user interface (UI) is implemented using Flutter as well. Learning to develop mobile apps with Flutter opens the door to multiple devices, form-factors, and platforms using a single codebase. You don't need any prior experience using Dart to follow along in this book; however, it's recommended that readers have some familiarity with writing code using one of the object-oriented programming languages. Your journey starts with learning to structure and organize the Flutter project to develop apps for multiple platforms. Next, you will explore the fundamentals of Flutter widgets. The journey continues with Flutter's layout widgets while also learning to build responsive layouts. You will get an understanding of organizing and applying themes and styles, handling user input, and gestures. Then you will move on to advanced concepts, such as fetching data over the network and integrating and consuming REST API in your app. You will get hands-on experience on design patterns, data modeling, routing, and navigation for multi-screen apps. When you are finished, you will have a solid foundational knowledge of Flutter that will help you move on to building great and successful mobile apps that can be deployed to Android, iOS, web, and desktop (macOS, Linux, Windows) platforms from a single codebase.

In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3D graphics. Despite their visual simplicity, roguelike games captivate thousands of players around the world. From the author of the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games introduces you to the visionaries behind some of the most popular roguelikes of all time and shows how their creations paved the way for the blockbuster videogames of today-and beyond.

In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3D graphics. Despite their visual simplicity, roguelike games captivate thousands of players around the world. From the author of the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games introduces you to the visionaries behind some of the most popular roguelikes of all time and shows how their creations paved the way for the blockbuster videogames of today-and beyond.