Take a look at our Game Development books. Shulph carries a great selection of Game Development books, and we are always adding more.
Get to grips with programming techniques and game development using C++ libraries and Visual Studio 2019 Key Features Learn game development and C++ with a fun, example-driven approach Build clones of popular games such as Timberman, Zombie Survival Shooter, a co-op puzzle platformer, and Space Invaders Discover tips to expand your finished games by thinking critically, technically, and creatively Book Description The second edition of Beginning C++ Game Programming is updated and improved to include the latest features of Visual Studio 2019, SFML, and modern C++ programming techniques. With this book, you'll get a fun introduction to game programming by building five fully playable games of increasing complexity. You'll learn to build clones of popular games such as Timberman, Pong, a Zombie survival shooter, a coop puzzle platformer and Space Invaders. The book starts by covering the basics of programming. You'll study key C++ topics, such as object-oriented programming (OOP) and C++ pointers, and get acquainted with the Standard Template Library (STL). The book helps you learn about collision detection techniques and game physics by building a Pong game. As you build games, you'll also learn exciting game programming concepts such as particle effects, directional sound (spatialization), OpenGL programmable shaders, spawning objects, and much more. Finally, you'll explore game design patterns to enhance your C++ game programming skills. By the end of the book, you'll have gained the knowledge you need to build your own games with exciting features from scratch What you will learn Set up your game development project in Visual Studio 2019 and explore C++ libraries such as SFML Explore C++ OOP by building a Pong game Understand core game concepts such as game animation, game physics, collision detection, scorekeeping, and game sound Use classes, inheritance, and references to spawn and control thousands of enemies and shoot rapid-fire machine guns Add advanced features to your game using pointers, references, and the STL Scale and reuse your game code by learning modern game programming design patterns Who this book is for This book is perfect for you if you have no C++ programming knowledge, you need a beginner-level refresher course, or you want to learn how to build games or just use games as an engaging way to learn C++. Whether you aspire to publish a game (perhaps on Steam) or just want to impress friends with your creations, you'll find this book useful.
Develop high-quality interactive games with the power of Unreal Engine's visual scripting language and Blueprints framework Key Features Design a fully functional game in UE4 without writing a single line of code Implement visual scripting to develop gameplay mechanics, UI, visual effects, VR and artificial intelligence Deploy your game on multiple platforms and share it with the world Book Description Blueprints is the visual scripting system in Unreal Engine that enables programmers to create baseline systems and can be extended by designers. This book helps you explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor and guides you through using Variables, Macros, and Functions. You'll also learn about object-oriented programming (OOP) and discover the Gameplay Framework. In addition to this, you'll learn how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters will focus on building a fully functional game using a step-by-step approach. You'll start with a basic first-person shooter (FPS) template, and each chapter will build on the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You'll then progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to more complex systems, such as user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. The skills you will develop using Blueprints can also be employed in other gaming genres. In the concluding chapters, the book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations. Finally, you'll learn how to build a basic VR game. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build a fully functional game and will have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience. What you will learn Understand programming concepts in Blueprints Create prototypes and iterate new game mechanics rapidly Build user interface elements and interactive menus Use advanced Blueprint nodes to manage the complexity of a game Explore all the features of the Blueprint editor, such as the Components tab, Viewport, and Event Graph Get to grips with object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts and explore the Gameplay Framework Learn Virtual Reality development with UE Blueprint Who this book is for This book is for anyone who is interested in developing games or applications with UE4. Although basic knowledge of Windows OS is required, experience in programming or UE4 is not necessary.
Explore modern game programming and rendering techniques to build games using C++ programming language and its popular libraries Key Features Learn how you can build basic 2D and complex 3D games with C++ Understand shadows, texturing, lighting, and rendering in 3D game development using OpenGL Uncover modern graphics programming techniques and GPU compute methods using the Vulkan API Book Description Although numerous languages are currently being used to develop games, C++ remains the standard for fabricating expert libraries and tool chains for game development. This book introduces you to the world of game development with C++. C++ Game Development By Example starts by touching upon the basic concepts of math, programming, and computer graphics and creating a simple side-scrolling action 2D game. You'll build a solid foundation by studying basic game concepts such as creating game loops, rendering 2D game scenes using SFML, 2D sprite creation and animation, and collision detection. The book will help you advance to creating a 3D physics puzzle game using modern OpenGL and the Bullet physics engine. You'll understand the graphics pipeline, which entails creating 3D objects using vertex and index buffers and rendering them to the scene using vertex and fragment shaders. Finally, you'll create a basic project using the Vulkan library that'll help you get to grips with creating swap chains, image views, render passes, and frame buffers for building high-performance graphics in your games. By the end of this book, you'll be ready with 3 compelling projects created with SFML, the Vulkan API, and OpenGL, and you'll be able take your game and graphics programming skills to the next level. What you will learn Understand shaders and how to write a basic vertex and fragment shader Build a Visual Studio project and add SFML to it Discover how to create sprite animations and a game character class Add sound effects and background music to your game Grasp how to integrate Vulkan into Visual Studio Create shaders and convert them to the SPIR-V binary format Who this book is for If you're a developer keen to learn game development with C++ or get up to date with game development, this book is for you. Some knowledge of C++ programming is assumed.
