Game Development Tools

by Marwan Ansari

Overview

This book brings the insights of game professionals, DCC creators, hardware vendors, and current researchers together into a collection that focuses on the most underrepresented and critical part of game production: tools development. The first gems-type book dedicated to game tools, this volume focuses on practical, implementable tools for game development professionals. Topics range from asset tracking to improving remote version control performance to robust and efficient IO. Technical artists, as well as game play, audio, and graphics programmers will find new tools to improve work flow and help build games faster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568814322
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/24/2011
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Marwan Ansari is a software engineer for a Chicago-based games company. He has a B.S. in computer science and mathematics from DePaul University and an M.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has 15 years of experiencein console games development, video drivers and demos, military simulators, and application and tools development. He specializes in 3D computer graphics and has been published in ShaderX^2 and Game Programming Gems 4.

Table of Contents

PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY: Taming the Beast: Managing Complexity in Game Build Pipelines. Game Streaming: A Planned Approach. Workflow Improvement via Automatic Asset Tracking. Continuous Integration for Games. Persistence Management of Asset Metadata and Tags. Real-Time Tool Communication. Robust File I/O. BUILDABLE TOOLS: Real-Time Constructive Solid Geometry. A COLLADA Toolbox. Shape-Preserving Terrain Decimation and Associated Tools. In-Game Audio Debugging Tools. Pragmatic XML Use in Tools. Low Coupling Command System. Object-Oriented Data. Improving Remote Perforce Usage. THIRD-PARTY TOOLS: Vector Displacement in the Sculpting Workflow. Optimizing a Task-Based Game Engine. Efficient Texture Creation with Genetica. Reducing Video Game Creation Effort with Eberos GML2D. YAML for C++: Applied Data-Driven Design. GPU Debugging and Profiling with NVIDIA Parallel Nsight. FBX Games Development Tools. Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The individual topics are very thoroughly and clearly explained with high-quality graphics. This is a good resource for experienced game designers seeking to optimize game development pipelines. Recommended.
—E. Bertozzi, CHOICE, November 2011

Game Development Tools offers the insights of game professionals, researchers, and more and provides guidelines, assessments of tools, and third-party applications for game developers. From building pipelines that work to GPU debugging and using in-game audio tools, this book offers discussions, color images, charts, and more and surveys commands, improvements, workflow, and more. No game developer’s reference library should be without this in-depth coverage for advanced developers.
—Midwest Book Review, August 2011

Editorial Reviews

The individual topics are very thoroughly and clearly explained with high-quality graphics. This is a good resource for experienced game designers seeking to optimize game development pipelines. Recommended.
—E. Bertozzi, CHOICE, November 2011

Game Development Tools offers the insights of game professionals, researchers, and more and provides guidelines, assessments of tools, and third-party applications for game developers. From building pipelines that work to GPU debugging and using in-game audio tools, this book offers discussions, color images, charts, and more and surveys commands, improvements, workflow, and more. No game developer’s reference library should be without this in-depth coverage for advanced developers.
—Midwest Book Review, August 2011

From the Publisher