Charles River Media

Creating casual games for profit and fun. (CD-ROM included)

Programmers interested in game development can start with Partridge's guide, full of code examples and tutorials, to creating casual games in Adobe's Flash and Director formats. Chapters cover principles of casual game design and discuss the minimal programming and rapid application development approaches for both simply- and heavily-coded games. Final chapters discuss casual games on the market and the potential for breaking into the industry for fun and profit. The included CD-ROM contains the software to complete the tutorials. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Game writing handbook.

Chandler draws from seven years of game writing experience, as well as interviews with others in the industry, to create this guide on creating, developing, and organizing video game storylines. Fourteen chapters discuss the differences between game and screen writing and teach readers to develop concept, context, and characters; structure the narrative, understand the technical parameters and technical writing demands, work with cinematics; integrate dialogue; direct voice actors; and get a job in the field. Sample spreadsheets, screenplays, and fictional projects support the text. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Mobile 3D game development; from start to market. (CD-ROM included)

The mobile phone game market is now largely capable of delivering three-dimensional games similar to those from the first-generation three-dimensional consoles, creating a large demand for such games. In this volume, Morales (computer graphics technology, Purdue U.) and Nelson (educational game development, Purdue U.) introduce the entire game-development process using Java ME as the base development platform and using the Mobile Graphics 3D API to render games in both retained and immediate modes. They also take the reader through the development of three games: a Space Invaders imitation, a first person shooter, and a multiplayer racing game. The CD-ROM contains all the source code from the text, art assets, and links to developer tools. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Power user's guide to Windows development. (CD-ROM included)

This tutorial allows Windows power users, Web developers, beginning programmers, and readers with no programming background to create games, media players, educational programs, and other programs for Windows using Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer (trial version included on the accompanying CD-ROM). The first 14 chapters contain essential information, and the following seven chapters give instructions for practical projects. Although no previous programming knowledge is required, the tutorial is not for the faint of heart or for those looking for a quick fix. While tasks are explained in step-by-step instructions, some tasks have up to 75 steps, and some steps are one- third of a page long. In addition to software, the CD-ROM contains files for book projects, music and video files for readers' own projects, and color versions of all images in the book. The author has written articles and books on game creation. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)