Building a Game with Unity and Blender
In the wake of the indie game development scene, game development tools are no longer luxury items costing up to millions of dollars but are now affordable by smaller teams or even individual developers. Among these cutting-edge applications, Blender and Unity stand out from the crowd as a powerful combination that allows small-to-no budget indie developers or hobbyists alike to develop games that they have always dreamt of creating. Starting from the beginning, this book will cover designing the game concept, constructing the gameplay, creating the characters and environment, implementing game logic and basic artificial intelligence, and finally deploying the game for others to play. By sequentially working through the steps in each chapter, you will quickly master the skills required to develop your dream game from scratch. ...
In the wake of the indie game development scene, game development tools are no longer luxury items costing up to millions of dollars but are now affordable by smaller teams or even individual developers. Among these cutting-edge applications, Blender and Unity stand out from the crowd as a powerful combination that allows small-to-no budget indie developers or hobbyists alike to develop games that they have always dreamt of creating. Starting from the beginning, this book will cover designing the game concept, constructing the gameplay, creating the characters and environment, implementing game logic and basic artificial intelligence, and finally deploying the game for others to play. By sequentially working through the steps in each chapter, you will quickly master the skills required to develop your dream game from scratch. ...
Information Architecture, 4th Edition
Scheduled for release in mid-2015, the fourth edition of this bestselling guide focuses on information architecture as a set of tools and techniques for dealing with today's tough information organization problems. It's ideal for anyone involved in any aspect of design. The universal and timeless principles of information organization described in the book's first three editions still apply in our increasingly mobile world. In the fourth edition, the authors cast those principles in the context of current practice, using many updated examples and illustrations. They examine technology- and vendor-independent tools and techniques that have also stood the test of time, and have updated the book's appendix to include the most useful information architecture resources available today. Reserve your copy of Information Architecture, 4th Edition and learn how well-planned information architecture is more essential than ever. ...
Scheduled for release in mid-2015, the fourth edition of this bestselling guide focuses on information architecture as a set of tools and techniques for dealing with today's tough information organization problems. It's ideal for anyone involved in any aspect of design. The universal and timeless principles of information organization described in the book's first three editions still apply in our increasingly mobile world. In the fourth edition, the authors cast those principles in the context of current practice, using many updated examples and illustrations. They examine technology- and vendor-independent tools and techniques that have also stood the test of time, and have updated the book's appendix to include the most useful information architecture resources available today. Reserve your copy of Information Architecture, 4th Edition and learn how well-planned information architecture is more essential than ever. ...
The Art of SEO
If your company is going to succeed in the web economy, optimizing your site for search engine visibility is essential. In this book, four of the most noted experts in the field of search engine optimization (SEO) provide you with proven guidelines and cutting-edge techniques for planning and executing a comprehensive SEO strategy. The authors clearly explain SEO fundamentals, while correcting many common misconceptions. ...
If your company is going to succeed in the web economy, optimizing your site for search engine visibility is essential. In this book, four of the most noted experts in the field of search engine optimization (SEO) provide you with proven guidelines and cutting-edge techniques for planning and executing a comprehensive SEO strategy. The authors clearly explain SEO fundamentals, while correcting many common misconceptions. ...
Cassandra: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition
Imagine what you could do if scalability wasn't a problem. With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how the Cassandra database management system handles hundreds of terabytes of data while remaining highly available across multiple data centers. This expanded second edition - updated for Cassandra 3.0 - provides the technical details and practical examples you need to put this database to work in a production environment. Authors Jeff Carpenter and Eben Hewitt demonstrate the advantages of Cassandra's non-relational design, with special attention to data modeling. If you're a developer, DBA, or application architect looking to solve a database scaling issue or future-proof your application, this guide helps you harness Cassandra's speed and flexibility. Understand Cassandra's distributed and decentralized structure; Use the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) and cqlsh - the CQL shell; Create a working data model and compare it with an equivalent relational model; Develop sample applica ...
Imagine what you could do if scalability wasn't a problem. With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how the Cassandra database management system handles hundreds of terabytes of data while remaining highly available across multiple data centers. This expanded second edition - updated for Cassandra 3.0 - provides the technical details and practical examples you need to put this database to work in a production environment. Authors Jeff Carpenter and Eben Hewitt demonstrate the advantages of Cassandra's non-relational design, with special attention to data modeling. If you're a developer, DBA, or application architect looking to solve a database scaling issue or future-proof your application, this guide helps you harness Cassandra's speed and flexibility. Understand Cassandra's distributed and decentralized structure; Use the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) and cqlsh - the CQL shell; Create a working data model and compare it with an equivalent relational model; Develop sample applica ...
