Torque for Teens 2nd Edition

by Michael Duggan (Author)

13 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1435456426

ISBN-10: 1435456424

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TORQUE FOR TEENS, SECOND EDITION teaches teens and other beginners the techniques they need to design their very own video games using Garage Games' powerful 3D computer game engine, Torque. Written in simple language, each chapter begins with a basic overview of the topic being covered, followed by step-by-step instructions to help readers conquer each new skill presented, and ending with a summary to reinforce what they've learned. Throughout the course of the book readers will put their new skills into action with a hands-on project that ends with the creation of a first-person shooter game. Each chapter builds upon the previous until their very own video game is complete. This second edition covers the latest-and-greatest version of the software, including updates and new interfaces.

About the Author

Michael Duggan is an Oklahoma-born author and illustrator with a background in game and web design. His education includes a bachelor of science degree in Game Art and Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Michael currently lives in the Ozark Mountains with his wife and step-kids and is an applications developer and digital media instructor at North Arkansas College.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cengage Learning PTR; 2nd edition (July 16, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1435456424
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1435456426
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 - 17 years
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 12
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.87 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches

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Michael Duggan
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Michael Duggan is an author and illustrator of several game design and digital media books. He works full-time as a software applications developer in the Ozark Mountains. He spends his spare time as an artist, storyteller, and game designer. Michael is also an adult with autism.
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Amazon Customer

Good 60K ft overview - did NOT grab any of my kid's attention very well

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2008

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I purchased this book with the hopes and intentions of using it as a home-school resource for our programming course. It is not bad in a general way, and was very good as a friendly introductory to Torque and as a business totorial for young entrepreneurs. It covers a business model and organization of your resources such as what jobs need to be defined within your dev-team etc. It covers (at great length - a bit too much actually) several games out there that are either built with Torque or by the makers of Torque - and how they were generally designed (as examples). There are even a few resources that were interesting to play with.

Unfortunately, that was about all it did. It seems to fail to really delve into the "guts" as I had hoped, and to illuminate the "exciting" world of 3D game creation from a Teenage Game Developer Newbie standpoint - particularly the easily distracted from "business model" speeches type (i.e. MOST kids). I guess I was wanting something that read like a friend showing you "cool stuff" and leading you into a place where suddenly the kids would look up and say "DAD! Check this out - I just realized what I did! This is way COOL!"

Three of my kids read the book now, all three were not engaged very long - all seemed to loose interest at the business model part and did not regain it at the examples section as I had hoped.

The other Torque books I have so far (Finney's, most notably) are very good and very deep - but not "friendly" enough to engage my teenagers in an enjoyable and fascinating way (well, except for one, but he is a bit "different" and also the yougest) - hence the "fun" becomes "school-WORK". I will try the one from Maurina next and hope for it to be the answer I am looking for.

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GameLaw.ORG

Outstanding gift for any wannabe game maker

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2008

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This is an outstanding overview of Garage Games' Torque Game Engine. Any aspiring game maker needs to have a copy of this book for reference. Torque allows rapid proto-typing of game ideas, supplying all the foundation for rendering, animation, sound, networking, scripting, all for both the PC and Macintosh. My own teenagers (pictured on the cover, CD, and page 31 :-) use a $25 copy of Milkshape 3D, and put their own models, sometimes with their own rigged, animated skeletons, right into a $100 copy of Torque, and play their own games.

After you've hooked your wannabe game makers with Torque for Teens, send them over to the perfect followup book:

3D Game Programming All in One, Second Edition

Torque has quickly become the number one game development and design harness for nearly all high school and college level game theory, development, application, and graphic design classes.

2 people found this helpful

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Julian

This is an interesting start.

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2013

Verified Purchase

I needed to buy this book for my game design class for my college course. Although I feel that some of the material is a no brainer stuff. It still gets valid points across and teahces you what you need to know to start out.

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D. Murray

Many things are lacking

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2009

Verified Purchase

The first few chapters are just reading and an overview of the game industry (no big deal here). When you start into using Torque the CD is missing the game engine needed to perform the exercises. The CD has the demo Torque engine but not the actual Torque engine - you have to purchase the engine (a few more $ to spend). The instructions on how to use the Torque Constructor (for creating crates and houses) seems to have been written by someone who knows how to use the software and assumes you are familiar with the software (too bad for you if you are not familiar with the Torque Constructor). When it comes time to create the character 'Little Reaper' for your first game the author includes Blender software on the CD but in the book he uses 3ds max to create the character (another piece of software you have to search for, download, and install). The examples given on how to use Torque, Torque Constructor and 3ds max to create your first game are very ambiguous at best. Many errors on how to do something (screenshots not matching the software) and I spent way too much time trying to figure out how the author wanted to do it as his examples and instructions were quite often wrong. I do not suggest this book to anyone wanting to start in on Torque due to the book errors and software not included on the CD.

2 people found this helpful

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Drew Snyder

OK Thus Far

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2008

I've been teaching game art/design since 2000. I read through the book and based on the text, it seems like a good start for a newbie to learn the basics of the Game Engine. But once I started to work through the book I ran into some problems. Firstly the author says that the Demo of the Game Engine contained on the CD includes a First Person Shooter Template Game - it does not! You need a full version of the software to get it, although I'm assuming it is probably possible to modify the demo instead.

Assuming you do purchase the Game Engine, you will run until a problem if you follow the instructions in Chapter 4. Do not run the starter.fps before you copy it! If you do, it will compile a series of CS files and will create errors for the Game Engine which will prevent you from using the World Editor. The long and short is that it would create absolute addresses for some texture files preventing the editor from opening(see page 63 of the book).

I haven't finished the book, but I'm hoping this is the only error.

One person found this helpful

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Crazy Daisy's Mom

Didn't live up to high hopes...

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2008

Purchased this book for my son who is interested in learning game programming. The book had a cd which was suppose to be all inclusive, but we ran into problems. Could not find examples it talked about in Chapter 4. Think there are items missing that we should have. The book does not spell out if you have to go to the website and download the development kit.

My son is not to happy with the book. I have a degree in computer science and I'm not happy with the book either. It's simple, if the book says go and get this file from this directory then it should be there.

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Torque for Teens 2nd Edition

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Michael Duggan

Michael Duggan

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