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Books for Game Developers

mrelusive.com

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Re: Books for Game Developers

#41

Post by i_c_b »

xeonmc wrote: post #35
i_c_b wrote: post #14

Wow. This post gave me emotional whiplash. I opened the collection of links, which is quite good if a bit old. But then I had a subconscious mental itch, and thought, wait... where had I heard the name mrelusive before? That sounds _really_ familiar. And then I remembered - oh, right, mrelusive, JP-what's-his-name. I've read a huge amount of his code. When I was working on Quake4 as a game programmer and technical de…

Did you know where the idea of crouch sliding came from?

I ... hmm. My memory is really, really dusty on that.

I remember I had a handful of conversations with Bryan Dube during development about Q4 deathmatch. He was a super sharp game programmer / technical designer who had done a ton of the work on Soldier of Fortune 2 deathmatch previously, and had worked on the Urban Terror mod for Quake 3 before that. And he was much more focused on multiplayer than I was.

We talked a lot about weapons (as I had done most of the code side work on weapons in Soldier of Fortune), but I'm now remembering him being really keen at the time on adding more high skill play to Q4 deathmatch. We all loved rocket jumping, and I remember him really wanting to add other kinds of high skill movement.

So that much I definitely remember. More than that and my memory is kind of fuzzy. To be honest, lots of team members loved deathmatch and Quake, and all of us were of course talking about gameplay possibilities all the time, so it's possible the idea originated somewhere else on the team.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#42

Post by i_c_b »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #36
i_c_b wrote: post #14

Wow. This post gave me emotional whiplash. I opened the collection of links, which is quite good if a bit old. But then I had a subconscious mental itch, and thought, wait... where had I heard the name mrelusive before? That sounds _really_ familiar. And then I remembered - oh, right, mrelusive, JP-what's-his-name. I've read a huge amount of his code. When I was working on Quake4 as a game programmer and technical de…

Really enjoyed this comment--thanks for sharing. Game development really sounds like such a different beast from standard line-of-business programming. Always enjoy hearing stories about it and reading books about it (Masters of Doom comes to mind).

Thanks! I've been thinking a lot recently about maybe getting some of my own stories down. The late 90's were a really fascinating time to be in games.

And I loved Masters of Doom, too, although it was weird reading it and occasionally seeing people I knew show up in it, briefly.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#43

Post by BigHatLogan »

i_c_b wrote: post #42
BigHatLogan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really enjoyed this comment--thanks for sharing. Game development really sounds like such a different beast from standard line-of-business programming. Always enjoy hearing stories about it and reading books about it (Masters of Doom comes to mind).

Thanks! I've been thinking a lot recently about maybe getting some of my own stories down. The late 90's were a really fascinating time to be in games. And I loved Masters of Doom, too, although it was weird reading it and occasionally seeing people I knew show up in it, briefly.

You should write them down. I would love to read them, and I'm positive many others would, too. The 90s gaming scene is incredibly fascinating to read about, especially as it started to shift from the cowboy ethic to the corporate ethic (both have their pros and cons). I think I speak for a lot of us when I say we'd love to hear what you have to share.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#44

Post by i_c_b »

wk_end wrote: post #40
i_c_b wrote: post #14

Wow. This post gave me emotional whiplash. I opened the collection of links, which is quite good if a bit old. But then I had a subconscious mental itch, and thought, wait... where had I heard the name mrelusive before? That sounds _really_ familiar. And then I remembered - oh, right, mrelusive, JP-what's-his-name. I've read a huge amount of his code. When I was working on Quake4 as a game programmer and technical de…

Just wanna say that I loved Soldier of Fortune. Lots of FPSs around that time felt really like and plastic-y. SoF was one of the few that made shooting a gun feel satisfying and visceral (and I’m not even talking about the gore, I played the censored version).

Thanks! That's really cool to hear, 20+ years later.

I actually did all the effects work on the weapons (muzzleflashes, smoke, explosions, bullet holes and surface sprays, and all the extensions to Quake2's particle systems to make that content possible) and all the single player weapons system game balancing, as a matter of fact. Both the sound design and animation / modelling on the weapons went through a number of iterations to get them really over-the-top and delightfully powerful / ridiculous, too - I was lucky to work closely with a great sound designer and a really talented animator on that.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#45

Post by lobf »

andersa wrote: post #26
dragontamer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quaternions Instead of representing a rotation by roll, pitch, and yaw... you represent rotations by a 4x4 matrix. As this is a 3-dimension problem being represented in a 4-dimensional matrix, you have some weirdness to the math (IE: you need an additional constraint) but otherwise things get easier. --------- "Why is it easier?" Because roll / pitch / yaw systems have Gimbal Lock. That's... pretty much all you nee…

A quaternion is not a 4x4 transformation matrix. In game development context, it usually refers to a structure consisting of 4 floats and is always assumed to be normalized. Maybe reading this comment helps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37527928#37529562

I love that the replies are kind of reinforcing OPs point that nobody seems to understand

Re: Books for Game Developers

#46

Post by Electrified »

It took awhile, but I finally found all of the books in the 'Game Development Essentials' series by Jeannie Novak (https://www.jeannie.com/gde)

• Game Development Essentials: An Introduction (3rd Edition) • Game Interface Design (2nd Edition • Mobile Game Development • Game Industry Career Guide • Game QA & Testing • Game Audio Development • Game Level Design • Online Game Development • Gameplay Mechanics • Game Simulation Development • Game Artificial Intelligence • Game Project Management • Game Story & Character Development

Re: Books for Game Developers

#47

Post by anttiharju »

jaaron wrote: post #18
meheleventyone wrote: post #2

Missing any Game Design books so my picks: Game Feel - Steve Swink - 2008 The Art of Game Design a Deck of Lenses - Jesse Schell - 2014 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - Matthew Frederick - 2007 Writing for Games: Theory & Practice - Hannah Nicklin - 2022 Procedural Generation in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2017 Procedural Storytelling in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2019 A Theory of…

Just want to add a +1 for these, particularly Art of Game Design, A Theory of Fun, and the Tanya Short/Tarn Adams books. To add to your list: I have a copy of Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences that I recently started reading.

Also want to add +1 for A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster. It's a very lightweight read with pictures, yet still changed the way I think about what is fun, and learning in general.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#48

Post by keyle »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #34
tester457 wrote: post #3

Good selection of older books. I didn't see [1] Game Programming Patterns. [1]: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

Game Programming Patterns was so helpful when I wrote a game engine! Both that book and Crafting Interpreters [0] by the same author are masterpieces. [0]: https://craftinginterpreters.com/

Read the game programming one, and reading this at the moment and completely agree.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#49

Post by vishaalk »

Does anyone know if the books in this list cover "gameplay systems"? I am 9 months into my game dev job after 7 years of experience at SaaS, and I looked a lot for examples of how to design something like a buff/debuff system or passives and came up short. Would appreciate some literature in this space because I feel like so many games have them that I don't want to re-invent the wheel each time.

Re: Books for Game Developers

#50

Post by [deleted] »

i_c_b wrote: post #41
xeonmc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know where the idea of crouch sliding came from?

I ... hmm. My memory is really, really dusty on that. I remember I had a handful of conversations with Bryan Dube during development about Q4 deathmatch. He was a super sharp game programmer / technical designer who had done a ton of the work on Soldier of Fortune 2 deathmatch previously, and had worked on the Urban Terror mod for Quake 3 before that. And he was much more focused on multiplayer than I was. We talked…

[deleted]
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