Leverage the power of the Unity 2018 game engine to create games with brilliant gameplay and high replayability. Key Features Develop different types of games from scratch with Unity 2018 Discover the secrets of creating AAA quality shaders without writing long algorithms Script intelligent game characters and agents using Artificial Intelligence techniques and algorithms Book Description Through this Learning Path, you'll learn how to leverage the features of Unity and create amazing games, ranging from action shooters and mind-bending puzzle games to adventure and Virtual Reality(VR) games. If you have no prior experience of using Unity, you can still benefit from this Learning Path, which easily explains the complete working of the Unity toolset. You'll start by learning how to create compelling shaders using Unity and understanding everything you need to know about vectors. This includes useful inputs on how lighting is constructed with vectors and how textures are used to create complex effects without the need for advanced math. In the succeeding chapters, you'll also be able to use popular AI techniques, such as A* and A*mbush to develop intelligent pathfinding agents for your games. The book will also guide you through different algorithms for creating decision-making agents that go beyond simple behaviors and movement. By the end of this Learning Path, you will have developed all the basic skills to create highly engaging and replayable games. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: Unity 2018 By Example - Second Edition by Alan Thorn Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Third Edition by John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi Unity 2018 Artificial Intelligence Cookbook - Second Edition by Jorge Palacios What you will learn Understand concepts such as game objects, components, and scenes Create functional games with C# scripting Write shaders from scratch in ShaderLab and HLSL/Cg Develop intelligent pathfinding agents with A and Ambush Work with terrains and world-creation tools Simulate senses for agents to make decisions based on the environment Implement waypoints by creating a manual selector Enhance games with volumetric explosions, special effects, and visuals Who this book is for If you are a game developer who wants to learn tools that can transform your gameplay, this beginner-level Learning Path is ideal for you. Having basic knowledge of C# will help you grasp the concepts explained in the book easily.
Learn to build intelligent and responsive Non-Player Characters for your games with Unreal Engine Game AI. Key Features Understand the built-in AI systems in Unreal Engine for building intelligent games Leverage the power of Unreal Engine 4 programming to create game AI that focuses on motion, animation, and tactics Learn to profile, visualize, and debug your Game AI for checking logic and optimizing performance Book Description Learning how to apply artificial intelligence ( AI ) is crucial and can take the fun factor to the next level, whether you're developing a traditional, educational, or any other kind of game. If you want to use AI to extend the life of your games and make them challenging and more interesting, this book is for you. The book starts by breaking down AI into simple concepts to get a fundamental understanding of it. Using a variety of examples, you will work through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts and features related to game AI in UE4. You will learn to work through the built-in AI framework in order to build believable characters for every game genre (including RPG, Strategic, Platform, FPS, Simulation, Arcade, and Educational). You will learn to configure the Navigation, Environmental Querying, and Perception systems for your AI agents and couple these with Behavior Trees, all accompanied with practical examples. You will also explore how the engine handles dynamic crowds. In the concluding chapters, you will learn how to profile, visualize, and debug your AI systems to correct the AI logic and increase performance. By the end of the book, your AI knowledge of the built-in AI system in Unreal will be deep and comprehensive, allowing you to build powerful AI agents within your projects. What you will learn Get an in-depth knowledge about all the AI Systems within Unreal Engine Create complex AIs, understanding the art of designing and developing Behavior Tree Learn how to perform Environmental Queries (EQS) Master the Navigation, Perception, and Crowd Systems Profile and Visualize the AI Systems with powerful debugging tools Extend every AI and Debug system with custom nodes and functions Who this book is for Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine is for you if you are a game developer with a bit experience in Unreal Engine, and now want to understand and implement believable game AI within Unreal Engine. The book will be both in Blueprint and C++, allowing people from every background to enjoy the book. Whether you're looking to build your first game or expand your knowledge to the edge as a Game AI Programmer, you will find plenty of exciting information and examples of game AI in terms of concepts and implementation, including how to extend some of these systems.
