Authors: Andrew Rollings & David Morris
Publisher: New Riders Games (November 3, 2003)
List Price: $54.99, Your Amazon.com Price: $34.64
ISBN-10: 0735713634
ISBN-13: 978-0735713635
Average rating: 4 stars
Amazon Sales Rank: #288,558 in Books

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Summary (from publisher's website)
Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition is a revision of the classic that you have been waiting for! This is a detailed guide to game design and planning from first concept to the start of development, including case studies of well known games. Originally published in 1999, Game Architecture and Design, has been updated by the original authors Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris. They tap back into what they teach so well and update this classic with skills and techniques found in the industry today. With more than just re-usable code, it's a comprehensive study that deals specifically with the issues of game design, team building and management, and game architecture. Through the use of real-world experiences and case studies, Andrew and Dave share it all. They show you what's worked and why as well as what to avoid and how to fix any errors. This intelligent and well-argued book is a glimpse into the often-disordered world of game development. Readers will gain solid advice and know-how that can bring some order to the often-chaotic world found in game development.

Review
This book was highly recommend to me by another game developer in the game industry. I have found it invaulable in all my programming projects. I consider this book a must read for any game developer, hince why it is the first book reviewed.

Since "Dungeon Logica" is a 3D game, it will utilize OpenGL ES. The sample OpenGL ES projects found in the IPhone SDK were not very promising. Anyone with any type of background in standard OpenGL would have no problem understanding what was happening, but all the samples, including the non-OpenGL ones, used a timer to handle when to redraw the scene. In a simple, non-complex game, this would be adequate, but in something more complex, a scheduling mechanism with deltas would be better suited. I have come across a couple of 3rd party solutions to this problem, and I suspect that a hybrid approach will ultimately be the final implementation.

Here is a list of the core software in use during development

Max OS Tools
Xcode
IPhone SDK
GarageBand

Windows Tools
GIMP
Windows Movie Maker
Milkshape 3D
Lithunwrap
TortoiseSVN
GoldWave
VMWare Player

Linux Tools
Subversion

Here is a list I have compiled of the hardware I am using during development.

Apple IMac
* MacOS X 10.5.1
* 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
* 20' Display

Sager NP9261 Laptop
* Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP 3
* 1.97 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* NVIDIA GeForce 8700M SLI
* RAID 1
* 17' Display

"Grey Box" Server
* Fedora 9 Linux
* RAID 1

Wacom Graphine Tablet

Tomorrow I will compile a list of software I am using in development.

In yesterdays post, I mentioned that a released the predecessor to "Dungeon Logica" 6 years ago. Since then I have retired from developing for the Palm platform as it has been supplanted by newer devices. I originally played around with making a PC version of the game using the Torque game engine. I was able to construct a playable demo, but needed a lot more art assets before the game could be considered complete. Through the process, I was able to develop a better level generator that was much more interesting than a 3x3 grid of connected rooms as well as flesh out some new puzzle ideas.



I suspect the main reason I didn't finish was time and resources. Both the original game and the scrapped PC version were side projects worked on evenings and weekends. I didn't want to bring anybody else in to help with the project because of past experiences. Since this was another non-paying side project, working with friends tended to be difficult to maintain discipline and properly assign jobs. Several of the team projects I have been a part of in the past failed because too much ambition and not enough conviction/experience.