Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition (Paperback)

~ (Author), David Morris (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Game writers have a hard lot. In order to compete, they're expected to write fantastic works of art and action that feature spectacular visual and physical effects, and which can render those effects with great speed. If they don't write for the latest hardware (which is often barely stable), the designers end up with something that looks antiquated. In the end, as well, there is the target market: Mostly males between the ages of 15 and 30, who have sharpened their volatility of taste to a fine edge. Game Architecture and Design is a protracted meditation on what makes a game (and a game development company, and a game developer) good.

This is not a programming book; it is a design book. Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris do talk about game architecture, and pick apart some top games with state diagrams and sketches of class hierarchies, but that sort of content is in the minority. Mostly, the authors provide informed opinions about bigger engineering decisions, such as the question of whether to use Microsoft DirectX or OpenGL, or how to spread processor cycles across artificial intelligence and rendering operations. They make frequent reference to successful (and failed) games, explaining why each might have worked out as it did. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to write good games, and other entertainment software. Overall, emphasis is on developing an idea into a product, with long and carefully considered digressions into architectural decisions (such as gameplay and visual effects), implementation choices (languages, libraries, and algorithms), and team management.

Product Description

Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition is a revision of the classic that you have been waiting for! This is a detailed guide to game design and planning from first concept to the start of development, including case studies of well known games. Originally published in 1999, Game Architecture and Design, has been updated by the original authors Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris. They tap back into what they teach so well and update this classic with skills and techniques found in the industry today. With more than just re-usable code, it's a comprehensive study that deals specifically with the issues of game design, team building and management, and game architecture. Through the use of real-world experiences and case studies, Andrew and Dave share it all. They show you what's worked and why as well as what to avoid and how to fix any errors. This intelligent and well-argued book is a glimpse into the often-disordered world of game development. Readers will gain solid advice and know-how that can bring some order to the often-chaotic world found in game development.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Games (November 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735713634
• ISBN-13: 978-0735713635
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #69,724 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone in the games industry: read this book, June 12, 2004

By	Simon Booth (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In a nutshell, everyone in the games industry should read this book! It doesn't matter if you're a designer, programmer, artist or producer, a beginner or a veteran - if you don't find something in the book that justifies the asking price and time invested then either a) you're too stubborn to learn or b) why haven't you written your own book yet?

OK, that's the good bit, and it's broad, so for the rest of the review I'll concentrate on the weaknesses that make it not quite perfect.

Firstly, the name of the book is rather misleading. Whilst the book does contain some good advice on game architecture and game design, it is actually not what the majority of the book is about. A quick glance at the table of contents shows that there is a major section on project management, and actually that's what the majority of the architecture and design sections focus on to. Whilst there is some specific advice on techniques, algorithms or whatnot to add to your game, the main focus throughout is on developing an effective *process*. It's basically a manifesto for making better games. That's what makes the book so strong... the games industry is full of people with great ideas for games, and great programming skill etc, but as a rule we have the management skill of a dead slug. This book seeks to address that problem. Even if you're not at management level, the advice and ideas in the book will be very useful to you in your self-management, and hopefully will help you to streamline your team.

That said, sometimes the ideas will be useful by giving you better ideas when you disagree with them. The book preaches a method called the "software factory", which does have many merits and probably is a very efficient way to make solid games - but I doubt it could ever lead to an exceptional one.

Although it occasionally denies the fact, the book does seem to promote a notion that is very common to people outside the industry, and occasionally present and harmful within it - that of a solitary game designer heroically bringing his unique vision and genius to life, either with the aid of a team of artists and programmers eager to lap up his sage advice or (more commonly, one expects) struggling against the team that fails to appreciate his special skills. The book may give the wannabe game designer the idea that he will be responsible for creating the story, characters, game mechanics, level features, art direction and even code architecture for his project, leaving the rest of the team to fill in the details. Well, maybe there's a dozen people in the world capable of filling all those roles on a modern game project - and at most that many development teams willing to work with them.

