Resources

GENERAL RESOURCES

Books

Title: Get In The Game
Author: Mark Menscher
This book offers practically the only comprehensive insight into getting into the industry. Includes detailed job roles, art and programming tips, interview advice and much more. Well worth taking a look at.

Title: The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners
Author: Jacob Habgood and Mark Overmars
This book, and companion CD, provide all you need to create your own games for Microsoft Windows using Game Maker. It introduces beginners of all ages to the art of creating computer games.

Websites

Wikipedia - Game Development

Game Industry Map
A great site that shows you ALL the games developers on a map of the world with contact details.

Livingstone-Hope Skills Review:

In February 2011, NESTA published a report co-written by Ian Livingstone for the games industry and Alex Hope for the VFX industry. The report drew on a huge consultation with developers and VFX artists; it gives an alarming picture of the state of creative digital skills in the UK and makes important recommendations for the future.

NESTA - The Next Gen Report

There is an accompanying video (currently 3rd on the page, titled 'Livingstone-Hope Skills Review trailer, Next Gen'), featuring the best of the UK’s games and VFX talent:

NESTA - Livingstone & Hope Report


Game career sites:

Computer Games - Skillset
The source of up-to-date information on training and education, tips for getting started and news of any upcoming initiatives in the Computer Games industry.

e-skills uk
e-skills UK's site for digital careers, focusing here on the games industry.

Game Career Guide
A really useful website with news and information on careers in games.

David Perry
Quite a good personal website containing advice about getting into the industry from Dave Perry who formed Shiny Entertainment and created the Earthworm Jim series of games.

Career Advice
Games Development section on the Government's careers advice website.

Video Game Design Schools
An unofficial but informative round-up of American games courses.


Game business/news sites:

TIGA
Tiga is the trade association representing the business and commercial interests of games software developers in the UK and Europe.

IGDA
The International Game Developers' Association website.

UKIE
The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association was founded in 1989 to establish a specific and collective identity for the British computer and video game industry.

GameDaily
Daily newsletter for the games industry (one of several).

GamesIndustry
European Games Industry News site.

Eurogamer

IGN
One of the best consumer video games sites around.

MCV
European Games Industry News site, linked to the print version of MCV.

Game development sites:

Gamasutra
This site has lots of excellent articles about all aspects of development. Linked with Game Developer magazine, this site has a wealth of interesting information and news for programmers, artists, musicians, producers, etc with some great coding tutorials.

GameDev.net
Very useful site with loads of well-written articles on how to do just about anything game related. Also has a very active forum with many competent and helpful readers. This is one of many places where you can get addresses for game developers.

DevMaster.net
A website dedicated to games development, the site is best known for its Game and Graphics Engines Database.

OpenGL
If you want to get into games you need to be familiar with graphics. OpenGL is a very good multi-platform graphics system and has articles and a forum frequented by most of the OpenGL community. OpenGL is also widely taught in colleges and universities and is well worth learning.

Elsevier
This online bookstore features books covering all aspects of computer graphics including animation, modelling and rendering.

The WorldForge Project
The WorldForge Project is developing a complete, distributable framework for massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. The system will include a number of fully developed roleplaying worlds with unique maps, histories, creatures and legends.

Activate Games

Game culture sites:

GamePolitics

Women In Games

GayGamer.net

GamerDad: Gaming with Children
Gamer Dad - a blog about video games, parenting, violence and children. American Andrew S. Bub reviews games (and films and television), and provides a forum where parents can ask questions and discuss issues of concern to them and their children.

GetGameSmart.com
The site offers tools and hints and tips to help create a dialogue between parents and kids regarding "smart" videogame playing.

Magazines

Game Developer Magazine

The Escapist

3D World
Monthly UK magazine looking at 3D graphic tips and techniques as well as developments in computer generated imagery for film, TV, games, online, etc.

Develop
UK monthly trade magazine with news and reviews of development tools/processes etc.

Edge
Monthly UK magazine covering industry developments and trends as well as game previews and reviews.

