Do you have a favorite game dev book? How about one that sucks eggs? Add your book reports to this forum!



Book Report: The Indie Game Development Survival Guide
by David Michel. Charles River Media
Jetpack Monkey, grade 5.

Has anybody else got a copy and read this fine book?

I just got it last week and couldn't set it down til I read everypage. I'm still re-reading it. TIGDSG goes in depth to explain how to set up means to organize and manage an indy game project, working with volunteer teams like many do here, how to set up fair profit sharing with other team members and to avoid many complications.

Michel touches on a lot of different topics that now seem critical to indie game development-- resource management, creative funding, design doc, working realistically within limitations of limited resources, ways of making your game unique from the mainstream, task scheduling, making and managing regular builds, budgeting, and poor neglected marketing etc..

This excellint boox was sehr enlightening in answering a lot of questions and unknowns that I had dodged and remained in blissful ignorance of for many years. Read it, live it, save a lot of wasted time! Like a lot of CRM books it's pretty good material.

But don't take my word for it..!

I'm a big fan of "C++ For Game Programmers" by Noel Llopis.

It isn't a book for beginners. Don't buy this book until you know at least the basics of C++.
It talks about how and, more importantly, when to use some of the more advanced features of C++ (Inheritance, Templates, etc.).

Nice idea for a thread (and good use of LeVar Burton!). Here are two quickies:



Game Development Business & Legal Guide talks about selecting a business entity, managing intellectual property, contracts, and all of those things you never knew you needed to know about business. It's handiest if you're just starting out, but has a few tidbits for everyone.



Not a business book, but Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists taught me almost everything I never wanted (but needed) to know about beginner shader programming. I'm not sure where to go from there (w/r/t HLSL, but that's a good start.

I haven't had to write a book report in about fifteen years, so I'll stop there before I get nightmares about Huckleberry Finn.

I can also vouch for the indie game development survival guide. Very very good.

Unfort, it's out of print. It's a GREAT book, but it seems that all business game dev books go out of print in no time.

aww out of print

I've also been reading this guy



It's pretty hardcore for the indie developer, but has a lot of information on creating a startup proposal and the many complicated aspects of the business end of it. I learned a lot about the different funding and publication models, and there's some interesting information on how portals and aggregator sites work, with a lot of diagrams to assist. It's very informative! Though for the indie I still the Indie Games Developer's Survival Guide is better.



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THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD

.. FOR ME TO POOP ON

I haven't hated a book ever as much as this one. I don't generally hate books. Books and literature are our friends. But this one brings out such an intense mega hate that I could shoot venemous x-rays from my eyes and burn it up in an explosion of pure loathing.

Many people seem to think Koster is the hot thing, but his book realllly was a disappointment. It might just be that I couldn't look past the drawings-- there's text on the left pages, and the right page is always a drawing by koster-- that looks like it was drawn by a kid-- and he goes off on this weird patronizing tangents about pascal's wager, improvisational jazz and personal stories. that sounds like it could be a good thing, but in this case, it's not-- raph talks down to the reader..

Most importantly, there's really not much theory about fun in there. Okay, he muses around a little bit, thinks about fun some, but it goes all over the place.. having read it, I don't feel like I learned anything bringing me closer to a grasp of what makes a game fun. The title is very misleading..

One of raph's "drawings". Literally half of the book contains these sketches, they're all terribly rendered and many of them feel like filler, and whenever there's women, they're putting down men or boys for playing games.


Enlightened view of the ladies. Learn a new word!
Arrows assist in comprehension. Rendered stunningly in pencil.


Raph's stunning cartoons make up half of the book!

I paid nearly 20 EUR for this. I will never forgive amazon for what they did to me, selling this book to me. Apparently i'm in the minority, though, because everyone else is raving about it. Seriously, everyone loves this thing except me. The most fun I theorize having with this book would be cutting out the pages and making origami. Or back-alley Tijuana style gambling fun: cut out the pages, lay them down on the floor of a box with a chicken in it, and bet on which page the chicken will pooop on.

If I would select a book about game development, I would select

Game Design. Secrets of the Sages Guide
by Marc Saltzman


german title: Game Design. Die Geheimnisse der Profis. Erfahrungen der besten Designer der Welt

I'm proud to have the first edition from 1999 with this beautiful cover, it really looks like a secret book.. the covers of the second edition you can buy at amazon looks like crap, so I made a shot with my cam to provide this picture

Its about: everything. It covers

• genres and perspectives
• genre guides (action, strategy, adventures, rpgs, sports, puzzles, sim)
• conception: character creation, storyboards, design documents
• puzzle design
• leveldesign
• missiondesign
• programming
• artificial intelligence
• game art: graphics
• animation
• UI and controls
• sound engineering
• music in games and subliminal perception
• testing, QA
• marketing and public relations
• website design in the meaning of games
• technical support and customer service
• own production and shareware
• ways to get into the game-dev business
• agents and headhunters
• design schools
• website list
• events, organisations and awards

It all bases upon interviews and columns, star designers wrote for saltzman. You will find really great insight views by articles from Al Lowe, Shigeru Miyamoto, David Perry, John Romero, Marc Aubanel, Joshua Staub, Sid Meier and many many more professionals in the industry. There are articles about the AI in AoE II, how they balanced the AI in FIFA soccer, how they designed the level maps in Quake1,2,3:Arena, HalfLife, Oddworld and HexenII, how they designed the missions in Star Craft, how valve did the sound engineering in Half Life and so on.

This is a very underestimated book. Most reviewers on amazon are disappointed, just because it doesnt provide a technical insight in DX or OpenGL, that there are not much listing how to do stuff and so on - this is exactly the reason why I hate books which say they deal with game design or "secrets" and all I get is some sourcecode and no real insight how to make games.
I think this is a great book, I read it several times and even if its has been instanced first in 1999, its up-to-date, because it talks about principles and secrets which will never be outdated. Its like a big "look behind the scenes".. or like drinking some beer with the most interesting people in the industry which made the most interesting games ever. Marc Saltzman has written a very precisely and extremely informative book, that every insider, gamer or potential game developer should read. I cannot say anything negative about this, except that the games they are dealing with, could not appeal to you, because at that time Peter Molineux was in development on Black and white 1. I guess, this isnt a reason why not to buy a book.

I dont know the current edition, maybe he added some newer articles. Get it for 20 Euro or whatever at amazon.. I promise: you will be satisfied afterwards.

[EDIT]
I agree with Caitlyn, I buyed "a theory of fun" as well and I didnt liked it as well. It was recommended by gamasutra I think, so, I buyed it. Its very small and thin and the additional comics are unnecessary. I didnt got much interesting things out of this.

"Game Design. Secrets of the Sages Guide" sounds really interesting.
Unfortunatly its not available at amazon at the moment.
Guess I gonna look for it in some other stores.
Thanks for the hints HeelX and all the others too!

@heelX: GameProgrammingStarterKit 3.0 owner?

Hi!

I have also this book!I have purchased it a years ago! with CD rom, and a copy of a small version of the old 3dgs A3! I must say this book is a real treasure!
with this book I have discovered 3dgs.


slava