The book states at one point that "the future belongs to the visionary, the dreamer". Not in the games industry it doesn't - it belongs to those designers with the technical skill and knowledge to turn a vision or a dream into a solid, consistent and satisfying set of game mechanics and level designs. Contrary to popular belief, good ideas are extremely common, and can come from any member of a development team. The skills to take those ideas and turn them into a real fully fleshed out system that results in player satisfaction are much rarer, and much more direly needed. BUT, this book does give any game developer a better chance of developing those skills, I think. However, I think the creation of a modern AAA title needs to be a much more collaborative process, drawing on the creativity and passion of the whole team, not just a few individuals on it. If nothing else, the team will produce much better work if they're involved on the creative level.

Back to the problems with the book - organisation is another. The book is grouped into 3 sections - design, production and architecture. Logically, the order should be design, architecture, production, and the book would read a lot better for it (and a bunch of production-related ideas that end up in the architecture section could be put in the appropriate place).

Lastly, although the book claims it is "not a programming book", it spends an inordinate amount of time on issues like bracing styles and commenting conventions. This information is very specific to programmers, unlike the rest of the book, and does not really belong here will it will doubtless make non-programmers stop reading. Furthermore, the issues and information are covered better in a myriad of other books, so the authors would have been better to simply refer the reader to one of those.

Another comment, though this book suffers less from it than most books written on games - the authors often seem to think of pc games as the only games, and the "real time strategy" types of games are the most frequently used as an example. It seems to be that programmers on these types of projects are the most likely to write about it, as a huge amount of the literature on games seems to have this bias that is unfortunately not reflective of the real distribution of the games on the store shelves. It hurts this book less than some others though.

OK, so there are some flaws with the structure and some of the advice needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but hopefully those will be fixed in the next edition - and even with the warts, the book is a very readable source of invaluable ideas, written by people that clearly have battle-won experience in development. As such, unless you've just shipped your 10th million seller and have nothing left to learn, I guarantee that it is worth your time to read this book. Your next game will be better for it.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book if you want to go into the industry, November 23, 2003

By	Amit Patel (SF Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Most of the game-writing books you find will cover a little bit of everything â€* some Windows programming, some C++ (or Java), some basic graphics knowledge, and a little bit about how to put it all together. My main complaints about those sorts of books is that much of it is not specific to games.

This book covers a different set of topics. It isn't about the programming aspect, but about the entire development process. There are three sections:

A. Game Design. As a non-professional game programmer, I found this section to be the most interesting. It covers things like game balance, skill levels, and making the parts of a game fit together nicely.

B. Project Management. This section covers aspects of game development that hobbyists will find overkill, but that professionals will want to read. It includes both history and prescriptions for managing a project. Some of it seems to be excessively specific, like descriptions of exactly how teams "should" be structured, why you should not allow inflatable furniture at the office, and what signs you should look for to identify "problem" developers.

C. Architecture. This section is a mix of stories about existing games and techniques to use when writing game code. It covers things like class hierarchies, state machines, game engines, design patterns, commenting style, whether you should use "goto", and other coding issues.

The first section was great. I think most game developers (both hobbyist and professional) would find it interesting. I did not find the second section interesting, probably because I'm not involved in the industry. Parts of the third section were good, but at some point it descended into 40 pages addressing little things like the use of braces in C++ code, using goto, why you should comment your code, and so on. That's the kind of thing that's already covered by software engineering texts, and doesn't change just because you're writing games.

Overall, I liked this book because it tackles the important issues in game development. However, I found that parts of it just weren't interesting, because I had read about those topics in books unrelated to game development.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last review is talking about the korean edition..., February 14, 2004

By	Andrew R (Auburn, AL United States) - See all my reviews

(Sorry about the 5 star rating... what else am I supposed to rate my own book? :)
That, and I need to 'cancel out' the guy below reviewing the wrong edition. )
They reviewer below complaining about diagram mistakes is correct... except that we had no control over the Korean edition of the book. He is not talking about *this* edition, which has those figures drawn correctly.