Game Developer
US magazine featuring articles on development, post mortems etc.

GamesTM
Monthly UK magazine covering industry developments and trends as well as game previews and reviews.

MCV
Weekly PR and marketing trade paper with all the latest news and events from the games industry.

---

ART

Books

Scott Eaton - Amatomy Books
A selection of books on anatomy.

Andrew Loomis. (Fun With a Pencil (1939), Figure Drawing For All It's Worth (1943), Creative Illustration (1947), Successful Drawing (1951), this book was also republished in a revised edition as Three Dimensional Drawing, Drawing The Head And Hands (1956), The Eye Of The Painter (1961))

Websites

zBrush Central

Scott-Eaton.com
Excellent anatomy, with a useful "books to get" list.

3D Total

Pose Maniacs
30/60 second "Virtual" Life Drawing poses

Game Artisans

COLOURlovers
Useful colour palette site.

Colour Scheme Generator
Another useful colour palette site.

Threedy

Pixologic
For useful Zbrush tutorials.

CGTalk - Forums
Forum for digital artists.

3DLuVr.com
General 3D website and good for reference. Plenty of tutorials, discussions and news on the industry - if you need a first point of contact as a 3D artist this is a good start.

ConceptArt.org
A great resource full of a wide range of concept art examples. Check the competition, learn new techniques and get brutal feedback on your work.

PolyCount
Definitive guide to all things 3D. Post your work on the message boards and receive critique - or critique other's work for useful feedback. You can submit models and artwork in competitions most months.

CGTalk

Nate Robins
Explains the fundamentals of 3D graphics (lights, textures, viewports, etc).

Game Artist Forums

CG Socitety
A great article from CG society on Blitz art.

Skillset's VFX handbook
Skillset's VFX handbook provides VFX talent with roadmap to future success.

Magazines

ImagineFX
Especially good for digital 2D art.

3D World
3D World Magazine

---

ANIMATION

Books

The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams
Easily the most detailed and comprehensive book on character animation. Essential reading. If you only buy one book on animation, make it this one

Disney's the Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston
Widely considered to be one of the best books ever published on the topic of character animation. The book gives many glimpses into the workings of the animation masters at Disney's during the Golden Age of animation. It is a frequently used reference among professional animators.

Acting for Animators by Ed Hooks
The first book about acting theory that is written specifically for animators.

Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair
In this comprehensive title, famed animator Preston Blair shares his expertise on how to develop a cartoon character, create dynamic movement, and coordinate dialogue with action. Topics include character development, line of action, dialogue, timing, and, of course, animation!

Digital lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn
Crafting a perfect render in 3D software means nailing all the details. And no matter what software you use, your success in creating realistic-looking illumination, shadows and textures depends on your professional lighting and rendering techniques.

Draw the Looney Tunes: The Warner Bros. Character Manual by Dan Romanelli
For years, this was the textbook used by in-house artists to learn the ropes at Warner Bros.

Modelling a Character by Paul Steed
Written by one of the best and most respected 3D artists in the First-Person-Shooter genre, and responsible for creating all the characters in Quake 3. Step-by-step detailed instructions on how to make great 3D characters from the ground up.

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud A 215-page comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication along the way. Understanding Comics was a Harvey and Eisner winner, and was praised in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and Wired.

Force - Dynamic life drawing for animators by Mike Mattesi

Simon Schama - The Power of Art

Stop Staring!: Facial Modelling and Animation Done Right by Jason Osipa

Autodesk: Animator Friendly Rigging DVDs, Parts 1 - 4.

Character Animation Crash Course by Eric Goldberg

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures - Volume 1

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures - Volume 2

Websites

Elastik IK
Bend bows, stretchy IK solutions.

3D Buzz
Sign up and download videos from here to learn how to use the packages you need to know.

AnimationMeat.com
Animators should go to the notes section, download the notes and read them.

Bio Motion Lab
Useful for seeing how a real person walks in certain moods.