Write maintainable, fault-tolerant, and cleaner game codes by understanding the standard development patterns and battle-tested practices. Key Features Gain expertise in Industry Standard design patterns. Get your hands on popular patterns such as Observer, Singleton, State, and Factory. Leverage the power of C# coding to create solid architectures for your game projects. Book Description Traditional building blocks of a robust architecture, such as design patterns, cannot be applied in Unity without being adapted to the Engine's unique way of doing things. We will review design patterns that are currently used by professional game programmers in indie, mobile, and AAA studios. We will also examine the infamous anti-patterns. The book begins by explaining Unity Engine's architecture and shows you how to explore it for designing games. This will help readers get familiar with the pillars of Unity's Engine architecture and assist them in making better technical decisions. We will then learn about the game industry's most popular software design patterns. Right from the initial concept up to its implementation, you'll learn every detail in the context of genuine industry use cases that game programmers often deal with in the field. This approach will be a onestop reference point and will give you a complete picture of tried and tested software development patterns with Unity using C#. We will review classic patterns such as Singleton; modern patterns such as Event Bus; and even rare patterns such as the Spatial Partition. The book concludes by covering the dark side of design patterns, by exposing recognizable patterns that tend to creep out in code bases and have unexpected negative side-effects. What you will learn Discover the core architectural pillars of the Unity game engine. Learn about software design patterns while building gameplay systems. Acquire the skills to recognize anti-patterns and how to avoid their adverse effect in your codebase. Enrich your design vocabulary so you can better articulate your ideas on how to better your game's architecture. Gain some mastery over Unity's API by writing well-designed code. Get some game industry insider tips and tricks that will help you in your career. Who this book is for The ideal target audience for this book is game developers who want to get their hands on industry-standard, software development patterns and techniques to create engaging and exciting games with Unity 2018. Basic Unity development knowledge is necessary to make the most out of this book. Prior experience with C# will also be helpful
Make your WebAssembly journey fun while making a game with it Key Features Create a WebAssembly game that implements sprites, animations, physics, particle systems, and other game development fundamentals Get to grips with advanced game mechanics in WebAssembly Learn to use WebAssembly and WebGL to render to the HTML5 canvas element Book Description Within the next few years, WebAssembly will change the web as we know it. It promises a world where you can write an application for the web in any language, and compile it for native platforms as well as the web. This book is designed to introduce web developers and game developers to the world of WebAssembly by walking through the development of a retro arcade game. You will learn how to build a WebAssembly application using C++, Emscripten, JavaScript, WebGL, SDL, and HTML5. This book covers a lot of ground in both game development and web application development. When creating a game or application that targets WebAssembly, developers need to learn a plethora of skills and tools. This book is a sample platter of those tools and skills. It covers topics including Emscripten, C/C++, WebGL, OpenGL, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS. The reader will also learn basic techniques for game development, including 2D sprite animation, particle systems, 2D camera design, sound effects, 2D game physics, user interface design, shaders, debugging, and optimization. By the end of the book, you will be able to create simple web games and web applications targeting WebAssembly. What you will learn Build web applications with near-native performance using WebAssembly Become familiar with how web applications can be used to create games using HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, and SDL Become well versed with game development concepts such as sprites, animation, particle systems, AI, physics, camera design, sound effects, and shaders Deploy C/C++ applications to the browser using WebAssembly and Emscripten Understand how Emscripten HTML shell templates, JavaScript glue code, and a WebAssembly module interact Debug and performance tune your WebAssembly application Who this book is for Web developers and game developers interested in creating applications for the web using WebAssembly. Game developers interested in deploying their games to the web Web developers interested in creating applications that are potentially orders of magnitude faster than their existing JavaScript web apps C/C++ developers interested in using their existing skills to deploy applications to the web
Develop your own games with Unity 2D/3D Game Kit and use it for your presentations, kids education, level design, game design, proofs of concept, or even just for fun! Key Features Build your first ever video game using Unity 2D/3D Game kit Learn how to create game levels, adding props, giving behaviours to objects and working on gameplay Step by step instructions on creating your own AI enemy and interacting with it Book Description Hands-On Game Development without Coding is the first Visual Scripting book in the market. It was tailor made for a non programing audience who are wondering how a videogame is made. After reading this book you will be able to develop your own 2d and 3d videogames and use it on your presentations, to speed up your level design deliveries, test your game design ideas, work on your proofs of concept, or even doing it just for fun. The best thing about Hands-On Game Development without Coding is that you don't need any previous knowledge to read and understand the process of creating a videogame. It is our main focus to provide you with the opportunity to create a videogame as easy and fast as possible. Once you go through the book, you will be able to create player input interaction, levels, object behaviours, enemy AI, creating your own UI and finally giving life to your game by building it. It's Alive! What you will learn Understanding the Interface and kit flow. Comprehend the virtual space and its rules. Learning the behaviours and roles each component must have in order to make a videogame. Learn about videogame development Creating a videogame without the need of learning any programming language Create your own gameplay HUD to display player and Enemy information Who this book is for This book is for anyone who is interested in becoming a game developer but do not posses any coding experience or programming skills. All you need is a computer and basic software interface knowledge.
