Creating Games offers a comprehensive overview of the technology, content, and mechanics of game design. It emphasizes the broad view of a games team and teaches you enough about your teammates' areas so that you can work effectively with them. The authors have included many worksheets and exercises to help get your small indie team off the ground. Special features: Exercises at the end of each chapter combine comprehension tests with problems that help the reader interact with the material Worksheet exercises provide creative activities to help project teams generate new ideas and then structure them in a modified version of the format of a game industry design document Pointers to the best resources for digging deeper into each specialized area of game development Website with worksheets, figures from the book, and teacher materials including study guides, lecture presentations, syllabi, supplemental exercises, and assessment materials

Explore Level Design through the Lens of Architectural and Spatial Experience Theory Written by a game developer and professor trained in architecture, An Architectural Approach to Level Design is one of the first books to integrate architectural and spatial design theory with the field of level design. It explores the principles of level design through the context and history of architecture, providing information useful to both academics and game development professionals. Understand Spatial Design Principles for Game Levels in 2D, 3D, and Multiplayer Applications The book presents architectural techniques and theories for level designers to use in their own work. The author connects architecture and level design in different ways that address the practical elements of how designers construct space and the experiential elements of how and why humans interact with this space. Throughout the text, readers learn skills for spatial layout, evoking emotion through gamespaces, and creating better levels through architectural theory. Create Meaningful User Experiences in Your Games Bringing together topics in game design and architecture, this book helps designers create better spaces for their games. Software independent, the book discusses tools and techniques that designers can use in crafting their interactive worlds.

Innovation Through Understandingsm The toughest part of innovation? Accurately predicting what customers want, need, and will pay for. Even if you ask them, they often can’t explain what they want. Now, there’s a breakthrough solution: Innovation Games. Drawing on his software product strategy and product management consulting experience, Luke Hohmann has created twelve games that help you uncover your customers’ true, hidden needs and desires. You’ll learn what each game will accomplish, why it works, and how to play it with customers. Then, Hohmann shows how to integrate the results into your product development processes, helping you focus your efforts, reduce your costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver the right solutions, right from the start. Learn how your customers define success Discover what customers don’t like about your offerings Uncover unspoken needs and breakthrough opportunities Understand where your offerings fit into your customers’ operations Clarify exactly how and when customers will use your product or service Deliver the right new features, and make better strategy decisions Increase empathy for the customers’ experience within your organization Improve the effectiveness of the sales and service organizations Identify your most effective marketing messages and sellable features Innovation Games will be indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers, and senior business executives alike.

Do you love video games? Ever wondered if you could create one of your own, with all the bells and whistles? It's not as complicated as you'd think, and you don't need to be a math whiz or a programming genius to do it. In fact, everything you need to create your first game, "Invasion of the Slugwroths," is included in this book and CD-ROM. Author David Conger starts at square one, introducing the tools of the trade and all the basic concepts for getting started programming with C++, the language that powers most current commercial games. Plus, he's put a wealth of top-notch (and free) tools on the CD-ROM, including the Dev-C++ compiler, linker, and debugger--and his own LlamaWorks2D game engine. Step-by-step instructions and ample illustrations take you through game program structure, integrating sound and music into games, floating-point math, C++ arrays, and much more. Using the sample programs and the source code to run them, you can follow along as you learn. Bio: David Conger has been programming professionally for over 23 years. Along with countless custom business applications, he has written several PC and online games. Conger also worked on graphics firmware for military aircraft, and taught computer science at the university level for four years. Conger has written numerous books on C, C++, and other computer-related topics. He lives in western Washington State and has also published a collection of Indian folk tales.

There are nine complete games with increasing complexity built in this book. The process of game building is well-illustrated with screenshots and explained code. This book is aimed at readers with an understanding of Objective-C and some familiarity with the cocos2d for iPhone 2.0 framework.

Unity brings you ever closer to the "author once, deploy anywhere" dream. With its multiplatform capabilities, you can target desktop, web, mobile devices, and consoles using a single development engine. Little wonder that Unity has quickly become the #1 game engine out there. Mastering Unity is absolutely essential in an increasingly competitive games market where agility is expected, yet until now practical tutorials were nearly impossible to find. Creating Games with Unity and Maya gives you with an end-to-end solution for Unity game development with Maya. Written by a twelve-year veteran of the 3D animation and games industry and professor of 3D animation, this book takes you step-by-step through the process of developing an entire game from scratch-including coding, art, production, and deployment. This accessible guide provides a "non-programmer" entry point to the world of game creation. Aspiring developers with little or no coding experience will learn character development in Maya, scripts, GUI interface, and first- and third-person interactions.

This tutorial-based book allows readers to create a first-person game from start to finish using industry-standard (and free to student) tools of Unity, Substance Painter, and Maya. The first half of the book lays out the basics of using Maya and Substance Painter to create game-ready assets. This includes polygonal modeling, UV layout, and custom texture painting. The book then covers rigging and animation solutions to create assets to be placed in the game, including animated first-person assets and motion-captured NPC animations. Finally, readers can put it all together and build interactivity that allows the player to create a finished game using the assets built and animated earlier in the book. • Written by industry professionals with real-world experience in building assets and games • Build a complete game from start to finish • Learn what the pros use: construct all assets using the tools used at game studios across the world • All software used are free to students • When complete, students will have a playable version of an FPS game Jingtian Li is a graduate of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts and New York’s School of Visual Arts, where he earned an MFA in Computer Art. He currently is an Assistant Professor of 3D Animation & Game Design at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Adam Watkins is a 20-year veteran of 3D education. He holds an MFA in 3D Animation and a BFA in Theatre Arts from Utah State University. He currently is the Coordinator and Professor of the 3D Animation & Game Department at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Kassandra Arevalo is an instructor of 3D Animation & Game Design at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. She previously worked as an animator at Immersed Games. Matt Tovar is an industry veteran animator. He has worked at Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and Sony Interactive on such games as The Last of Us, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and most recently Marvel’s Avengers with Crystal Dynamics. He is an Assistant Professor of 3D Animation at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.