Game Programming Gems 5 (Game Programming Gems Series) (v. 5) (Hardcover)

by Kim Pallister (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
With every new volume, the Game Programming Gems series continues to provide a road map through the vast array of development challenges facing today’s game programmers. With the wisdom of many industry experts, Gems 5 includes 62 newly unearthed gems that were polished up for your reading pleasure. These gems are filled with practical insights and techniques that will solve your current problems and help inspire future games. You and your team need to develop for today’s platforms, while preparing for the new technology looming on the horizon and with the tools provided here, you can! So dig into this new collection and put it to work.

SECTION HIGHLIGHTS: * GENERAL PROGRAMMING: parsing text data in games, using templates for reflection in C++, a generic pager, CSG construction using BSP trees, building Lua into games * MATHEMATICS: geometric algebra for computer graphics, minimal acceleration hermite curves, minimal numerical approximation, oblique view frustums for mirrors and portals * ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: fast target ranking using an AI potential field, parallel AI development with PVM, beyond A*, Dynamic A star, cover finding with navigation meshes * PHYSICS: aerodynamics for game physics, realistic cloth animation using the mass-spring model, pressurized soft-body model, realistic camera movement in a 3D car simulator * GRAPHICS: dimensional impostors for realistic trees and forests, gridless controllable fire, explosion effects using billboard particles, gemstone rendering, procedural level generation * NETWORK & MULTIPLAYER: keeping an MMOG online & persistent, seamless world server, a vulgarity filtering system, remote procedure call system, safe random number systems * AUDIO: multithreaded audio techniques, sound management by group, using 3D surfaces as audio emitters, reverb based on feedback delay networks, single-speaker speech recognition

ON THE CD-ROM: The CD-ROM is packed with source code and listings from the book and demos to compliment the articles. Windows demos were compiled using Microsoft Visual C++® 6.0 (.dsw files) or Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0 (.sln files). OpenGL® utility Toolkit (GLUT v3.7.6), Sun’s J2SE™, and Microsoft DirectX® 9 SDK are also included.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Windows®: Intel® Pentium ® series, AMD Athlon or newer processor, Windows® XP (64MB RAM) or Windows® 2000 (128MB RAM) or later required. 3D graphics card required for some sample applications and DirectX® 9 and GLUT 3.7 or newer required. Linux systems require the Linux kernel 2.4.x or later, XFree86 4.0, and OpenGL driver, glibc 2.1 or newer. Mesa can be used in place of 3D hardware support. Videos require the DivX codec.

About the Author
Kim Pallister is the technical marketing manager and processor evangelist with Intel's Software and Solutions Group. He is currently focused on real-time 3D graphics technologies and game development. He has contributed many articles to the gems series and was the General Programming section editor for volume 3. Mark Deloura is the founding editor of the series, and the manager of developer relations for Sony Computer Entertainment America, with a focus on PlayStation and future entertainment products.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 791 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584503521
• ISBN-13: 978-1584503521
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #523,557 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Charles River Media Game Development Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 62 Hints & Tips for the Intermediate/Advanced Programmer, March 10, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Intended for the intermediate to advanced game programmer, this is a book that will literally have something for everyone. It contains sixty-two 'gems' that is, articles on how to some particular aspect of game programming. Sophisticated game programming is probably the most complex programming there is. And this book goes into some pretty sophisticated programming details.

For instance:
4.2 Dynamic Grass Simulation - Just how does grass move when the wind is blowing
5.7 Rendering Gemstones - you can see through them, you can see highlights
5.2 Let it Snow - And how does the appearance of snow change if you are moving through it.

There is no question that the main driving force for faster computers is to make for more realistic gaming. And the faster computers allow more sophisticated programming to be done to make the grass wave realistically.

This is probably not a book you're going to sit down and read from cover to cover. You'll probably scan through and read the ones that are applicable to just what you need to do next. But then in a couple of weeks, in a couple of months....

4.0 out of 5 stars Satisfied with this Purchase, February 27, 2009

By	J. Wood - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I originally purchased this book to gain insight into solving a specific issue I was having after fruitlessly combing the internet for answers.

While the article I originally purchased the book for didn't really help me as much as I had hoped, there is nonetheless a wealth of other information in this book that may prove to be useful to the budding game developer.

Most of the info in this book could probably be obtained by searching the internet, but it's nice to have it all in one package.

Also note that since this book was published in '05, some of the info may already be somewhat outdated, especially those articles pertaining to graphics hardware techniques, which a significant portion of the book is devoted to.