Game Programming Patterns Kindle Edition

- a modern re-contextualization of the Gang of Four book.- not a book for discovering new and exotic design patterns.- a book that essentially goes through a list of GOF patterns and gives cleaner definitions and examples in the context of game development.- explanations are not only clear, but the concepts in each chapter start with the naive implementation, then gradual design improvements are added along with examples of how re-usability and de-coupling is improved. It's also an iterative process where there is a story being told about how the code is improving at each step.- Doesn't focus on a single project, or even smaller ones. There is no complete and running code in this book. It will give you examples of small problems that can be solved using the design patterns.- This book ages better than a more technical book because it decouples itself from technology, and focuses on addressing how code is designed.- There is a scary picture of the author on the back of the printed version.

This is an awesome book that is a must have for any software developer. Though experienced with general programming building boring office software I had always wanted to make video games but always found the mere idea of writing a video game to be an intimidating venture but this book gave me confidence because the author presents the architecture of a game in an easy to understand matter not from an academic perspective but from a perspective of experience given the author used to be a developer with Electronic Arts. The author even mentions some caveats with the patterns presented under certain scenarios and then gives some ideas on how to work around them which is great for an over thinking over engineering fellow as myself. If this book were to have an alternate title it would be, in my opinion; "Game Programming Demystified."Though the contents are available for free on the author's website I bought both the physical book and the Kindle version on release day to support the author's awesome work. As I recall the author started writing this on his own initiative while he worked at Electronic Arts and later published it in book form only after overwhelming demand. I am extremely appreciative of the author's generosity and him taking the time to share his industrial knowledge.

Being based largely on the original set of patterns outlined by the Gang of Four, anyone who has been a software developer for a decent amount of time, whether in the game industry or not, is very likely already at least passingly familiar with the patterns outlined in this book. Even so, I genuinely enjoyed the book's approach to explaining the patterns and how they might be best applied to game development specifically. It is written in a clear and very understandable style, with excellent examples and detailed explanations. Beginning gamedevs should be able to easily implement any of the patterns from first principles in their chosen programming language after reading the book, and even experienced gamedevs will appreciate the straightforward way that this book explains the subject matter.I would strongly recommend this book as essential reading material for anyone new to game development.

I must chime in with the others. This book is a fantastic book for programming in general, not just for games. It has a crystal clear look at how to be the benevolent architect of a very complicated piece of software without getting lost in exactly how your particular language does something. The code samples are technically C++, but are written so cleanly and stripped of all unnecessary parts that it feels like pseudo-code.Also, you can read the whole thing online right now. It's funny, it's an unbelievable game-maker spirit animal guide, it'll make your code better. Go there, use it, and come back and buy a copy.I bought the hard copy because I wanted this guy to get something for his incredible effort. Also, it looks pretty, and as he says, "doesn't need batteries". On that note, it's incredibly well typeset and laid out.I couldn't be happier with the book.

I read this book 2 years ago, during my senior year in college. It definitely helped me become a better software engineer overall as a lot of the concepts in the book can be applied to any kind of development, let alone games. It is written in a very friendly manner, concepts are explained clearly with beautiful examples derived from games and experience. Should have written this review 2 years ago maybe, but now that I think about it, it's better I wrote it now because now I can see how much I got out from this book. Definitely recommended to anyone who aspires to be a software engineer and going through a phase of game development like I did. Thanks, Robert! Looking forward to reading your next book!

Not only that the book informs the reader by using very specific examples when applying various patterns, but the author made sure the reader is guided from finding the proper solution up until finding possible flaws. While the book can be used as an absolute go to when trying to find a solution to your implementation I would suggest to take the book as an engineering course; it does show a good amount of patterns but doesn't leave those simple. It strips the pattern "it's shell" showing the good and the bad, where it can be applied and how, where it would fail and why, how to mitigate and further more. The book also contains code examples written in C++, but well organised and written such as even with 0 C++ experience, one could 100% understand! Additionally the book feels like a conversation with the author due to the pitch perfect puns and parentheses. The author's game development experience is shared among those rows.

I am 14 years old and I have been doing game development for over a year. I have probably read about up to 50 books on game developmet/programming but this is definitely the best. I understand this book perfectly and looking forward to implementing these patterns/theory into my games. I strongly recomend reading this book as you will come back to it repeatedly and you will learn A LOT. I really wish I read this book earlier. Anybody, young or old, asiring to beome a successful game developer should read this book.Thank you @Robert Nystrom for creating this wonderful book.P.S. Although, to gain a good understnding of this book you should be at an intermediete level in programming(in any language)as this book teaches you programmng methods/theory.

Read it in three days - that's how easy is to read. Having said that, it's worth reading twice, thrice and so on, because you will want to come back to fully understand each pattern individually, and then, back again, to understand how they can work together, and then again to relate to other patterns outside of the scope of this book.It will also help you to understand Game Engines (e.g. Unity), how they work underneath the surface and editor. How to optimize them and use the best of both worlds. Finally, it will refer to some nice concepts (data-oriented programming) and misconceptions (misuse of singletons).Really enjoyed reading it and will do so again as soon as possible.

Bought this as a gift for my brother - we've been getting into a bit of open source game server development recently, but he hasn't got as a strong theoretical grounding in programming as I do. I didn't get to read the whole book (hence why I didn't want to give a five star review), but I read three or four chapters reviewing design patterns, and they were helpful, intuitive and accurate. I can only hope the rest of the book continues in the same way!

Very nice book, goes into just enough detail to give you the concepts but leaves you to think about improvements, extensions or potential uses outside the ones listed. The patterns are classic programming patterns but given a slight twist of game dev. The author does a good job of explaining the patterns and how/where/why they might be used as well as some potential pitfalls. If you want extensive detail on game engines or how to make your first game this isn't the book, but it doesn't claim to be! The patterns within would be a great help to any budding C/C++/Java game developer (as well as many other mainly OOP based languages I'm sure). Don't expect to be able to write the next AAA title after reading this but you can be sure that your understanding of how games (and their code more specifically) are generally organised. Some of the patterns I felt could have been elaborated on a bit more but overall this book is a great read for anyone looking to get into game development.

Fantastic book and really helps to organise your coding.I've found this boom very easy to read, the author uses humour to help keep this book from being dull and I find this book gives you the key concepts needed without bombarding you with useless/ non relevant information.The script used in the book is C++ but can be adapted for other languages easily as the author has tried to accommodate for other languages by giving you the concepts.A must read if you are wanting to write your own games/ programs