CSS Floating
While flowing text around images is certainly nothing new, with CSS you can float any element, from images to paragraphs to lists. In this practical guide, author Eric Meyer reveals some interesting - and surprising - ways to use CSS floats in your web design, including the latest capability to flow content past non-rectangular float shapes. Short and sweet, this book is an excerpt from the upcoming fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide. When you purchase either the print or the ebook edition of CSS Floating, you'll receive a discount on the entire Definitive Guide once it's released. Why wait? Learn how to bring life to your web pages now. Learn the characteristics of floated elements, and CSS rules for using them; Be aware of certain rule exceptions when applying floats to your design, including the use of negative margins; Use the clear property to prevent floats from affecting elements in the next section of the document; Create floating boxes in non-rectangular shapes, ...
While flowing text around images is certainly nothing new, with CSS you can float any element, from images to paragraphs to lists. In this practical guide, author Eric Meyer reveals some interesting - and surprising - ways to use CSS floats in your web design, including the latest capability to flow content past non-rectangular float shapes. Short and sweet, this book is an excerpt from the upcoming fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide. When you purchase either the print or the ebook edition of CSS Floating, you'll receive a discount on the entire Definitive Guide once it's released. Why wait? Learn how to bring life to your web pages now. Learn the characteristics of floated elements, and CSS rules for using them; Be aware of certain rule exceptions when applying floats to your design, including the use of negative margins; Use the clear property to prevent floats from affecting elements in the next section of the document; Create floating boxes in non-rectangular shapes, ...
Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP
If you need to build a scalable, fault tolerant system with requirements for high availability, discover why the Erlang/OTP platform stands out for the breadth, depth, and consistency of its features. This hands-on guide demonstrates how to use the Erlang programming language and its OTP framework of reusable libraries, tools, and design principles to develop complex commercial-grade systems that simply cannot fail. In the first part of the book, you'll learn how to design and implement process behaviors and supervision trees with Erlang/OTP, and bundle them into standalone nodes. The second part addresses reliability, scalability, and high availability in your overall system design. If you're familiar with Erlang, this book will help you understand the design choices and trade-offs necessary to keep your system running. Explore OTP's building blocks: the Erlang language, tools and libraries collection, and its abstract principles and design rules; Dive into the fundamentals of O ...
If you need to build a scalable, fault tolerant system with requirements for high availability, discover why the Erlang/OTP platform stands out for the breadth, depth, and consistency of its features. This hands-on guide demonstrates how to use the Erlang programming language and its OTP framework of reusable libraries, tools, and design principles to develop complex commercial-grade systems that simply cannot fail. In the first part of the book, you'll learn how to design and implement process behaviors and supervision trees with Erlang/OTP, and bundle them into standalone nodes. The second part addresses reliability, scalability, and high availability in your overall system design. If you're familiar with Erlang, this book will help you understand the design choices and trade-offs necessary to keep your system running. Explore OTP's building blocks: the Erlang language, tools and libraries collection, and its abstract principles and design rules; Dive into the fundamentals of O ...
Designing with Data
On the surface, design practices and data science may not seem like obvious partners. But these disciplines actually work toward the same goal, helping designers and product managers understand users so they can craft elegant digital experiences. While data can enhance design, design can bring deeper meaning to data. This practical guide shows you how to conduct data-driven A/B testing for making design decisions on everything from small tweaks to large-scale UX concepts. Complete with real-world examples, this book shows you how to make data-driven design part of your product design workflow. Understand the relationship between data, business, and design; Get a firm grounding in data, data types, and components of A/B testing; Use an experimentation framework to define opportunities, formulate hypotheses, and test different options; Create hypotheses that connect to key metrics and business goals; Design proposed solutions for hypotheses that are most promising; Interpret the re ...
On the surface, design practices and data science may not seem like obvious partners. But these disciplines actually work toward the same goal, helping designers and product managers understand users so they can craft elegant digital experiences. While data can enhance design, design can bring deeper meaning to data. This practical guide shows you how to conduct data-driven A/B testing for making design decisions on everything from small tweaks to large-scale UX concepts. Complete with real-world examples, this book shows you how to make data-driven design part of your product design workflow. Understand the relationship between data, business, and design; Get a firm grounding in data, data types, and components of A/B testing; Use an experimentation framework to define opportunities, formulate hypotheses, and test different options; Create hypotheses that connect to key metrics and business goals; Design proposed solutions for hypotheses that are most promising; Interpret the re ...
Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation
What is JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and how can you put it to work? This concise guide helps busy IT professionals get up and running quickly with this popular data interchange format, and provides a deep understanding of how JSON works. Author Lindsay Bassett begins with an overview of JSON syntax, data types, formatting, and security concerns before exploring the many ways you can apply JSON today. From Web APIs and server-side language libraries to NoSQL databases and client-side frameworks, JSON has emerged as a viable alternative to XML for exchanging data between different platforms. If you have some programming experience and understand HTML and JavaScript, this is your book. Learn why JSON syntax represents data in name-value pairs; Explore JSON data types, including object, string, number, and array; Find out how you can combat common security concerns; Learn how the JSON schema verifies that data is formatted correctly; Examine the relationship between browsers, w ...
What is JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and how can you put it to work? This concise guide helps busy IT professionals get up and running quickly with this popular data interchange format, and provides a deep understanding of how JSON works. Author Lindsay Bassett begins with an overview of JSON syntax, data types, formatting, and security concerns before exploring the many ways you can apply JSON today. From Web APIs and server-side language libraries to NoSQL databases and client-side frameworks, JSON has emerged as a viable alternative to XML for exchanging data between different platforms. If you have some programming experience and understand HTML and JavaScript, this is your book. Learn why JSON syntax represents data in name-value pairs; Explore JSON data types, including object, string, number, and array; Find out how you can combat common security concerns; Learn how the JSON schema verifies that data is formatted correctly; Examine the relationship between browsers, w ...
Beginning Xamarin Development for the Mac
Develop apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple wearables using Visual Studio for the Mac. Learn how to set up your development environment and emulators, and how to create adaptive user interfaces for various platforms. Expert Dawid Borycki guides you through the fundamentals of programming for Apple platforms (Model View Controller, Test Driven Development), navigation patterns, gesture handling, accessing user's location, and reading and consuming data from web services. After reading this book, you will be able to build native apps that look and feel like other apps built into iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, and have the skills that are in high demand in today's market. If you are already programming C# apps for web or desktop, you will learn how to extend your skill set to Apple mobile, wearable, and smart TV platforms. Build and implement native apps for Apple platforms; Create adaptive, universal views and handle navigation between them; Access user's location and handle touch in ...
Develop apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple wearables using Visual Studio for the Mac. Learn how to set up your development environment and emulators, and how to create adaptive user interfaces for various platforms. Expert Dawid Borycki guides you through the fundamentals of programming for Apple platforms (Model View Controller, Test Driven Development), navigation patterns, gesture handling, accessing user's location, and reading and consuming data from web services. After reading this book, you will be able to build native apps that look and feel like other apps built into iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, and have the skills that are in high demand in today's market. If you are already programming C# apps for web or desktop, you will learn how to extend your skill set to Apple mobile, wearable, and smart TV platforms. Build and implement native apps for Apple platforms; Create adaptive, universal views and handle navigation between them; Access user's location and handle touch in ...
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Revealed
Learn the main features of Azure Cosmos DB and how to use Microsoft's multi-modal database service as a data store for mission-critical applications. The clear examples help in writing your own applications to take advantage of Cosmos DB's multi-modal, globally distributed, elastic database. Simple step-by-step instructions show how to resolve common and uncommon scenarios involving Azure Cosmos DB, and scenarios such as delivering extremely low response times (in the order of milliseconds), and scaling rapidly and globally. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Revealed demonstrates a multitude of possible implementations to get you started. This book guides you toward best practices to get the most out of Microsoft's Cosmos DB service. Later chapters in the book cover advanced implementation features, helping you master important elements such as securing the database, querying, and using various APIs. Set up a development environment to work with Azure Cosmos DB; Configure Azure Cosmos DB ...
Learn the main features of Azure Cosmos DB and how to use Microsoft's multi-modal database service as a data store for mission-critical applications. The clear examples help in writing your own applications to take advantage of Cosmos DB's multi-modal, globally distributed, elastic database. Simple step-by-step instructions show how to resolve common and uncommon scenarios involving Azure Cosmos DB, and scenarios such as delivering extremely low response times (in the order of milliseconds), and scaling rapidly and globally. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Revealed demonstrates a multitude of possible implementations to get you started. This book guides you toward best practices to get the most out of Microsoft's Cosmos DB service. Later chapters in the book cover advanced implementation features, helping you master important elements such as securing the database, querying, and using various APIs. Set up a development environment to work with Azure Cosmos DB; Configure Azure Cosmos DB ...