AnimationMentor.com

11 Second Club

John K Stuff - Blog

Keith Lango - Blog

Spline Doctors - Blog

Persistence of Vision - Blog

Cartoon Brew

Seward Street

Story Boredom - Blog

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels - Blog

The Blackwing Diaries - Blog

The Animation Podcast

Spungella Animation Blog

framefilter.blogspot.com
Storyboarding / visualising / cinematography

Karen J Lloyd' Storyboard Blog
Storyboarding / visualising / cinematography

moviescreenshots.blogspot.com
Storyboarding / visualising / cinematography

Kyle Kenworthy's Animation Blog
Acting reference

Audiomotion
This site has free mocap to download and experiment with.

Magazines

Animation Magazine
Monthly US magazine looking at animation developments in TV, film, games, etc.

---

AUDIO

Books

Audio-Vision by Michel Chion
Quite an esoteric book and favoured by academics, but worth a look all the same.

Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema - David Sonnenschein

Sound Recording Practice, by John Borwick
(a multi-author book complied by Borwick)

The Art of Digital Audio by John Watkinson

Websites

Audio section of Gamasutra

FilmSound.org

Magazines

Sound on Sound

Audio Engineering Society

---

DESIGN

Books

Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen
Games have become as much a genre of pop culture as film or television, but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman offer an impassioned defence and definition of this emerging field.

Game Design, Theory and Practice by Richard Rouse (Wordware Publishing Inc)
This goes through the whole process from idea to final code and has several interviews with top name coders. It also goes through how to write a GDD etc. It is a theory book though, not technical, and can be very informative and useful (it also has a CD with several software development packages on it).

Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games by Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Twain, Steven Hoffman
Game design basics.

Gender Inclusive Games Design by Sheri Graner-Ray
A fascinating insight into the considerations you should be making when designing games for a non-typical audience. Full of ideas that can feel counter-intuitive to people who love video games the way they are.

The Back Of The Napkin by Dan Roam
An excellent guide to expressing complex ideas via diagrams for easy understanding. It's not written with game design in mind, but it's easy to see how the ideas can be appropriated and used to explain exactly how and why your game mechanics fit together. Since communication is such a crucial part of a designer's role, this book can provide you with some invaluable tools.

Swords and Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-playing Games by Neal Hallford
Decipher the arcane mysteries behind role-playing game development tools like plot trees, world bibles, design documents, and game scripts.

Game Design Secrets of the Sages
This book is a few years old now, but does a good job of covering the theories behind a broad range of Game Development areas including art, design, sound, programming, PR and marketing.

Screenwriting Updated by Linda Aronson
This was intended as a guide to writing for TV and film, but it's very applicable to the games industry. The focus is on the structure of a story and gives practical strategies for creating or improving your narratives. This may be more useful for the more experienced, rather than outright beginners.

Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster
Authored by Ralph Koster, Chief Creative Officer of Sony Online Entertainment, A Theory of Fun for Game Design features a novel way of showing interactive designers how to improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun.

Architecture: Form, Space and Order (Paperback) by Francis D. K. Ching
A classic introduction to the principles of architecture.

Websites

Adventure Games Studio
A free game creation tool.

The Valve Developer Community

Gamasutra - Level Design

Kieron Gillen's Workblog

Game Career Guide
An excellent article called "Student Illusions About Being a Game Designer"

Gamestar Mechanic
This is an interesting new game design initiative for children, particularly as it's a free to play and create/subscription model. E-Line media is run (at time of posting) by Alan Gershenfeld, ex-Activision and currently co-chair of Games for Change which is a US-based organisation that has been lobbying for the use of games in social and educational arenas.

---

MANAGEMENT

Books

Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin) by Mike Cohn

Game Production Handbook: by Heather Chandler

Leading a Software Development Team (The practical solutions series) by Richard Whitehead

Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules by Steve C. McConnell

Introduction to Game Development (Charles River Media Game Development) by Steve Rabin

Websites

Wikipedia - The basics of Project Management

Wikipedia - The basics of Software Project Management

Wikipedia - General information on the software development process

---

PROGRAMMING

Free Software

While the commercial software used in professional game development is often expensive, there are a selection of free alternatives you can download and start using right now. Here we present a few options:

Free Programming Resources

Microsoft Visual Studio Express
Slimmed-down version of Microsoft's premier development environment used extensively throughout the games industry. Learning to write C++ with Visual Studio will stand you in good stead for your career.

