Gary Rosenzweig's ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University shows you how  to use ActionScript, the programming language behind Flash CS3 Professional. The lessons teach you all the basics of ActionScript programming through game examples, but the code can be easily adapted to non-game-oriented projects, such as web training and advertising. Written by a real-world Flash developer, this book presents you with the source code of 16 complete games and lays the foundation for you to create your own games. Gary also provides a companion website - flashgameu.com,  which contains files, updates, new content, Gary's blog and much more.

Many young programmers are interested in game programming. Learn VB .NET Through Game Programming is a self-paced learning tutorial designed to help any developer master the basics of object-oriented programming (OOP) with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. Unlike other books on OOP, this easy-to-understand book provides readers with peer-level language, while illustrating concepts with definitive and intuitive game programming examples.

The goal of this book is to teach you how to get started programming in Visual Basic .NET by developing games. This book doesn’t intend to be a complete treatise of all the features and capabilities of this latest version of VB. Instead, it provides a series of example programs that illustrate basic features of the language and begins the huge task of introducing you to the contents of the .NET Framework. In addition, I introduce one more important programming concept—the concept of design. Now that object-oriented languages are more common, people have found that the various objects in a program can be designed to interact with each other in different ways; these interactions can make the program more or less complex or more or less adaptable to future features or enhancements.

To illustrate the importance of design on a program, I’ve taken the time to walk you through the development process of several of these programs rather than simply presenting you with the final version of the game. By learning how to solve a program one way, then improving upon that design in a second or third version of the program, you’ll begin to recognize when your own designs might be headed down a wrong path and some redesign is in order.

This book assumes you’ve had at least some experience in software development before diving into the first chapter and that you now want to learn Visual Basic .NET. Perhaps you’re a VB 6 programmer, for example, in which case this book will help describe the syntactical differences between the languages, as well as introduce you to the .NET Framework classes that will be new to you. Perhaps you’re experienced in an older technology such as mainframe programming and are looking to update your skill set to something more modern. Whatever the case, my assumption is that as you crack open Chapter 1, “Developing Your First Game,” you’ve written programs in some other language so that you have a jumping-off point.

Microsoft DirectX is an advanced suite of multimedia APIs built directly into Microsoft Windows operating systems. DirectX provides a standard development platform for Windows-based PCs by enabling software developers to access specialized hardware features without having to write hardware-specific code. DirectX was first introduced in 1995 and is the recognized standard for multimedia application development on the Windows platform. Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C# will illustrate the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process many facets of the DirectX 9 software will be demonstrated. The C# language is used to show the power of developing a game using a Rapid Application Development (RAD) language. During the course of the book, readers will learn to develop an off-road driving game that brings such features as management of large scenes, environmental effects, and physics into play.

Welcome to the exciting world of 3D graphics creation with DirectX 9! "Beginning DirectX® 9" is your introductory guide to creating realistic virtual worlds and characters for games. This true beginner's guide offers easy-to-follow instructions for getting your first DirectX program up and running. Then it's on to 3D concepts and Direct3D® as you use DirectX 9 to begin designing and building your own 3D worlds. Expand your DirectX knowledge with an introduction to sound processing with DirectSound® and user input with DirectInput®. Wrap things up as you complete a comprehensive project that shows you how to apply each new concept. Bring amazing fantasy worlds to life with the power of DirectX 9!

Detailing the history, techniques, and mathematics of sudoku—a logic puzzle that has become a worldwide phenomenon—this resource answers such questions as Where did sudoku originate? How do the puzzles work? and What is the science behind sudoku? Ideal for curious minds and logic lovers alike, this companion includes a full discussion on constraint programming—a newly developed branch of computer science used to solve sudoku puzzles—and applies these problem-solving principles to other fields. Numerous sudoku grids, ranging in difficulty from beginner to expert, are also included.