Programming Books

Question

I am wanting to purchase some books to get me started in game development. I was hoping that I could find some books that were actually used at game programming colleges but cant seem to find a place to find them. If anyone attends a game programming college and can provide me with the books required to take the courses that would be great. I am not really an e-book person I would rather sit down and read a book. If anyone who had a really good beginning game programming book that they can recommend please let me know. I have looked online and there are so many and so many different reviews for each of them. I would like to get some input from people who have read the books and have felt confident that they learned something from it.

Edit: Anyone else have any input. Not a whole lot of responses here.

Answer 1

I can't recommend any books, but I do have a related recommendation; Don't look so much for "game programming books". Instead, look for two kinds of books:

1) Game design books. That is; not 'design' as in graphics, but design as in something about the theories and applications of game application design, that covers topics like AI, 'game loops', threading and objects and the like. Something that covers not "how to make a roleplaying game in c# in 21 days", but instead something that covers the important, general topics that game programming involves, in general.

2) Detailed books on the languages, techniques and technologies that you will likely use to create the kind of game you might be interested in doing... without a game-specific focus, but rather a focus on high-quality, high-performance, highly-scalable code.

The type of books you are looking for probably are what I noted as number 1 above; but I just recommend that you avoid the more simplistic game programming books that emphasize they'll have you creating some game with (insert language) in the book.

Answer 2

The book Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition is used at several colleges to teach game design.

I read it and thought it was excellent.

Caveat: one of the authors, Andrew Rollings, is a personal friend. But it's still a good book!

Answer 3

The most populair texts on this subject are:

• The Game Maker's Apprentice
• Game Coding Complete
• The Game Maker's Companion

But what to read also depends on your own (programming) knowledge and what platform or type of games you like to focus.