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Game Scripting Mastery 1st Edition

by Alex Varanese (Author)

21 ratings

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As a game programmer, you realize the importance of creating stunningly realistic characters and captivating plots? players should lose themselves in your game. You also understand the attraction of modding, and recognize the need to design a game that allows players to reshape it to fit their own vision. So how do you create a game that is all things to all people? Through scripting?creating a custom-designed language. This comprehensive book contains everything you need to know in order to easily script and control your in-game entities and environments, as well as how to give players the ability to write mods and extensions. With a foreword by legendary game designer John Romero, Game Scripting Mastery is the serious game programmer's one-stop guide to scripting.

ISBN-10

1931841578
ISBN-13

978-1931841573
Edition

1st
Publisher

Course Technology PTR
Publication date

December 18, 2002
Language

English
Dimensions

7.25 x 2 x 9 inches
Print length

1272 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in 1981, Alex Varanese has been an avid gamer since age 6 when his parents gave him a Nintendo for Christmas. Alex is currently a Java programmer in his native Silicon Valley. His interestes include coding, 3D rendering, visual effects, and film production.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Course Technology PTR; 1st edition (December 18, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1931841578
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931841573
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.75 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 2 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,243,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #883 in Computer Programming Languages
- #2,388 in Video & Computer Games
- #2,966 in Computer & Video Game Strategy Guides

Customer Reviews:
21 ratings

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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5

21 global ratings

5 star		36%
4 star		27%
3 star		26%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		11%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Ysovuka

Thick tome, useful information after all the fluff.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2017

Verified Purchase

Huge thick tome which I feel tried to cover way to much material. It covers Command Based Languages along with Functional Languages.

Skip the command based languages, skip the introduction to Lua, Python, etc. The chapters describing functional languages is what you want if your making a scripting language.

Overall I reduced the stars for thickness and covering too much information. It's an old book and that is what they did back then, but it doesn't mean it was the right thing to do. A book should focus on a single responsibility, teaching a single outlined targeted subject, targeting 400 or less pages. Any more and your readers will get bored of it.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

very retard friendly and beginner friendly intro to, not just scripting, but compiler and language theory.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 7, 2009

I received my purchase in almost perfect condition. The CD that came with the book had a scratch on it that ALMOST made it unusable, but I managed to get everything I needed off of it (Direct X was the only thing that wouldn't install properly, which you can get elsewhere, so I got lucky. It could have been worse, though...)

Helpful

Dopeman

Want to be a game scripting master? Skip this one

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 29, 2007

This book is targeted to programmers with little experience.
What's the point of discussing parsing and virtual environments with beginners?
Making your own virtual machine will be a disaster unless you are at graduate/late undergrad level.
He doesn't even touch upon backtracking lexers, LL(k), LR parsing or how FSM machines are supposed to work.
Doesn't mention parse trees or optimization.

I understand this is a beginners' book but come on, it's like 800 pages.
He could have put important information, but instead the book contains MOSTLY USELESS STUFF (like him debating the phrase 'lookup table')
Most of the code is childish, non-reusable and inefficient.

Get the dragon book if you want to be a 'game scripting master'

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Paulo V. W. Radtke

Good starting point

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 10, 2005

This book was a nice read, following a coherent structure and didatic approach to present game scripting. The author does not only cover current scripting languages but also demonstrates the implementation of an actual virtual machine, so the reader can decide what is best for him while testing all approaches. The first part gives the insight needed for game scripting, why we need it, how it can be done in simple ways and why we need more advanced approaches. Next he discusses current languages, such as Lua (my favourite in this book), and their advantages and drawbacks. Finally the book starts detailing the implementation of an actual virtual machine, which is a very good compiler theory practice. In this sense, these chapters will make much more sense if you are is shape with Aho's Red Dragon book or Tremblay's green book. The book has its shortcomings as well, but overall it's a very well written text with good information on how to actually use scripting on games.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Klaine Tong

Good starting place but buggy example code

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2004

This is good will be a good start that give a beginner in the area of building VM, Assembler and Compiler and how things fit together . I would not suggest anyone to stop in this books as it is still rather incomplete .
The major flaws in this book is that the compiler, Assembler and VM examples included in this book all have serious bug which would confuse alot of newbies .
For example The assembler would not complain if it cannot find a variable and just skip the variable and would not push it to the stack. However, it still generates a pop instruction for the variable causing corruption in the stack.
The next serious bug would be in the VM's relative Index access code. It corrupts the stack if you have arrays in your code .
I would really appreciate if the author would have tested the code more thoroughly before releasing it in the book especially when the book is taegeted for newbies.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Brad

this book teaches compiler design, not game scripting

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 7, 2008

The title of this book may be game scripting, but if you are expecting code on how to code AI for monster sprites that interface with a 2D game engine, well you will be surprised that this book teaches you how to build a complete scripting language compiler from the ground up, including the virtual machine it runs on. This is the only book that targets beginning programmers on this subject on the market. This book is missing out on a lot of potential sales by being misnamed. All the other reviewers who crit this book for lacking compiler theory can go jump in a lake, there are plenty of other books on this subject that will barrage you with all the matematical theory behind the actaul coding.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ironblayde

The best book he's ever written!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 14, 2003

Once, in an article I wrote on gamedev.net, I made the mistake of hinting that I might write a series of articles on game scripting one day. They never came, and two years later, I still get E-mails asking if I'm going to it. Now, of course, I don't bother making excuses, I just tell them to go out and buy "Game Scripting Mastery."
That Alex "Liquidex" Varanese actually started and finished a project without adding another two dozen to the stack in the interim is an event worthy of the history books. I bought "Game Scripting Mastery" for that reason alone. This has never happened before, and in all likelihood, will never happen again. This is the one chance we will have to see the singular genius of Varanese preserved for future generations to look upon and tremble with awe, unlike the countless projects whose lives are as those of sparks from a raging inferno, existing only long enough to be eclipsed by the greater light of those that come after.
You have no idea what I'm rambling about, but trust me, this *is* a good book. Nothing else that I know covers so much in such exhaustive detail. Aspiring game programmers have been crying out for a resource like this one for years, and now they have it. Do not miss this book if you have any interest in game scripting systems. If you can't find it, get someone to ship it to you. If you can't afford it, sell your precious bodily fluids until you can.
And Alex, the original model of the Genesis was far superior to the second.

12 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Richard A

Superb!

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on February 20, 2003

Verified Purchase

Superlatives abound describing this book. This is a definite 5 star job - incredibly well done.
The author takes a challenging topic and walks the reader through it, starting at the very beginning of the scripting concept while simultaneously avoiding talking baby-talk to experienced developers and avoiding being condescending to those less experienced.
The author's writing is exceptional with an easy-to-read style that gets the information across clearly and concisely. If you have an interest in scripting for your applications (this material can apply to anything you develop not just for games) - this is the book for you.
If you have more than a passing interest in compiler theory and how this whole wonderful thing hangs together - this is the book for you.
As the author quite rightly declares at the very beginning of the book - this stuff isn't easy to get through. He does however do an admirable job as guide and tutor, and if you are willing to put in the work you will draw an immense amount of knowledge from it.
Always be cautious of 5 star reviews (this one included) but I'm afraid in this case I can only unreservedly recommend it.
As a footnote, those concerned about the windows orientation of this series will be pleasantly surprised. The content applies just as nicely to a *nix box as it does to a windows one. In fact the word linux is even mentioned if I remember correctly :-) The first third is not devoted to windows specific information as is normally seen in these books. The CD contains windows apps but the source code is still applicable - code is code after all.

7 people found this helpful

See all reviews

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