Game development: list of books
I believe it depends on what is your objective. Do you want to work for a game or an engine company as a developer? Then having a bachelor will help you a lot. If you just want to be an indie developer, you should probably focus on learning a good engine, design your game and code it.
No matter what your objective is I would tell you to code some very simple game such as a snake or tic tac toe using some "harder" SDK (such as SDL) to learn about the very basics of game development (such as camera positioning and movement interpolation ).
If you already know c++ I wouldent reccomend beginning c++ through game programming. That book is for beginners.
Absolutely. If you already know c++ I don't think that book will help you much. If you want to improve you skills though, I'd recommend Effective C++ by Scott Meyers.
Also, you probably aren't going to find anything in those XNA books that you can't get for free online. There are so many tutorials and examples out there (http://www.riemers.net/)
many thanks guys for all your answers.
I believe it depends on what is your objective. Do you want to work for a game or an engine company as a developer? Then having a bachelor will help you a lot. If you just want to be an indie developer, you should probably focus on learning a good engine, design your game and code it.
No matter what your objective is I would tell you to code some very simple game such as a snake or tic tac toe using some "harder" SDK (such as SDL) to learn about the very basics of game development (such as camera positioning and movement interpolation ).
If you already know c++ I wouldent reccomend beginning c++ through game programming. That book is for beginners.
Absolutely. If you already know c++ I don't think that book will help you much. If you want to improve you skills though, I'd recommend Effective C++ by Scott Meyers.
Also, you probably aren't going to find anything in those XNA books that you can't get for free online. There are so many tutorials and examples out there (http://www.riemers.net/)
In my country you can see if a course is worth it if you can use it to enter in a public university master's degree or PHD. Also, you can see if good universities of other countries recognize the university that gives this online course.
Asking people from the HR area or contractors on likedin can be useful, but a lot of times they will lie and tell you that the degree is worth something so they won't hurt anyone's feelings.
The game-specific books sitting on my shelf include the following:
Game Engine Architecture
Game Coding Complete 4th Edition
Real-Time Collision Detection
Artificial Intelligence for Games
Programming Game AI by Example
Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c (for graphics programming)
Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 11
OpenGL SuperBible 6th Edition
Programming 2D Games
Programming a Multiplayer FPS in DirectX
Creating Games with Unity and Maya
OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook
Real-Time Rendering 3rd Edition
Character Animation with Direct3D
OpenGL Programming Guide 7th Edition
Game Physics Engine Development
Cross Platform Game Development
Mathematics and Physics for Programmers
AI Techniques for Game Programming
The non-game-specific books include:
Effective C++
Effective STL
Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy
Data Structures for Game Programmers
Design Patterns
Pattern Oriented Software Architecture (5 volumes)
Introduction to the Boost C++ Libraries
The Boost C++ Libraries
SAMS Teach Yourself UML, XML, C#, SQL, some other basic stuff here.
Cross-Platform development in C++
C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 2nd Edition
Advanced Qt Programming
Component Software
Debugging
Advanced Windows Debugging
C++ Template Metaprogramming
Advanced C++ Metaprogramming
TCP/IP Illustrated, V1: The Protocols
The C++ Standard Library
API Design for C++
C++ Concurrency in Action
That's all I can think of at the moment.
Uberwulu, could you please tell me if Game Coding Complete 4th Edition is a very good book ?
Its summary/source code are really attractive ( architecture of the code for a game, event system/sub system, scripting with lua ... ) but I just wanted to have a comment from a reader.
ok Accelerated C++ and Effective C++ are not specific for game programming isn't it?
No they're not game programming specific, but they are programming specific :)
One of the key things you need as a programmer is the ability to learn new APIs/SDKs and programming methodologies quickly... and it really helps to have a solid understanding of the language.
could you please tell me if Game Coding Complete 4th Edition is a very good book ?
I have read both the 2nd edition and 3rd edition. I found them both to be great books. Haven't read the 4th addtion, but I would assume its pretty good.
Honestly I was just looking through all the game dev books on my shelf and thats probably the one I would recommend the most (of the ones I have).
Also the "Introduction to <xxx> Game Programming with xxx>" books are usually pretty good, although you have to look through them first. Sometimes they spend half the book covering really basic C++ stuff that you probably already know.
Bear in mind, I'm not a professional game developer...just a hobbiest....