Game Programming Golden Rules

Game Programming Golden Rules provides indispensable techniques that should be part of every game programmer’s arsenal. Written as a series of easy-to-remember rules, the book provides a building block approach in which each new rule builds upon the previous one. Each rule is written as a simple principle and covered from the perspective of how it works in the overall structure of a game project. Topics covered include effective searching and spatial partitioning to data optimization, finite state machines, data driven game systems, and scripting languages. By mastering these areas and applying the rules, programmers learn how to ease the workload for themselves and the rest of the team, resulting in a less painful, smoother, and faster game development cycle. By the end of the book, readers will have deeper confidence and a more profound understanding of the essential techniques of game programming. This book is an excellent resource for those wanting to break into the industry as well as seasoned veterans looking to enhance and refine their skills.

FEATURES

• Details the essential rules that provide a proven template for fast, effective game development
  
• Includes ideas that utilize a building block approach to game development
  
• Teachers programmers how to enhance productivity and work more efficiently
  
• Appeals to all members of the programming team with a broad array of subjects
  
• Provides techniques for empowering team members and helping everyone reduce their workload

BRIEF TOC

Tentative Table of Contents: Introduction; Chapter 1: The Fastest Check is One That is Not Done; Effective Searching, Spatial Partitioning; Chapter 2: At a Glance Comparisons; Hash Values; Chapter 3: Geometry is Your Friend; Dot and Cross Products; Matrices; Quaternions vs. Matrices; Curves; Chapter 4: Understand Your Data; Data Optimization; Data Regularization; Chapter 5: Make Your Data Do the Work for You; Finite State Mathematics; Data Drives Saved Game System; Chapter 6: Empower Your Designers, But Don’t Let Them Hang Themselves; Scripting Languages; Speeding up Turnaround Time; Repetitive Tasks Produce Errors; Chapter 7: Trust the Compiler, But Not Too Much; Inheritance; Templates vs. Macros, Effective use of assert; Effective Use of const; Type Conversions; How to Detect and Work Around a Compiler Bug; Chapter 8: Measure Twice, Cut Once (Optimization); Orders of Complexity; C Runtime qsort; Hierarchical Performance Analyzer.