Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript
Anyone familiar with Zynga's Farmville understands how fun and addictive real-time social games can be. This hands-on guide shows you how to design and build one of these games from start to finish, with nothing but open source tools. You'll learn how to render graphics, animate with sprites, add sound, validate scores to prevent cheating, and more, using detailed examples and code samples. By the end of the book, you'll complete a project called Tourist Resort that combines all of the techniques you've learned. You'll also learn how to integrate your game with Facebook. If you're familiar with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, you're ready to get started. ...
Anyone familiar with Zynga's Farmville understands how fun and addictive real-time social games can be. This hands-on guide shows you how to design and build one of these games from start to finish, with nothing but open source tools. You'll learn how to render graphics, animate with sprites, add sound, validate scores to prevent cheating, and more, using detailed examples and code samples. By the end of the book, you'll complete a project called Tourist Resort that combines all of the techniques you've learned. You'll also learn how to integrate your game with Facebook. If you're familiar with JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, you're ready to get started. ...
Programming Interactivity, 2nd Edition
Ready to create rich interactive experiences with your artwork, designs, or prototypes? This is the ideal place to start. With this hands-on guide, you'll explore several themes in interactive art and design - including 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, computer vision, and geolocation - and learn the basic programming and electronics concepts you need to implement them. No previous experience is necessary. You'll get a complete introduction to three free tools created specifically for artists and designers: the Processing programming language, the Arduino microcontroller, and the openFrameworks toolkit. You'll also find working code samples you can use right away, along with the background and technical information you need to design, program, and build your own projects. ...
Ready to create rich interactive experiences with your artwork, designs, or prototypes? This is the ideal place to start. With this hands-on guide, you'll explore several themes in interactive art and design - including 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, computer vision, and geolocation - and learn the basic programming and electronics concepts you need to implement them. No previous experience is necessary. You'll get a complete introduction to three free tools created specifically for artists and designers: the Processing programming language, the Arduino microcontroller, and the openFrameworks toolkit. You'll also find working code samples you can use right away, along with the background and technical information you need to design, program, and build your own projects. ...
Introducing Starling
Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone. ...
Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone. ...
Building the Realtime User Experience
The Web is increasingly happening in realtime. With websites such as Facebook and Twitter leading the way, users are coming to expect that all sites should serve content as it occurs - on smartphones as well as computers. This book shows you how to build realtime user experiences by adding chat, streaming content, and including more features on your site one piece at a time, without making big changes to the existing infrastructure. You'll also learn how to serve realtime content beyond the browser. Throughout the book are many practical JavaScript and Python examples that you can use on your site now. And in the final chapter, you'll build a location-aware game that combines all of the technologies discussed. ...
The Web is increasingly happening in realtime. With websites such as Facebook and Twitter leading the way, users are coming to expect that all sites should serve content as it occurs - on smartphones as well as computers. This book shows you how to build realtime user experiences by adding chat, streaming content, and including more features on your site one piece at a time, without making big changes to the existing infrastructure. You'll also learn how to serve realtime content beyond the browser. Throughout the book are many practical JavaScript and Python examples that you can use on your site now. And in the final chapter, you'll build a location-aware game that combines all of the technologies discussed. ...
Mathematica Cookbook
Mathematica Cookbook helps you master the application's core principles by walking you through real-world problems. Ideal for browsing, this book includes recipes for working with numerics, data structures, algebraic equations, calculus, and statistics. You'll also venture into exotic territory with recipes for data visualization using 2D and 3D graphic tools, image processing, and music. Although Mathematica 7 is a highly advanced computational platform, the recipes in this book make it accessible to everyone - whether you're working on high school algebra, simple graphs, PhD-level computation, financial analysis, or advanced engineering models. ...
Mathematica Cookbook helps you master the application's core principles by walking you through real-world problems. Ideal for browsing, this book includes recipes for working with numerics, data structures, algebraic equations, calculus, and statistics. You'll also venture into exotic territory with recipes for data visualization using 2D and 3D graphic tools, image processing, and music. Although Mathematica 7 is a highly advanced computational platform, the recipes in this book make it accessible to everyone - whether you're working on high school algebra, simple graphs, PhD-level computation, financial analysis, or advanced engineering models. ...
Making Musical Apps
Want to turn your mobile device into a musical instrument? Or equip your game with interactive audio, rather than canned samples? You can do it with Pure Data (Pd), an open source visual programming environment that lets you manipulate digital audio in real time. This concise book shows you how to use Pd - with help from the libpd library - as an easily embeddable and widely portable sound engine. Whether you're an audio developer looking to create musical apps with sophisticated audio capabilities, or an application developer ready to enhance mobile games with real-time procedural audio, Making Musical Apps introduces you to Pd and libpd, and provides hands-on instructions for creating musical apps for Android and iOS. ...
