Well, the wait is finally over. Game Programming Algorithms and Techniques is now shipping!
You can buy it directly from Pearson here.
EDIT: Now shipping from Amazon, too.
Now Shipping!
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Category Archives: Book
Extended Preview Now Available!
The extended preview of the book (TOC, Preface, Chapter 1, and Index) is now available on Pearson’s site.
Be sure to check it out!
Book Update
You may have wondered how things were going with the book. Currently, I’m in my final review pass. In this phase, I review the fully typeset PDFs for every chapter. In addition to this, I review the almost final artwork (that is far better than the art I drew myself!).
Once my notes all go back to the production team, they will incorporate them before doing a test print to make sure everything turned out properly. If it did, it’ll be off to the presses and out just before the new year.
I’m also busy developing the supplemental materials that will be available on Pearon’s course portal for the book. This includes PowerPoint slides as well as a sample course outline.
Final Revisions Complete!
Well, it was a long journey but I’ve finished the final revisions of my book. It’s now off on the production process, and it’ll be out by the end of the year!
Draft Complete
Last week, I finished the first draft of my manuscript. Now I begin the much shorter revisions phase where I’ll be returning to teach chapter and making any changes based on the technical reviews. Many of the chapters will only have minor changes here or there, but there are a few where I will be doing some larger overhauls. However, the revision process time period will be much shorter than the initial writing period.
Source Code for Ship Attack! Posted
The source code for the second sample game from the book, Ship Attack! is now up. It’s a 2D side-scroller for iOS devices that’s written in Objective-C using cocos2d. As with the source code for the tower defense game, there is a chapter in the book that provides insight into the code provided.
Source Code for __Defense Posted!
I’ve posted the source code for __Defense, a futuristic tower defense game written in C# for XNA/MonoGame. The code for this game is covered in Chapter 14 of the book, but I decided to post it in advance so people can check it out!
Draft Now Available on Safari + Pre-Order on Amazon!
An early draft of my book is now available here, through the Safari “Rough Cuts” program.
Rough Cuts basically gives Safari users access to the draft manuscript as it’s being written. This draft is literally the same one that goes to the technical reviewers, which means the text might be rough around the edges, and there might be some errors. But the great thing about Rough Cuts is it allows any Safari user to become involved with the review process.
You can also now pre-order the book on Amazon!
My Writing Process
I thought that people might be interested in learning a little bit about what happens behind the scenes while writing a technical book. I finished the text on my physics chapter yesterday, so the process is still fresh on my mind.
I already have a rough outline of what are all the chapters I want to cover — I had to develop this months ago, before the book deal was signed. So I know what chapters will be where, and how I want them to tie in together. The order of topics is fairly similar to how I’ve constructed it for ITP 380 (Video Game Programming), which I’ve taught for 10 consecutive semesters at this point. In any event in this instance, I knew I was writing a chapter on physics.