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Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 1st Edition

by Thor Alexander (Author)
3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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As the MMP game market continues to grow, new challenges and technology hurdles constantly emerge. Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 is an all new volume in this successful series written to address the challenges faced by the entire MMP development team, not just the programmers. The articles include a wealth of unique knowledge acquired through the experiences of some of the online game industry's best and brightest developers. These developers have worked on the most successful and anticipated MMP games, such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, The Sims Online, Second Life, Asheron's Call, Star Wars Galaxies, and more. Programmers will find a wide array of technical tips and techniques throughout the collection, while designers and producers will find numerous articles filled with readable, informative insights to successful MMP design, along with time and costsaving production methods. Most of the articles are self-contained so they can be read in any order. There is also a companion Web site that will be updated frequently with development news and commentary from the biggest names in online game development. This collection will provide the entire team with ready-to-use techniques and innovative methods for solving all of your MMP challenges.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1584503904
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1584503903
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Charles River Media
  5. Publication date
    February 28, 2005
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.75 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  8. Print length
    484 pages
  9. See all details
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Amazon First Reads | Editors' picks at exclusive prices

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

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Charles River Media; 1st edition (February 28, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 484 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1584503904
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1584503903
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.75 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings

Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5
13 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

James Clifton
5.0 out of 5 stars Told me what I wanted
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2007
Verified Purchase
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS THE SAME REVIEW AS THE SEQUELS BOOK, THAT IS BECAUSE I CONSIDER THEM TO BE EQUALLY AS GOOD AS EACH OTHER.
DON'T BUY ONE BOOK, GET THEM BOTH.

As a games programmer I wanted to branch out into a MMG and this book was one of 4 that taught me everything I wanted to know.

This book is split into 3 main sections; each section has several chapters about differant aspects of the MMP's. If you have any interest in MMP games you cannot help but to find most chapters helpful.
I will admit that some chapters bored me and I skipped them, but the amount of helpful chapters there were more than made up for it.

Each chapter has been written by a differant person and quick searches on google makes you realise that these people really do know their particular areas of expertise.

James
3 people found this helpful
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Stanley Lippman
3.0 out of 5 stars it is not a book for developers
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2007
Verified Purchase
there is very little detailed technical content in this book -- i mean, if you are a software developer, then a lot of this feels like fluff. i wanted a leg up on coding, and this isn't that book. it does provide a certain high-level overview, but it's not sufficient for "game development." for example, the discussions of server architect are interesting, but largely represent a kind of "we did this and were successful" summaries. if you wanted to move into this field, this book isn't an "open sesame." if you haven't thought much about the field and just want to get a feel for what the issues are, then the text is interesting but expensive.
20 people found this helpful
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playerdark
1.0 out of 5 stars Just a bunch of stories
Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2014
Verified Purchase
This, like all the "Gems" series books etc suffer from the same problem: People who are probably very good at what they're doing are asked to write articles for people who want to become better but dont want to divulge their real secrets nor is there the space to do give real usable examples.

So you are left with some general blahblah which you could gather for free on the internet and which leaves you with the stale feeling that you just wasted your money and time and didn't learn anything useful.

Worse, some articles (like the one about distributed service approach) are simply misleading and false and may lead a novice developer astray and on a path that ends up in a dead end. If you want to learn about client server design or any form of distributed computing, don't buy this book. Buy the books by Andrew Tannenbaum which are still readily available and cost just a handful of dollars if you buy them used and I guarantee you learn more useful things about network games than from this lemon.
7 people found this helpful
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Nestath
5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2011
Verified Purchase
I just love all the titles of Charles River Media (Delmar Cengage Learning) about game development. Always didatic and with great contents, every book that I get from this amazing company let me exited to pass through every detail until the end. Just amazing!
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J. L. Hoskins
2.0 out of 5 stars Few good chapters, not worth the price
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2007
As an experienced online game producer with one reasonably successful title under my belt I really felt that this book offered less in terms of game development knowledge than what can be freely and easily found on the internet.

The book itself is a collection of essay-length chapters written by different authors regarding various aspects of online game design. I found that the length of these chapters is generally too long for simpler subjects and too short for more complicated topics.

