Game Programming for Artists provides a foundation for artists and creatives to jumpstart learning to program their own games. It is an accessible and conversational guide focused on three areas: basic programming, understanding game engines, and practical code for commonly employed game systems. The best way to get into games is to make one, and this book will help artists do that!
Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.
Become a Player in the Business of Video Game Art Every year video games generate billions of dollars and some of the most dynamic and engaging artwork today. It’s an ever-growing field that holds great professional opportunity, but you need the right skills and savvy if you want to stake your claim. In How to Become a Video Game Artist, veteran video game designer Sam R. Kennedy provides the inside track on everything you need to forge a career in the world of video game art. Starting with the basics of game creation and a look at the artistic skills necessary to get started, Kennedy spotlights specific, key roles for creators—from concept artists to character animators to marketing artists and beyond. Each chapter features screenshots from popular video games like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and World of Warcraft; interviews with video game art professionals who’ve worked for top gaming companies like BioWare, Blizzard, and Ubisoft; step-by-step examples of actual game art; and detailed breakdowns of the training and portfolio samples you’ll need to make these jobs your own. For anyone who wants to go from gamer to game designer, this book contains all the secrets you’ll need to rise to the top of one of the most exciting industries of our time.
The art of programming mechanics -- Real world mechanics -- Animation mechanics -- Game rules and mechanics -- Character mechanics -- Player mecahnics -- Environmental mechanics -- Mechanics for externl forces.
Summary Manning's bestselling and highly recommended Unity book has been fully revised! Unity in Action, Second Edition teaches you to write and deploy games with the Unity game development platform. You'll master the Unity toolset from the ground up, adding the skills you need to go from application coder to game developer. Foreword by Jesse Schell, author of The Art of Game Design Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Build your next game without sweating the low-level details. The Unity game development platform handles the heavy lifting, so you can focus on game play, graphics, and user experience. With support for C# programming, a huge ecosystem of production-quality prebuilt assets, and a strong dev community, Unity can get your next great game idea off the drawing board and onto the screen! About the Book Unity in Action, Second Edition teaches you to write and deploy games with Unity. As you explore the many interesting examples, you'll get hands-on practice with Unity's intuitive workflow tools and state-of-the-art rendering engine. This practical guide exposes every aspect of the game dev process, from the initial groundwork to creating custom AI scripts and building easy-to-read UIs. And because you asked for it, this totally revised Second Edition includes a new chapter on building 2D platformers with Unity's expanded 2D toolkit. What's Inside Revised for new best practices, updates, and more! 2D and 3D games Characters that run, jump, and bump into things Connect your games to the internet About the Reader You need to know C# or a similar language. No game development knowledge is assumed. About the Author Joe Hocking is a software engineer and Unity expert specializing in interactive media development. Table of Contents PART 1 - First steps Getting to know Unity Building a demo that puts you in 3D space Adding enemies and projectiles to the 3D game Developing graphics for your game PART 2 - Getting comfortable Building a Memory game using Unity's 2D functionality Creating a basic 2D Platformer Putting a GUI onto a game Creating a third-person 3D game: player movement and animation Adding interactive devices and items within the game PART 3 - Strong finish Connecting your game to the internet Playing audio: sound effects and music Putting the parts together into a complete game Deploying your game to players' devices
"This book supports my own 30-year crusade to demonstrate that games are an art form that undeniably rivals traditional arts. It gives detailed explanations of game art techniques and their importance, while also highlighting their dependence on artistic aspects of game design and programming.” — John Romero, co-founder of id Software and CEO of Loot Drop, Inc. "Solarski’s methodology here is to show us the artistic techniques that every artist should know, and then he transposes them to the realm of video games to show how they should be used to create a far more artful gaming experience ... if I were an artist planning to do video game work, I’d have a copy of this on my shelf." — Marc Mason, Comics Waiting Room Video games are not a revolution in art history, but an evolution. Whether the medium is paper or canvas—or a computer screen—the artist’s challenge is to make something without depth seem like a window into a living, breathing world. Video game art is no different. Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is first to examine the connections between classical art and video games, enabling developers to create more expressive and varied emotional experiences in games. Artist game designer Chris Solarski gives readers a comprehensive introduction to basic and advanced drawing and design skills—light, value, color, anatomy, concept development—as well as detailed instruction for using these methods to design complex characters, worlds, and gameplay experiences. Artwork by the likes of Michelangelo, Titian, and Rubens are studied alongside AAA games like BioShock, Journey, the Mario series, and Portal 2, to demonstrate perpetual theories of depth, composition, movement, artistic anatomy, and expression. Although Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is primarily a practical reference for artists and designers working in the video games industry, it’s equally accessible for those interested to learn about gaming’s future, and potential as an artistic medium. Also available as an eBook
Is the art for your video game taking too long to create? Learning to create Pixel Art may be the answer to your development troubles. Uncover the secrets to creating stunning graphics with Pixel Art for Game Developers. The premier how-to book on Pixel Art and Pixel Art software, it focuses on the universal principles of the craft.The book provide
Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity is perfect for those who would like to come to grips with programming Unity. You may be an artist who has learned 3D tools such as 3ds Max, Maya, or Cinema 4D, or you may come from 2D tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator. On the other hand, you may just want to familiarize yourself with programming games and the latest ideas in game production. This book introduces key game production concepts in an artist-friendly way, and rapidly teaches the basic scripting skills you'll need with Unity. It goes on to show how you, as an independent game artist, can create casual interactive adventure games in the style of Telltale's Tales of Monkey Island, while also giving you a firm foundation in game logic and design. The first part of the book explains the logic involved in game interaction, and soon has you creating game assets through simple examples that you can build upon and gradually expand. In the second part, you'll build the foundations of a point-and-click style first-person adventure game—including reusable state management scripts, load/save functionality, a robust inventory system, and a bonus feature: a dynamically configured maze and mini-map. With the help of the provided 2D and 3D content, you'll learn to evaluate and deal with challenges in bite-sized pieces as the project progresses, gaining valuable problem-solving skills in interactive design. By the end of the book, you will be able to actively use the Unity 3D game engine, having learned the necessary workflows to utilize your own assets. You will also have an assortment of reusable scripts and art assets with which to build future games.
The success of Angry Birds, Peggle, and Fruit Ninja has proven that fun and immersive game experiences can be created in two dimensions. Furthermore, 2D graphics enable developers to quickly prototype ideas and mechanics using fewer resources than 3D.2D Graphics Programming for Games provides an in-depth single source on creating 2D graphics that c
