learn game development
While Josh Thompsons’ Linux For Beginners Guide, at first, looks like it may be yet another self-published Kindle book, it’s actually pretty good quality once you get into it. The book is not very long, and can probably be finished in an hour or two. The material covered is on the easier side, good for a beginner’s book, and the explanations are adequate.
Linux Command Line by Travis Booth is an okay introduction to Linux but all the errors and mistakes make it a confusing read. That said, I did learn a few tricks, like how to search for files or programs from the command line, so the short book was somewhat worthwhile. I also got it on my Amazon Unlimited plan, so it did not
Author William Shotts has done an amazing job with The Linux Command Line. I’ll admit I’m something of a Linux newbie, but I feel like I have learned so much from reading this book. The text is complex, yet approachable, and teaches lots of handy command line tips without being tied to a specific distro (though there is some brief discussion regarding packaging
Sams has always published solid content, and this book does not disappoint. In fact, I think one of the first game development books I read some 20 odd years ago was from Sams. This text on Unreal Engine 4 is comprehensive and worth reading (even if it is a few years old). Here the authors cover many important topics, like installing Unreal, working
Rachel Cordone’s Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Quick Start Guide is the perfect book for people with some programming chops, or users of other engines (like Unity), that want to get up to speed quickly with Unreal. I really liked how the author does not waste time explaining basic things (like what functions or variables are) and jumps to the practical steps for
This is the second book in the new game engine development series by acclaimed author and engine developer, Eric Lengyel. Though it is not strictly necessary to read in order, it is basically one book cut into sections, so you may want to get the first one, as well as the upcoming continuations of the series, to get the most out of it.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is a blockbuster tour through WebGL, with many performance optimizations and considerations not commonly found in other texts. Like typical gems collections, each chapter is written by a different author and focuses on one aspect of WebGL coding. There is a lot of coverage here, and I found the authors’ expertise to be second to
Of the top WebGL books I’ve read so far, I think I can say this one is the best. Not only is it well written, but it includes lots of detail about how rendering APIs work, 3d math, lighting concepts, and even some performance considerations at the end. It’s not a very long book, but it covers the fundamentals well. I also enjoyed
Understanding ECMAScript 6 delivers exactly what the subtitle proclaims, the definitive guide for JavaScript developers. While I have been working with Javascript for years now (and particularly ECMAScript when I was developing for Flash) I hadn’t really kept up with the recent developments. JavaScript always seemed to be missing important OOP concepts like classes or inheritance, and the ways to “fake” them with
WebGL Programming Guide is the first WebGL book that I can fully recommend. The authors stick to straight WebGL code (no libraries like Three.js) and explain everything in full detail. Since they focus more on the API than anything else, most of the samples are simple things like colored triangles or spinning cubes, but that is fine to learn the basics. I liked