Microsoft DirectX 10 SDK
Software Development Kit for the DirectX libraries essential to any game development for PC platforms. Extensive documentation and samples for this ubiquitous cutting edge SDK make it an excellent resource.

Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition
Free version of the heavyweight Maya modelling, animation and rendering package, ideal for creating resources for game development.

Microsoft XNA
XNA Game Studio 3.0 enables programmers to create video games for Windows and the Xbox 360 console (with an active XNA Creators Club membership) using optimised cross-platform gaming libraries based on .NET. Most large established games companies will not use XNA, because it is based on C# rather than C++, but you can learn a great deal about how games are constructed and about console development.

Eclipse IDE
Cross-platform IDE for software development from the Eclipse Foundation. Not many games companies use this but it gives you an alternative to the standard that is Microsoft Visual Studio.

Blender.org
Open source 3D modelling package with a Python-based game scripting language.

LibSDL SDK
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer.

Processing
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. If you have no experience in programming it is a great way to get immediate feedback for your ideas while learning a C++ style syntax.

Open source, GNU/Linux, BSD & Mac OSX
While the operating systems GNU/Linux, BSD and Mac OSX are very rarely used for developing code for console games, it is useful to understand how they differ from the Windows OS. Games consoles have their own bespoke operating systems and libraries which have little resemblance to DirectX or OpenGL. Many of the tools and utilities for consoles are based on GNU/Linux and have their origins in the open source community.
Ubuntu
Apple Developer Connection
SourceForge.net

Other platforms: Mobile Phones and Web games
There are a plethora of ideas and concepts from which any programmer can learn and your future career may not be directly working on games for Windows or games consoles. While Java is not used in console gaming, other video games platforms such as the web and mobile phones do use this language. Web games more commonly use Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) although the development environment is not free (or cheap).
Sun Developer Network - Java
Adobe Flash

Books

A sector of programming long ignored, there has recently been an explosion of publications about all aspects of game programming. Searching your favourite online bookshop will turn up literally hundreds of titles; we list here just a few that you might like to consider:

C++ Programming

Algorithms in C++ by Robert Sedgewick, published by Addison Wesley
Ideal for learning the nuts and bolts of C++ development, primarily concerning itself with list management (searching and sorting) and circumstances under which each list type is needed.

Beginning C++ by Ivor Horton
Several people here at Blitz learnt C++ from this book and also learnt Java from Ivor's Beginning Java book. The author's writing style is easy to understand and all the code fragments are well written and laid out, teaching the reader a tidy way to write C++ programs.

C/C++ Programmers Bible by Jamsa Klander, Jamsa Press
Not so much a 'learn how to program' book but rather a huge C/C++ reference. It's laid out so that everything is really easy to look up making it very useful to have sat by your keyboard while you're working.

Effective C++ by Scott Meyers
This exceptionally useful text offers Scott Myers's expertise in C++ class design and programming tips. The second edition incorporates recent advances to C++ included in the ISO standard, including namespaces and built-in template classes, and is required reading for any working C++ developer.

The C++ Programmers Guide by Bjarne Stroustrup
This book is absolutely vital and is written by the guy who invented the language. It thoroughly explains the ins-and-outs of C++.

Game Programming & Software Development


Game Programming Gems, Graphics Programming Gems and GPU Gems
These are quite advanced but incredibly useful, and every coder should have one. The text is very relevant, well organised, and easy to understand. Each book comes with a CD of tutorials and example code, which again are slightly advanced, but they do contain a huge number of tricks occasionally with example C source code.

Game Coding: Complete by Mike McShaffry

Game Programming for Dummies
It's a few years old now but the stuff it goes over is still quite useful for complete beginners. It starts you off with how to set up your compiler for DirectX, explains game loops and covers direct input and direct draw, but there's no 3D stuff in there.

