German SDL Book

I just discovered a new German book about game development with SDL will be released soon (08/07/2008) : Spieleprogrammierung mit dem SDL. Erstellen von 2D-Spielen mit dem Simple DirectMedia Layer (ISBN 978-3446412118) by Johannes P.-M. Kühn & Matthias Schlemm.

Game Developer's Open Source Handbook

Can't help, I just like books and by crawling on Amazon I found yet another interesting book - the Game Developer's Open Source Handbook by Steven Goodwin, Charles River Media (2006) - which is covering game development around Open Source - it's tools, strategies, the philosophy behind. This book seems to be a good introduction for game developer's to get an overview of the modern world of Open Source.

Python Game Development Book

Apress has published a new book about game programming with Python: Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame: from Novice to Professional by Will McGugan.

New Blender book is comming

A new Blender book is in production - Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! Simulating the Physical World with Blender 3D by Blender guru Tony Mullen - and presumably will be published in February 2008. As the title announce, it'll be about Blender's physics and dynamic tools.

And I just found out, yet another Blender book is available - The Official Blender 2.3 Guide: Free 3D Creation Suite for Modeling, Animation, and Rendering (2005) by Ton Roosendaal and Stefano Selleri.

OGRE 3D Programming

The OGRE 3D graphics engine has become real popular in open source game development, and meanwhile is an alternative for some commercial developers, who already using it. A notable thing is the good documentation about the engine, a friendly community, and even now a book - Pro OGRE 3D Programming (2006). In my opinion this makes the position of OGRE very clear as a constant among (FOSS) 3D graphics rendering engines.

Graphic Artist Gluttony

A quick search about books for graphic artist astonished me to find so many results for Blender and the GIMP, but only few are up to date. To my surprise a new Blender book will be released next month - The Essential Blender.

I acknowledge to not have read one of these books, but as proposed in the forum we'll create a database of game development books, and this is just for completeness. Of course you're invited to give a review or a comment about any of this books, either here or in the forum.

Books about the GIMP:

• Beginnig GIMP: From Novice to Professional (2006)
• GIMP 2 for Photographers (2006)
• GIMP Pocket Reference (2000)
• Grokking the GIMP (2000)
• GIMP for Linux Bible (2000)
• The GIMP for Linux & Unix (2000)
• Guerrilla Guide to Great Graphics With the GIMP (2000)
• GIMP - The Official Handbook (1999)
• Sams Teach Yourself GIMP in 24 Hours (1999)

Books about Blender:

• The Essential Blender(not out yet - 9/27/2007)
  
• Introducing Character Animation With Blender (2007)
• The Official Blender GameKit: Interactive 3D for Artists (2003)
• The Official Blender 2.0 Guide (2001)
• Blender Book (2000)

Windows & Linux Game Programming

This book about Windos & Linux game programming is hard to find. It's not old, but doesn't seem to be very popular. I would be interested anyway, but Amazon doesn't sell it anymore.

Windows and Linux Game Programming: Integrating SDL, OpenGL, and Direct X

Programming Linux Games for Download

This book is a true classic on Linux game programming. It is written by the creators of SDL and founders of Loki Software, and covers lots of things a game programmer should care about when using Linux & SDL.

Of course you can buy a printed copy of this book, but for all those poor guys there are legel(?) PDF versions of this book available. I found a free e-book copy here, but this can be off another day. Better search on your own.

Better Game Characters

Yesterday I've been at the IGDA meeting - the International Game Developers Association - where Katherine Isbister, the author of the book Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach, gave a lecture about the importance of emotions in games to reach a wider audience.

In fact, todays challange of the game industry is to make gamers cry by the emotional experience of the game, as it's usual for film makers or authors to give the their consumer an emotional experience.

The idea behind the book is, technics change but humans don't - well, at least almost. Upon this conclusion, game designers bear responsability of how to make the player identify with the game, and what emotions the game characters, style, setting, and control will cause.

The main problem is to master the so called zombie line, the effect of having soulless and robotic characters. The key to this problem is a better psychological approach in design. The idea goes so far, that mastering this will create new genres of games.

You may agree, stories and movies are more interesting with well designed and interesting characters, so it is for games. In deed, modern games by the industry follow this approach, as GTA is thrilling with story, characters and setting, as Nintendo DS & Wii allow new experience by their controls, or as severel games offer the option to completely design the character by the player, which goes so far that it's even possible to make a virtual mirror image of the player, what leads to self identification and represantation in a virtual world.

For more information, read their blog about Game Empathy.