Writing computer games is hard. Games today are complex projects that involve large teams of specialized artists and programmers. These teams are perpetually pushing technology beyond its boundaries and stretching their skills to the max. To alleviate these problems, Game Programming Golden Rules presents a series of nine “Golden Rules” that help define a methodology for creating a modern game. Each rule is written as a simple principle and covered from the perspective of how it works in the overal structure of a game project. The rules cover a variety of topics from embracing C++ and scripting, to the resource pipeline, finite state machines, and optimization. The order in which the rules are presented was carefully chosen, so that each rule presents a topic that is then put to use in later rules.

Many of the rules involve empowering the designers and artists to put their own content directly into the game, bypassing the need for a programmer’s involvement beyond the initial setup. This frees up the programmers’ time to concentraste on creating the systems that make the game, rather than focusing on the outpout of these systems. BY the end of the book, you will have deeper confidence and more profound understanding of the essential techniques of game programming and how the theory of these techniques interlocks. This is an excellent resource for the entire development team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martin Brownlow (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA) has been a professional video game programmer for 10 years, and has received numerous programming accolades and awards for his work on both MDK and Sacrifice. He also contributed to Game Programming Gems 3. He has worked for such companies as Virtuality Entertainment, Shiny Entertainment, Tremor Entertainment, and Visual Concepts. He currently works for Planet Moon Studios. His latest project, Armed & Dangerous, was released for Xbox and PC in December 2003.

Subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to stay up to date!