Game Programming Gems 7

by Jacobs, Scott

• ISBN13: 9781584505273
• ISBN10: 1584505273
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-22
• Publisher: Cengage Learning

Summary

Welcome to the seventh volume of the must-have reference series for game developers, Game Programming Gems, the series that helped define the standards for game programming and continues to be an essential source for new, innovative techniques. "Game Programming Gems 7" provides the tools and inspiration that game developers need to excel. Featuring cutting-edge, ready-to-use techniques contributed by industry veterans and experts, this new collection is a key resource for inspiration, insight, and a plethora of time-saving, ready-to-use methods for the developer’s tool box! Gems 7 answers the needs of passionate developers, eager newcomers, voracious production requirements, and the demand for innovating and entertaining gameplay. Covering all the key development areas including math and physics, artificial intelligence, audio, and even scripting and data-driven systems, each section is edited by an expert in the field to ensure that the ideas are original, accurate, and useful.There are gems that contribute directly to a player’s experience of the game, including audio production gems and human-game interactions. Does your development team include a DBA? Inside you’ll find a gem that suggests ways to integrate your object system with a relational database. Recognizing the need for good solutions for managing ever-increasing team sizes and facilitating efficient internal and external communications, there is a networking gem that applies tools to multiplayer development that are common to many network administrators, but may not yet have widespread use in our industry. Dig into this new volume of useful, practical ideas and techniques and get ready to make games that are more inventive, entertaining, and satisfying!

Table of Contents

General Programming	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
Efficient Cache Replacement Using the Age and Cost Metrics	p. 5
High Performance Heap Allocator	p. 15
Optical Flow for Video Games Played with Webcams	p. 25
Design and Implementation of a Multi-Platform Threading Engine	p. 35
For Bees and Gamers: How to Handle Hexagonal Tiles	p. 47
A Sketch-Based Interface to Real-Time Strategy Games Based on a Cellular Automaton	p. 59
Foot Navigation Technique for First-Person Shooting Games	p. 69
Deferred Function Call Invocation System	p. 81
Multithread Job and Dependency System	p. 87
Advanced Debugging Techniques	p. 97
Math and Physics	p. 107
Introduction	p. 109
Random Number Generation	p. 113
Fast Generic Ray Queries for Games	p. 127
Fast Rigid-Body Collision Detection Using Farthest Feature Maps	p. 143
Using Projective Space to Improve Precision of Geometric Computations	p. 153
XenoCollide: Complex Collision Made Simple	p. 165
Efficient Collision Detection Using Transformation Semantics	p. 179
Trigonometric Splines	p. 191
Using Gaussian Randomness to Realistically Vary Projectile Paths	p. 199
AI	p. 205
Introduction	p. 207
Creating Interesting Agents with Behavior Cloning	p. 209
Designing a Realistic and Unified Agent-Sensing Model	p. 217
Managing AI Algorithmic Complexity: Generic Programming Approach	p. 229
All About Attitude: Building Blocks for Opinion, Reputation, and NPC Personalities	p. 249
Understanding Intelligence in Games Using Player Traces and Interactive Player Graphs	p. 265
Goal-Oriented Plan Merging	p. 281
Beyond A*: IDA* and Fringe Search	p. 289
Audio	p. 295
Introduction	p. 297
Audio Signal Processing Using Programmable Graphics Hardware	p. 299
MultiStream - The Art of Writing a Next-Gen Audio Engine	p. 305
Listen Carefully, You Probably Won't Hear This Again	p. 321
Real-Time Audio Effects Applied	p. 331
Context-Driven, Layered Mixing	p. 341
Graphics	p. 349
Introduction	p. 351
Advanced Particle Deposition	p. 353
Reducing Cumulative Errors in Skeletal Animations	p. 365
An Alternative Model for Shading of Diffuse Light for Rough Materials	p. 373
High-Performance Subdivision Surfaces	p. 381
Animating Relief Impostors Using Radial Basis Functions Textures	p. 401
Clipmapping on SM1.1 and Higher	p. 413
An Advanced Decal System	p. 423
Mapping Large Textures for Outdoor Terrain Rendering	p. 435
Art-Based Rendering with Graftal Imposters	p. 447
Cheap Talk: Dynamic Real-Time Lipsync	p. 455
Networking and Multiplayer	p. 463
Introduction	p. 465
High-Level Abstraction of Game World Synchronization	p. 467
Authentication for Online Games	p. 481
Game Network Debugging with Smart Packet Sniffers	p. 491
Scripting and Data-Driven Systems	p. 499
Introduction	p. 501
Automatic Lua Binding System	p. 503
Serializing C++ Objects into a Database Using Introspection	p. 517
Dataports	p. 535
Support Your Local Artist: Adding Shaders to Your Engine	p. 541
Dance with Python's AST	p. 555
Index
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.