Recommended reading

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Revision as of 13:39, 2 January 2012 by Rsaarelm (talk | contribs) (Add Game Feel)
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Books and articles that might be of use for designing and developing roguelikes.

Development

Artificial Intelligence for Games

Ian Millington (ISBN 0-12497-782-0)

Very comprehensive look on various AI techniques for games, such as pathfinding, tactical decision making and agent communication. Also discussing support architecture for game AI and relating the AI to wider game design concerns.

rsaarelm

Game Coding Complete, 3rd edition

Mike McShaffry (ISBN 1-58450-680-6)

A very comprehensive work on how to program AAA games, from an author who worked on Origin's Ultima games and on Thief: Deadly Shadows. Assumes a working knowledge of C++ and dives straight into how you set up the actual game program on Windows, with lots of tricks of the trade from real projects. The explanation on how to set up the game engine using process, actor and event classes and how to program input devices and user interfaces are very useful for roguelike development. Chapters about managing caches for massive asset libraries and working with complex 3D graphics less so.

rsaarelm

The Pragmatic Programmer

Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas (ISBN 0-201-61622-X)

Design

The Art of Computer Game Design

Chris Crawford (ISBN 0-88134-117-7)

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

Jesse Schell (ISBN 0-12369-496-5)

Game Design: Theory and Practice

Richard Rouse (ISBN 1-55622-735-3)

Game Feel

Steve Swink (ISBN 0-12374-328-1)

Goes into detail on how the interactive feedback loops between the player and the game rules work. A lot of it is about real-time games, but concerns about space, input and response matter for turn-based roguelikes as well.

rsaarelm

Tabletop: Analog Game Design

Drew Davidson, Greg Costikyan, et al (ISBN 1-25787-060-2) [online]