All you need to know about making a game

#1 Design or development?
Advanced or beginner?

I have a few I can recommend...

John.

#2 I don't know about "All you need to know", but here's a list of books I have on my bookshelf:

Multiplayer Game Programming - Barron
Swords and Circuitry - N&J Hallford
Begining Direct3D Game Programming - Engel & Geva
Game Programming Gems(the whole series)
Modelling a Character in 3DS Max - Steed
3D Game Art F/X & Design - Ahearn
[Digital]Texturing and Painting - Demers
[Digital]Lighting and Rendering - Birn
[Digital]Character Animation vol 1&2 - Maestri
Programming Dynamic Character Animation - Paull
Infinite Game Universe: Mathematical Techniques - Guy W. Lecky-Thompson
Designing 3D Games That Sell! - No Idea(too lazy to get up and look, sorry)
Game Developer Magazine - If you don't have this, get it, and get it now!

Well, that's about it for the game related books, and those should keep you busy for a while ;) I think if you're wanting to be a designer, you should try and get a "jack of all trades" ability going on, so you know both what your coders are doing and what your artists are doing, as well as knowing your end of the job which is writing, design, project management and business stuff.

Game Dev Magazine is the most important of them, from a design standpoint because you get to read the post-mortems on the bigger games out there, and you can find out what went right and(more importantly to me) what went wrong, and hence get a little foresite going. Hope that helps...

#3 Well im looking for both design and development... and infact can u give me a list of both the beginner and advanced books?

#4 Sure can, just keep in mind some of these are old:

Development (in order of importance):

Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics (2002) - Advanced
Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus (1999) - Beginner
OpenGL Super Bible (new edition available) - Beginner? (I found this book to be a difficult way to learn OpenGL, but now it makes a great reference)
Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995) - Dated (not really a beginner or advanced book, only a good optimization reference)
Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus (1994) - Dated (at this point the book is so old that only about 20 pages can still be applied to modern games, however this book still get usage)

Believe it or not I think its very important to have older books around, they can teach you how to do more with less processing power. Processors have become very fast and a lot of newer books seem to treat the cpu as an unlimited resource (just my opinion though). If you develop exclusively for x86 I would also suggest downloading the P3 / P4 optimization guide from Intel.


Design (I'm an intermediate at best when it comes to art, but here's what I have):

MAXScript and the SDK for 3D Studio MAX (a programming book, but prefabs and plugins are a must have in game design)
Digital Texturing and Painting

The Digital Texturing and Painting book really opened up a whole new world for me. I've always used Photoshop to create textures, but I never realized how much more potential Photoshop had until I read this. Btw: the book is not exclusively Photoshop, but it does have some tricks in Photoshop that never occurred to me to try.


The rest of the books I have get almost no usage. I find that checking out people's demos and hitting forums is still the best way to get ideas and help.


Hope this helps...

John.

#5 I'd suggest the following:

Learn C in 24 hours (SAMS Publishing, can't remember the author)
C++ Weekend Crash Course (can't remember publisher or author)

Game ideas are pretty easy to come up with. Designing game systems on pen-and-paper is something of a challenge. Translating game systems on to the computer without knowing how to program is an impossible task. If you can program already, skip this step. If you can't, clear your weekend.

Just a note: "C++ for Dummies" isn't a book I'd recommend. The way that it's written assumes that you have previous experience in C and/or C++, which isn't exactly in keeping with the Dummies series.

#6 IMHO, just about any book that Andre LaMothe is associated with is a good read. Not that the subject matter may pertain to you in every instance, but generally, the books he writes or edits are written plainly and are good for soaking up knowledge.

#7 Real Time Rendering 2nd Revision (grr...must...have...updated...copy)

#8 Oddly enough, I've found, and most folks I've talked to agree, that the LaMothe series are really terrible books. Light on content, rehashing the same stuff in every book. I bought one, and will never waste money on his series again.

#9 In my opinion, the LaMothe series WAS good, but is now far too dated, except maybe for the Windows Game Programming For Dummies book. And any newer books he has that I don't know about.

But you're right, they do repeat alot of stuff. So there's not much point in buying more than one book by LaMothe (though I didn't know this until after I bought all those books).

#10 Computer Games are SOFTWARE at the core, regardless of how great the "game design" is it still has to be coded, so if you don't know anything about software development, start there first.

#11 I believe I mentioned that it helps about knowing how to code. :) Although it should be pointed out that developing a game title is quite a bit different from developing a word processor. Still, it all comes down to the coding.

#12 If you are looking for design and development books, I would suggest:

Game Development and Production - Erik Bethke
Game Architecture and Design - Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris
Game Design Perspectives - Fran