The journey continues with this ALL NEW volume in the Game Programming Gems series! As with the first two volumes, a dynamic group of some of the best game programmers in the industry have generously joined together to share their insights and techniques. Their ready-to-use ideas, tips, and solutions, will help save hours of programming time, prevent redundancy, and leave you with more time to add cutting-edge features to your own games.

Covering all the key areas of game development, this invaluable resource delves deep into the problems often encountered by programmers, and provides practical, valid solutions. Each section is edited by an expert in the field to ensure that the ideas are original, accurate, and useful for a variety of game development projects. In addition to covering Mathematics, Graphics, General Programming, Audio, and Artificial Intelligence, Game Programming Gems 3 also includes an all new section on Network and Multiplayer games.

This is a must-have reference, and series, for every game developer. If you are just getting started, this book offers a true cross-section of the challenges youíll face, and provides a variety of additional references to help you find all the resources you need to advance your skills and knowledge. If youíre an expert already, youíll find new ideas and techniques to help save plenty of valuable programming time.

Features

General Programming: Scheduling game events, object-composition framework, C-style macros, function-binding code generation, handle-based smart pointers, custom STL allocators Mathematics: Fast base-2 functions, using vector fractions, approximations to trigonometric functions, constrained inverse kinematics, cellular automata for physical modeling Artificial Intelligence: Optimized machine learning with GoGap, terrain analysis in an RTS, tactical path-finding with A*, a fast approach to navigation meshes Graphics: T-junction elimination and retriangulation, fast heightfield normal calculation, realistic character locomotion, a programmable vertex shader compiler, procedural texturing Network and Multiplayer: Minimizing latency in real-time strategy games, scaling multiplayer servers, template-based object serialization, secure sockets Audio: Audio compression with Ogg Vorbis, creating a compelling 3D audio environment, obstruction using axis-aligned bounding boxes, using the biquad resonant filter

On the CD

(Windows) The CD-ROM is packed with portable source code in C & C++. Most of the techniques will work on all platforms, however, there are some techniques which will only work on Windows/ DirectX. Also included are demos of many of the techniques described in the book, the DirectX8.1 SDK, the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT), the glSetup Monolithic version, and high resolution versions of the color plates.

SECTION EDITORS

Kim Pallister, General Programming
John Byrd, Mathematics
Steve Woodcock, Artificial Intelligence
Jeff Lander, Graphics
Andrew Kirmse, Network and Multiplayer
Scott Patterson, Audio

CONTRIBUTORS

Thor Alexander, Jason Beardsley, Oscar Blasco, Ben Board, Martin Brownlow, Phil Burk, John Byrd, Drew Card, Christopher Christensen, Wagner Correa, Mark DeLoura, Thomas Demachy, Mike Ducker, Eddie Edwards, Charles Farris, Tom Forsyth, David Fox, Byon Garrabrant, Miguel Gomez, Robin Green, Jim Greer, Soren Hannibal, Michael Harvey, Brian Hawkins, Garin Hiebert, Dan Higgins, Greg Hjelstrom, Naty Hoffman, Don Hopkins, Kenneth Hurley, Pete Isensee, John Isidoro, Jan Kautz, Paul Kelly, Andrew Kirmse, James Klosowski, Adam Lake, Jeff Lander, William Leeson, Eric Lengyel, Frank Luchs, Carl S. Marshall, James McNeill, Mike Milliger, Kenny Mitchell, Jack Moffitt, Aaron Nicholls, Chris Oat, Kim Pallister, Scott Patterson, Allen Pouratian, Steve Rabin, Justin Randall, Eric Robert, Gabriel Rohweder, Greg Seegert, Jason Shankel, Claudio Silva, Zack Booth Simpson, Greg Snook, William van der Sterren, Jan Svarovsky, Dante Treglia, Alex Vlachos, Carlo Vogelsang, Jason Weber, Stephen White, Steven Woodcock, Thomas Young, Mark Zarb-Adami

Dante Treglia is the lead software engineer at Nintendo of America's Software Development Support Group where he supports the Nintendo GameCube development community.