Graphics & 3D Programming

Shader X series

3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development by Fletcher Dunn and Ian Parberry

Computer Graphics Principles and Practice by Foley, Van Dam, Feiner and Hughes.
The bible of computer graphics containing everything you ever wanted to know from lines to solid geometry. It doesn't just tell you the theory of each of the algorithms but also gives solid examples in C. The only down side is that some of the hardware examples are showing their age. This is one of those books that is useful to have around once you gain more experience and knowledge; you'll find yourself referring back to it with much more understanding of the subject.

Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications by Mark de. Berg, Marc van Kreveld, Mark Overmars, Otfried Schwarzkopf
A wide-ranging introductory text that exposes readers to the main themes in modern computational geometry. Each chapter introduces a sub-field of computational geometry via natural problems and basic algorithms; exercises and notes help to flesh out the chapter material.

Mathematics for 3D Programming & Computer Graphics by Eric Lengyel
It's hard to get away from 3D maths in computer games and this book covers all the major areas specifically aimed at the games programmer. This book explains everything maths related that you need to know - vector and matrix maths, quaternions and collision checking. Starts simple and explains how things are useful before going all the way to the full mathematical proofs.

Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe
A really useful book for getting started in games programming using DirectX. It's a little out-dated now and the book only covers 2D, but it is well written and covers all the main concepts which can be transferred into 3D games programming.

The OpenGL Superbible
Probably the single best book for programming using OpenGL. Although OpenGL has fallen out of fashion, this book and learning OpenGL can be a good starting point into 3D as it is more initially accessible than DirectX. The book covers all the projection, culling, texturing, etc. which are relevant to any graphics API you finally use.

AI Programming

A.I. Game Programming Wisdom series

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russel & Norvig
This is a recommended general AI text from a number of sites and is also one of the recommended texts on degree courses. It contains all the useful searching algorithms including A* and MiniMax and is covered with easy-to-understand examples.

Physics Programming

Game Physics by David H. Eberly
Physics for Game Developers by David M. Bourg
A very good (if a little advanced) book describing how the laws of physics can be applied to a game situation. Contains annotated C code.

Physics for Game Developers by O'Reilly
A good introduction for people interested in putting physics in games.

Websites

As with most things on the Internet, there are more game development websites than you can shake a stick at. Put 'Game Development' or 'Game Programming' into your favourite search engine and click away. It is important to separate game development from game programming. Also, which of these you get the most from will depend on your favourite aspect of game programming. To get you started we list here just a few:

Programming

Online programming tutorial teaches Javascript
JavaScript tutorial site attracts 20,000 users

Google AppInventor
Allows you to create Android apps and games using the Scratch programming environment. It’s also all cloud-hosted which is quite neat.

Eclipse.org

Java Developer Resources, Java Programming Center - Young Developers
Java resources

Richard Bowles' Beginner's Guide to C++

DirectX: Advanced Graphics on Windows

Alice.org
Alice v2.0 is the next major version of the Alice 3D Authoring system, from the Stage3 Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. It has been completely rewritten from scratch over the past few years. The focus of the Alice project is to provide the best possible first exposure to programming for students ranging from middle schoolers to college students.

Blitz Research
An excellent entry-level programming package that will teach you the principles of 2D and 3D programming without making you learn C++ first.

Processing 1.0
Another entry level programming system that you can use to test out simple projects without learning C++ and all the libraries first.

Game Programming

Free Programming Resources

Game AI
A useful resource for AI programmers with plenty of links to websites and book recommendations.

GameDev.net & Game Development Wiki
The site contains many tutorials for hobbyists and professionals alike, with a noticeable focus on computer programming.

DevMaster.net

CodeGuru: Games

Toymaker

FlipCode
This site is no longer maintained but you can get some interesting stuff from the archives though (FlipCode Archives)

Game Toolkits

The Game Creators - GDK

Microsoft - XNA Developer Center

---