Explore reinforcement learning (RL) techniques to build cutting-edge games using Python libraries such as PyTorch, OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow Key Features Get to grips with the different reinforcement and DRL algorithms for game development Learn how to implement components such as artificial agents, map and level generation, and audio generation Gain insights into cutting-edge RL research and understand how it is similar to artificial general research Book Description With the increased presence of AI in the gaming industry, developers are challenged to create highly responsive and adaptive games by integrating artificial intelligence into their projects. This book is your guide to learning how various reinforcement learning techniques and algorithms play an important role in game development with Python. Starting with the basics, this book will help you build a strong foundation in reinforcement learning for game development. Each chapter will assist you in implementing different reinforcement learning techniques, such as Markov decision processes (MDPs), Q-learning, actor-critic methods, SARSA, and deterministic policy gradient algorithms, to build logical self-learning agents. Learning these techniques will enhance your game development skills and add a variety of features to improve your game agent's productivity. As you advance, you'll understand how deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques can be used to devise strategies to help agents learn from their actions and build engaging games. By the end of this book, you'll be ready to apply reinforcement learning techniques to build a variety of projects and contribute to open source applications. What you will learn Understand how deep learning can be integrated into an RL agent Explore basic to advanced algorithms commonly used in game development Build agents that can learn and solve problems in all types of environments Train a Deep Q-Network (DQN) agent to solve the CartPole balancing problem Develop game AI agents by understanding the mechanism behind complex AI Integrate all the concepts learned into new projects or gaming agents Who this book is for If you're a game developer looking to implement AI techniques to build next-generation games from scratch, this book is for you. Machine learning and deep learning practitioners, and RL researchers who want to understand how to use self-learning agents in the game domain will also find this book useful. Knowledge of game development and Python programming experience are required.
Get ready for a fun-filled experience of learning Java by developing games for the Android platform Key Features Learn Java, Android, and object-oriented programming from scratch Build games including Sub Hunter, Retro Pong, Bullet Hell, Classic Snake, and a 2D Scrolling Shooter Create and design your own games, such as an open-world platform game Book Description Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems presently. It uses the most popular programming language, Java, as the primary language for building apps of all types. However, this book is unlike other Android books in that it doesn't assume that you already have Java proficiency. This new and expanded second edition of Learning Java by Building Android Games shows you how to start building Android games from scratch. The difficulty level will grow steadily as you explore key Java topics, such as variables, loops, methods, object oriented programming, and design patterns, including code and examples that are written for Java 9 and Android P. At each stage, you will put what you've learned into practice by developing a game. You will build games such as Minesweeper, Retro Pong, Bullet Hell, and Classic Snake and Scrolling Shooter games. In the later chapters, you will create a time-trial, open-world platform game. By the end of the book, you will not only have grasped Java and Android but will also have developed six cool games for the Android platform. What you will learn Set up a game development environment in Android Studio Implement screen locking, screen rotation, pixel graphics, and play sound effects Respond to a player's touch, and program intelligent enemies who challenge the player in different ways Learn game development concepts, such as collision detection, animating sprite sheets, simple tracking and following, AI, parallax backgrounds, and particle explosions Animate objects at 60 frames per second (FPS) and manage multiple independent objects using Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Understand the essentials of game programming, such as design patterns, object-oriented programming, Singleton, strategy, and entity-component patterns Learn how to use the Android API, including Activity lifecycle, detecting version number, SoundPool API, Paint, Canvas, and Bitmap classes Build a side-scrolling shooter and an open world 2D platformer using advanced OOP concepts and programming patterns Who this book is for Learning Java by Building Android Games is for you if you are completely new to Java, Android, or game programming and want to make Android games. This book also acts as a refresher for those who already have experience of using Java on Android or any other platform without game development experience.