The authors aren't heavy-hitters from Microsoft, Sony, Blizzard, etc. Not that there aren't some great minds behind some of the articles, but I really felt that the majority of the articles were written by authors that didn't have nearly the amount of knowledge regarding these topics that I would expect. In particular there are a few articles from authors (some whose companies have a less than stellar reputation with their users) that contain some patently bad advice.

Overall, I'd say the book is hit-and-miss, with more misses than hits. There are a few worthwhile articles, but not enough to justify the cost of this book. You'll get almost as much from reading the chapter list and spending some time thinking about the topics covered as you will from actually reading the chapters.

I wouldn't recommend this book to a person of any level of experience in online game development. There are far better books on this subject out there.
6 people found this helpful
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W Boudville
4.0 out of 5 stars for designing games, not for source code level work
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2007
The book is unlike typical computer graphics books that focus mainly at the source code level. Alexander has compiled an impressive set of essays, drawn from game programmers at several companies. It is an industry-wide summation of publicly available ideas for state of the art coding, circa 2005.

Look, if you are hoping for tips on solving a specific coding problem, this may not be the best choice of books. Instead, the articles are more useful at the architectural design level, for a new multiplayer game. Some topics seem quite novel. Like applying graph theory to study and design a game. Including at the large ["macro"] level where you might be building a community, with economic facets. Graph theory also permits a way to classify different MM games, providing a unified and consistent view. Not the sort of thing you might expect to run into in a gaming text. But the complexities of building a MM world can be staggering.

There are many more essays, touching on numerous aspects. You need to be an experienced game developer to fully appreciate this book. Which is not to say that the ideas here cannot ultimately find expression at the source code level. Just that you need to take a high level view.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Live
3.0 out of 5 stars Viel Theorie, relativ wenig Praxis
Reviewed in Germany on December 2, 2012
Verified Purchase
Ich habe mir dieses Buch gekauft, da ich mehr zum Thema MMO Entwicklung erfahren wollte.
Leider muss ich gleich vorweg dazu sagen, dass ich ein wenig enttäuscht wurde. Ich bin ein Programmierer, ein Software Developer bzw Game Developer und so wie es der Titel sagt, sollte das Buch das Game Development behandeln. Leider wird in diesem Buch nur wenig auf Quelltext-Beispiele eingegangen, meist sind nur Pseudocode-Snippets vorhanden und diese recht dürftig erläutert.

Das Buch behandelt hauptsächlich Techniken und Theorien, die einem dabei helfen können die bisher gesammelten und erlernten Kenntnisse zu vertiefen und zu verbessern. Deshalb ist dieses Buch auch für NICHT-Entwickler geeignet. Jeder, der sich in einem Entwickler-Team wiederfindet, kann viel daraus mitnehmen.

Das Buch ist in drei Sektionen aufgeteilt: Design-, Engineering- und Produktionstechniken.

Design Techniken - 11 Artikel

Engineering Techniken - 15 Artikel

Production Techniken - 8 Artikel

Jeder Artikel innerhalb der Sektionen ist von einem Mitglied eines MMO-Entwicklungsteams verfasst worden und präsentiert oft Beispiele von echten Spielen, die auf dem Markt erschienen sind. Der jeweilige Autor teilt seine Erfahrungen und Meinungen über bestimmte Praktiken mit und zeigt dem Leser, was man mit der vorgestellten Technik erreichen kann.

Ein gutes Beispiel ist dafür der Artikel "Server Architektur", ein sehr wichtiges und heikles Thema. Leider findet man darin nur sehr generelle Informationen und Architektur-Beispiele. Wie auch viele andere Artikel ist der Artikel nach dem Schema "wir haben das so gemacht und es hat supertoll funktioniert" geschrieben. Detaillierte Informationen oder einen AHA!-Effekt vermisst man oft.

Die Artikel in dem Buch folgen aber alle keinem roten Faden, man kann das Buch lesen wie man möchte, Je nachdem welcher Artikel Sie interessiert oder für Sie spannend ist.

Alles in allem finden sich in diesem Buch viele interessante Artikel, leider trifft der Titel aber nach meinem Geschmack nicht ganz zu. Es gibt nur drei Sterne, da das Buch für den Inhalt:
a) zu teuer ist,
b) der Titel imho nicht passt und
c) viele Beispiele nur sehr vage beschrieben werden und auf den Pseudo-Code, der interessant wäre, nur wenig eingegangen wird.
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