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Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#
- By Jeremy Gibson Bond
- Published Jul 8, 2014 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the Game Design series.
Safari PTG
- Your Price: $69.99
Description
- Copyright 2015
- Dimensions: 7" x 9"
- Edition: 1st
- Safari PTG
- ISBN-10: 0-13-343957-7
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-343957-1
Learn Game Design, Prototyping, and Programming with Today’s Leading Tools: Unity™ and C#
Award-winning game designer and professor Jeremy Gibson has spent the last decade teaching game design and working as an independent game developer. Over the years, his most successful students have always been those who effectively combined game design theory, concrete rapid-prototyping practices, and programming skills.
Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development is the first time that all three of these disciplines have been brought together into a single book. It is a distillation of everything that Gibson has learned teaching hundreds of game designers and developers in his years at the #1 university games program in North America. It fully integrates the disciplines of game design and computer programming and helps you master the crucial practice of iterative prototyping using Unity. As the top game engine for cross-platform game development, Unity allows you to write a game once and deliver it to everything from Windows, OS X, and Linux applications to webpages and all of the most popular mobile platforms.
If you want to develop games, you need strong experience with modern best practices and professional tools. There’s no substitute. There’s no shortcut. But you can get what you need in this book.
COVERAGE INCLUDES
- In-depth tutorials for eight different game prototypes
- Developing new game design concepts
- Moving quickly from design concepts to working digital prototypes
- Improving your designs through rapid iteration
- Playtesting your games and interpreting the feedback that you receive
- Tuning games to get the right “game balance” and “game feel”
- Developing with Unity, today’s best engine for independent game development
- Learning C# the right way
- Using Agile and Scrum to efficiently organize your game design and development process
- Debugging your game code
- Getting into the highly competitive, fast-changing game industry
Sample Content
Table of Contents
Preface xxiv
Part I Game Design and Paper Prototyping 1
1 Thinking Like a Designer 3
You Are a Game Designer 4
Bartok: A Game Exercise 4
The Definition of Game 10
Summary 17
2 Game Analysis Frameworks 19
Common Frameworks for Ludology 20
MDA: Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics 20
Formal, Dramatic, and Dynamic Elements 24
The Elemental Tetrad 27
Summary 29
3 The Layered Tetrad 31
The Inscribed Layer 32
The Dynamic Layer 33
The Cultural Layer 34
The Responsibility of the Designer 36
Summary 37
4 The Inscribed Layer 39
Inscribed Mechanics 40
Inscribed Aesthetics 46
Inscribed Narrative 49
Inscribed Technology 58
Summary 59
5 The Dynamic Layer 61
The Role of the Player 62
Emergence 63
Dynamic Mechanics 64
Dynamic Aesthetics 70
Dynamic Narrative 75
Dynamic Technology 77
Summary 77
6 The Cultural Layer 79
Beyond Play 80
Cultural Mechanics 81
Cultural Aesthetics 82
Cultural Narrative 83
Cultural Technology 84
Authorized Transmedia Are Not in the Cultural Layer 85
The Cultural Impact of a Game 86
Summary 87
7 Acting Like a Designer 89
Iterative Design 90
Innovation 97
Brainstorming and Ideation 98
Changing Your Mind 101
Scoping! 103
Summary 104
8 Design Goals 105
Design Goals: An Incomplete List 106
Designer-Centric Goals 106
Player-Centric Goals 109
Summary 124
9 Paper Prototyping 125
The Benefits of Paper Prototypes 126
Paper Prototyping Tools 127
An Example of a Paper Prototype 129
Best Uses for Paper Prototyping 138
Poor Uses for Paper Prototyping 139
Summary 140
10 Game Testing 141
Why Playtest? 142
Being a Great Playtester Yourself 142
The Circles of Playtesters 143
Methods of Playtesting 146
Other Important Types of Testing 152
Summary 153
11 Math and Game Balance 155
The Meaning of Game Balance 156
Installing Apache OpenOffice Calc 156
Examining Dice Probability with Calc 157
The Math of Probability 165
Randomizer Technologies in Paper Games 170
Weighted Distribu