Want to turn your mobile device into a musical instrument? Or equip your game with interactive audio, rather than canned samples? You can do it with Pure Data (Pd), an open source visual programming environment that lets you manipulate digital audio in real time. This concise book shows you how to use Pd - with help from the libpd library - as an easily embeddable and widely portable sound engine. Whether you're an audio developer looking to create musical apps with sophisticated audio capabilities, or an application developer ready to enhance mobile games with real-time procedural audio, Making Musical Apps introduces you to Pd and libpd, and provides hands-on instructions for creating musical apps for Android and iOS. ...
HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers
Graphic Shaders are used throughout the game and movie industry to improve onscreen graphics. They are versatile, doing important tasks like making computer rendered aliens look realistic, providing the ripples on a background lake or growing fur on the latest Pixar monster. In the PC world, programmers are often delighted to find that shaders are nothing more than a miniature program that is optimized to run on the computers GPU. This happiness fades when they start exploring the strange programming model underlying shaders however. Because shaders are strung together in an unusual fashion and run on a massive parallel processer developers shouldn’t use their traditional OO or procedural approach to writing code. Writing effective shaders requires a mind shift regarding how to craft a useful algorithm. To top it off, shaders are written in a unfamiliar C-like language. In the Microsoft DirectX world the dominant language is High Level Shader Language or HLSL. ...
Graphic Shaders are used throughout the game and movie industry to improve onscreen graphics. They are versatile, doing important tasks like making computer rendered aliens look realistic, providing the ripples on a background lake or growing fur on the latest Pixar monster. In the PC world, programmers are often delighted to find that shaders are nothing more than a miniature program that is optimized to run on the computers GPU. This happiness fades when they start exploring the strange programming model underlying shaders however. Because shaders are strung together in an unusual fashion and run on a massive parallel processer developers shouldn’t use their traditional OO or procedural approach to writing code. Writing effective shaders requires a mind shift regarding how to craft a useful algorithm. To top it off, shaders are written in a unfamiliar C-like language. In the Microsoft DirectX world the dominant language is High Level Shader Language or HLSL. ...
iPhone and iPad App 24-Hour Trainer
The number of applications in the Apple app store is growing at a staggering rate. Want to get in the game, but don't know iOS? This book will help! With even little or no prior programming experience, you can learn the code necessary to build an app by following the how-to instructions in this book. Comprised of clear, no-nonsense lessons, the book walks you through each tutorial and then encourages you to work through simple exercises so that you can immediately apply what you just learned. ...
The number of applications in the Apple app store is growing at a staggering rate. Want to get in the game, but don't know iOS? This book will help! With even little or no prior programming experience, you can learn the code necessary to build an app by following the how-to instructions in this book. Comprised of clear, no-nonsense lessons, the book walks you through each tutorial and then encourages you to work through simple exercises so that you can immediately apply what you just learned. ...
Professional C++, 2nd Edition
Essential reading for experienced developers who are determined to master the latest release of C++ Although C++ is often the language of choice from game programming to major commercial software applications, it is also one of the most difficult to master. With this no-nonsense book, you will learn to conquer the latest release of C++. The author deciphers little-known features of C++, shares detailed code examples that you can then plug into your own code, and reveals the significant changes to C++ that accompany the latest release. You'll discover how to design and build applications that solve real-world problems and then implement the solution using the full capabilities of the language. ...
Essential reading for experienced developers who are determined to master the latest release of C++ Although C++ is often the language of choice from game programming to major commercial software applications, it is also one of the most difficult to master. With this no-nonsense book, you will learn to conquer the latest release of C++. The author deciphers little-known features of C++, shares detailed code examples that you can then plug into your own code, and reveals the significant changes to C++ that accompany the latest release. You'll discover how to design and build applications that solve real-world problems and then implement the solution using the full capabilities of the language. ...
Objective-C Fundamentals
Objective-C Fundamentals guides you gradually from your first line of Objective-C code through the process of building native apps for the iPhone. Starting with chapter one, you'll dive into iPhone development by building a simple game that you can run immediately. You'll use tools like Xcode 4 and the debugger that will help you become a more efficient programmer. By working through numerous easy-to-follow examples, you'll learn practical techniques and patterns you can use to create solid and stable apps. And you'll find out how to avoid the most common pitfalls. ...
Objective-C Fundamentals guides you gradually from your first line of Objective-C code through the process of building native apps for the iPhone. Starting with chapter one, you'll dive into iPhone development by building a simple game that you can run immediately. You'll use tools like Xcode 4 and the debugger that will help you become a more efficient programmer. By working through numerous easy-to-follow examples, you'll learn practical techniques and patterns you can use to create solid and stable apps. And you'll find out how to avoid the most common pitfalls. ...