Game Design Foundations (Wordware Game and Graphics Library) (Paperback)

by Roger E. Pedersen (Author)
Key Phrases: seven card stud, poker room, statistics screen, Texas Hold, Rainbow Six, Delta Force (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Game Design Foundations provides an easy-to-follow process for game designers to express their concepts and begin the development process. Game designer Roger E. Pedersen explores the various game genres, discusses the research process, and explains the basics needed to understand programming, artwork, sound and audio, testing, and scriptwriting (both linear and non-linear). The book provides extensive examples to illustrate the game development process and includes more than 1,200 game ideas. Learn the tools and secrets of a game designer with 20 years of experience and more than 50 gaming titles to his credit.

* Learn how to thoroughly research your concept.

* Find out about the tools needed for sound, music, and 2D and 3D art and animation.

* Discover the variety of 3D engines that are available for game development.

* Understand the basics of programming, scriptwriting, artificial intelligence, testing, and the user interface.

* Learn how to design and write important documents including the one pager, executive summary, and design document.

* Analyze the numerous examples provided for ways to get your game idea and vision documented and ready to be developed.

ON THE CD:
* Reel Deal Poker Challenge demo
* FMJ Software’s audio and graphics tools: Any Image v2.5, Image Eye v6.0, Awave Audio v7.6, and Awave Studio v8.5
* Full code for tic-tac-toe example in Visual BASIC and Visual C++
* More than 1,200 game ideas

About the Author
Roger E. Pedersen has been designing, producing, and programming games since the early 1980s for companies such as CBS Software, Gametek, Hi-Tech Expressions, Villa Crespo Software, Acclaim Entertainment, Phantom EFX, Walker Boy Studio, 3D Open Motion, Hypnotics, and Merit Industries. His cumulative title sales have surpassed 10 million copies on over 50 titles for multiple platforms including the personal computer, video consoles, location-based, Internet, arcade, and hand-held. He is also the author of award-winning articles for Gamasutra.com, GameDev.net, and Gignews.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc. (April 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556229739
• ISBN-13: 978-1556229732
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,669,537 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Who is this book for?, April 8, 2003

By	J. Fristrom (www.gamedevblog.com) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The title of this book is "Game Design". You might think, therefore, that most of it would be devoted to the design aspect of making games. This is not the case.

Most of the book is a shallow survey of the different aspects of game development. Programming, art, audio, production, testing, and the various tools used by each department. Everything except design, it seems.

Pederson writes the book as if you have just been appointed the job of creative director on a videogame development team. If that's the case, it's silly for him to be giving this survey of information that you probably already know.

The first few chapters are actually about game design, but the ideas here mostly fall into two categories: stuff that a game design lead would already know, and stuff that is wrong. His formula for making games consists of reading the reviews for previous games in the same genre, keeping the good parts, and fixing the flaws. This is not a recipe for making a hit game. This is not how Tetris, Diablo, Zelda, or The Sims were made.

How about some advice for level or mission designers? How about some advice for anyone other than the ultimate authority of a game development team who wants to make their game better but doesn't know how?

The one thing I liked about this book was Pederson's point about how game ideas are a dime a dozen. It is so true; I've been working on games for ten years, and it always seems like I'm drowning in other people's ideas. I am glad I'm not the only one who feels this way, and I don't regret reading the book, if it was just for his persuasive arguments on this one point.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you can't surf the web..., September 6, 2003

By	Troy Gilbert (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Well, I'd award zero stars if I could. Honestly, I haven't read the book but I can't imagine what it's like after meeting the man and seeing his presentation earlier today at XGDX. I can guarantee the two positive reviews are definitely planted by promoters. BTW, just because a book sells out doesn't mean it sold that many copies... they could've only had a dozen on hand... I don't know anyone in the industry (yes, I work in the game industry) that was eagerly anticipating this title.

One section I have read is the chapter where he reviews the game engines. In particular, I can comment on his review of RenderWare because I work for Criterion (makers of RenderWare). His review said plenty of nice things. Of course, we wrote them. All of the game engine reviews were nothing more than a cut-n-paste job from the websites of the engine. This is incredibly evident in the changes in voice between the reviews ("We" is used in one) and the 100% positive spin on all of the engines (only a few have been used in commercial games -- they can't all be that great). Not sure who edited this, but they definitely let one slip by...

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing with a few useful bits, April 24, 2003

By	Marque Pierre Sondergaard "World's Best Textu... (Liverpool, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let me start by saying that I truly looked forward to the release of Pedersen's Game Design Foundations. Very few books deal with this topic in a satisfactory manner, so every time you see a new release advertised, you get your hopes up.

Well this one was a letdown, because it contained very little information, I hadn't found for free on the internet. Here is what I wished I had known before forking out my cash...

The book starts off with a section where the author takes you through a few of his war stories and learned rules. A lot of them makes sense and are a good contribution to the book as such. An example could be "Share your toys", where Pedersen urges us to help others unselfishly, instead of trying to keep your experience and succes to yourself.

The next section is devoted to game ideas. In this chapter Pedersen lists more then 1200 ideas for games. The ideas consist of an extensive list of sports (of which many have been developed as games today), movies (where he lists the main idea behind each movie), board games, music and authors. Some of these have merrit, but the 1200+ number is not so solid. For example "mythology", "mythological creatures", "norse mythology" and "Irish mythology" are counted as 4 different game ideas. In my opinion, these first two sections are the most valuable in the book, and you should only consider buying it if these things have caught your attention.

The third section is devoted to research. One such object of research is a comparisson between the Rainbow Six and Delta Force series of games. Pedersen goes to great lengths to name every weapon in each game (+ their sequels and mission disks). In my book this doesn't really add value to the research. Whereas the parts about what is good and bad about each game is non-existent for quite a few of the examples and when it is existent it is limited to a few sentences like "has multiplayer support". Whereas research in design work obviously has its place, Pedersen really gets around the nitty gritty and important bits in an easy and rushed fashion.

The fourth part of the book is aimed introducing the games designer to the tools involved in building a game. Pedersen takes us through art and animation packages, game engines and sound tools to name a few. I wonder why this section is in the book, because everything reads like a marketing brochure for the individual products, so there is really no difference from what advertising materials you'd get from the respective producers of these tools. In this section we also get exposed to very basic programming and you learn to make your own tic-tac-toe game in Visual Basic. 5 pages are devoted to designing user interfaces. A good and welcome idea, but one could have wished for more then 5 pages, out of which several go to describe user interfaces in card games. Pedersen also tries to explain basic scriptwriting.

The last section (save the appendices) is devoted to different aspects of the design document. A basic attempt at explaining its use and structure. If you want to read about design documents and their application, I would suggest Luke Ahearn's Creating 3D Games That Sell, Rollings & Morris' Game Architecture and Design or Game Design Theory and Practise by Richard Rouse III.

When all is said and done, this book confuses me, because it tries to accomplish so many things(without an overarching structure), but does neither of them particularly well. It kinda reminds me of Luke Ahearn's Creating 3D Games That Sell, which is basically 3 different books attempted in one book. Just to clarify, that book contains sections which are easily worth the cover price. I am sorry, but Game Design Foundations will not teach you to be a games designer on your own, or how to break into the games industry as a budding games designer. Roger Pedersen got easily around this one; There are very few things you couldn't find on the net with half an hour of searching. If you are serious about learning games design and development, then get Rollings & Morris excellent book Game Architecture and Design, or if you just want a "foundation" course, check out Saltzman's Secret of the Sages. Sadly, this one doesn't deserve the cover price...