Book Description
With every new volume, the Game Programming Gems series continues to provide a road map through the vast array of development challenges facing today’s game programmers. With the wisdom of many industry experts, Gems 5 includes 62 newly unearthed gems that were polished up for your reading pleasure. These gems are filled with practical insights and techniques that will solve your current problems and help inspire future games. You and your team need to develop for today’s platforms, while preparing for the new technology looming on the horizon and with the tools provided here, you can! So dig into this new collection and put it to work. SECTION HIGHLIGHTS: * GENERAL PROGRAMMING: parsing text data in games, using templates for reflection in C++, a generic pager, CSG construction using BSP trees, building Lua into games * MATHEMATICS: geometric algebra for computer graphics, minimal acceleration hermite curves, minimal numerical approximation, oblique view frustums for mirrors and portals * ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: fast target ranking using an AI potential field, parallel AI development with PVM, beyond A*, Dynamic A star, cover finding with navigation meshes * PHYSICS: aerodynamics for game physics, realistic cloth animation using the mass-spring model, pressurized soft-body model, realistic camera movement in a 3D car simulator * GRAPHICS: dimensional impostors for realistic trees and forests, gridless controllable fire, explosion effects using billboard particles, gemstone rendering, procedural level generation * NETWORK & MULTIPLAYER: keeping an MMOG online & persistent, seamless world server, a vulgarity filtering system, remote procedure call system, safe random number systems * AUDIO: multithreaded audio techniques, sound management by group, using 3D surfaces as audio emitters, reverb based on feedback delay networks, single-speaker speech recognition ON THE CD-ROM: The CD-ROM is packed with source code and listings from the book and demos to compliment the articles. Windows demos were compiled using Microsoft Visual C++® 6.0 (.dsw files) or Microsoft Visual C++ 7.0 (.sln files). OpenGL® utility Toolkit (GLUT v3.7.6), Sun’s J2SE™, and Microsoft DirectX® 9 SDK are also included. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Windows®: Intel® Pentium ® series, AMD Athlon or newer processor, Windows® XP (64MB RAM) or Windows® 2000 (128MB RAM) or later required. 3D graphics card required for some sample applications and DirectX® 9 and GLUT 3.7 or newer required. Linux systems require the Linux kernel 2.4.x or later, XFree86 4.0, and OpenGL driver, glibc 2.1 or newer. Mesa can be used in place of 3D hardware support. Videos require the DivX codec.

About the Author
Kim Pallister is the technical marketing manager and processor evangelist with Intel's Software and Solutions Group. He is currently focused on real-time 3D graphics technologies and game development. He has contributed many articles to the gems series and was the General Programming section editor for volume 3. Mark Deloura is the founding editor of the series, and the manager of developer relations for Sony Computer Entertainment America, with a focus on PlayStation and future entertainment products.

SYNOPSIS

Game Programming Gems 5 is an ALL NEW volume in this must-have series. It is filled with ready-to-use expert techniques, ideas, and solutions for game developers, and includes many innovative solutions that have been used successfully in commercial projects. Insightful tips and tools that reduce programming time and redundancy are provided throughout, in all key areas of game development, including Audio, Graphics, Networking/Multiplayer, Mathematics, General Programming, Physics, and Artificial Intelligence. Each article is written by an industry pro, and each section is edited by an expert in the field. The ideas are original, accurate, and useful for a variety of game development projects. Ready-to-use source code is included for each algorithm and can be used immediately. A cumulative index for all volumes in this series is included making searching between volumes easy and efficient.

FEATURES Provides an ALL NEW collection of original tools and techniques written by industry pros Comprehensive coverage of all key development areas, including Mathematics, Graphics, General Programming, Audio, Artificial Intelligence, Network and Multiplayer Games, and Game Physics Includes ready-to-use techniques to save valuable programming time CD-ROM is packed with portable source code, allowing developers to easily implement techniques into their own projects

ACCREDITATION