Massively Multiplayer Game Development (Charles River Media Game Development) [Hardcover]

Thor Alexander (Author)

Book Description

Series: Charles River Media Game Development | Publication Date: February 14, 2003

Massively Multiplayer (MMP) game development is one of the fastest growing areas in the game market. With the first MMP releases, the genre took off with amazing speed, and as its popularity continues to soar, so do the many challenges, internationalization, customer support, hacking, and technological advancements. To keep up with these challenges, developers need to implement the best tools and techniques available. Massively Multiplayer Game Development provides these solutions. This comprehensive, insightful collection of articles is written by some of the industry's best MMP developers, and provides a wealth of unique knowledge acquired while working in the MMP trenches. Details on database techniques and game systems are also included. Unlike many programming books, Massively Multiplayer Game Development is intended to appeal to the entire team: programmers will find a multitude of technical ideas, and designers and producers will benefit from the detailed information on design, architecture, and customer support.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thor Alexander (California) has been working in the game industry for over twelve years as a designer, engineer and entrepreneur. He has held lead designer and senior programming positions at Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Xatrix Entertainment. He has contributed to titles such as Earth & Beyond and Freelancer as well as the Ultima Online game series. He has also contributed to the books AI Game Programming Wisdom and Game Programming Gems 3 as well as Massively Multiplayer Game Development.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 484 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (February 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584502436
• ISBN-13: 978-1584502432
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Bag, March 25, 2003

By 

Jeffrey Thompson (Champaign, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Massively Multiplayer Game Development (Charles River Media Game Development) (Hardcover)

I have very mixed feelings about this book. While it presents a wonderfully broad discussion of MMOG development and is chalk full of ideas that you can use in development, it is at the same time often incomplete. The problem is not in the desire for the sections of the book to more deeply discuss their subject matter, but more due to the fact that the sections often fail to fully describe even what they are attempting to talk about. Included source code is fairly sparse making it difficult to discern what the authors were reaching at even when he provides UML (minus complete descriptions). At least one python project fails to work at all and there is no information for corrections on the Charles River Media web site.

So, do I recommend this book? Yes. Knowing the book as I do now, I would still have purchased it, however this may be one that you want to look through somewhat carefully at a local bookstore prior to purchasing. Expect to have to expend considerable effort when developing code based on portions of the book as you will progress along merrily based on the descriptions only to hit a roadblock in the code based on an incomplete or completely missing description of a critical portion of the topic. This book is definitely for already competent developers/designers, though you should already be prior to attempting to craft a MMOG anyway.

This book will likely float between 2 and 5 stars depending on the reader.

Best of luck to all!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful compendium of wisdom, March 10, 2005

By 

Evan Sims (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Massively Multiplayer Game Development (Charles River Media Game Development) (Hardcover)

A fascinating book that compiles an array of essays by professionals in today's MMO industry. Each chapter brings something new and unique to consider: from the database to the game engine, costumer service to the network protocols, AI factions to interface design. However, some of the topics are so broad and complex the authors really have no chance of leaving you with a sense of satisfaction when their time is up- moving from topic to topic each chapter, you often feel the essays are left open and incomplete. Even so, the issues discussed are very important to consider, and rarely have I seen them covered in other books on the subject. Definitely an interesting read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MMO encyclopedia, February 20, 2006

By 

Kosmyq (Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Massively Multiplayer Game Development (Charles River Media Game Development) (Hardcover)

Thos book is a collection of wisdom, aimed to provide an overall view of what you need to consider to write your own MMO. There is no code and the articles do not go too deep, which is not a bad thing, because they provide easy to understand contents. So before writing any code, read a related article, avoid pitfalls and only then start writing. I have been reading this book for several months, over and over and I still love it. There is no need to read the articles in any particular order and each reading session can be as short as 30 min. and still provide good knowledge to you. This book is a must have on your bookshelf if you are serious about MMO games and use other people's knowledge to shorten you own development cycle. I like it so much, I just bought the 2nd edition, which looks very promising, too. And dear author(s), if you write a book with a framework, I'll buy that one, too, without any doubt.