The Black Art of Multiplatform Game Programming

THE BLACK ART OF MULTIPLATFORM GAME PROGRAMMING covers all the skills necessary to create amazing games. It will take you all the way from pixel plotting to full-blown game development. Written with beginners in mind, this book assumes no prior knowledge of game programming–anyone can learn how to program exciting video games using this book. Inside you’ll find an introduction to game development on multiple platforms using SDL, extensive coverage of coding techniques used by programming gurus, a complete guide to game engine design and implementation, a modern approach to software architecture, and advanced programming procedures and optimizations. Downloadable files include all the source code used in this book, video tutorials for each chapter, standard tools used for game development, and the SDL standard development library.

Conflict Andromeda, the final game made in the book.

The image scaling demo displaying a monster as it appears to approach the screen.

A Pong-style game made in the book.

A Breakout-style game made in the book.

The image rotation demo made in the book displaying a small spaceship.

The factory/scripting demo made in the book displaying a world populated with sprites.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Workstation.
Chapter 2: Entering the Digital Domain.
Chapter 3: Tapping into the World of Graphics.
Chapter 4: Interacting with the Metrics.
Chapter 5: Blasting Music and Sound Effects.
Chapter 6: Your First Playable Video Game.
Chapter 7: Rethinking the Paddle Game.
Chapter 8: Designing a Game Engine.
Chapter 9: Crafting Levels with Tile Maps.
Chapter 10: Forging Worlds with Scene Management.
Chapter 11: Inside the Mass Production Zone with Factories and Scripts.
Chapter 12: The Final Frontier.
Chapter 13: SDL 2.0 and the Future.