Now in full color, the 10th anniversary edition of this classic book takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video games, and examines the elements they share with traditional games such as checkers. At the heart of his exploration, veteran game designer Raph Koster takes a close look at the concept of fun and why it's the most vital element in any game. Why do some games become boring quickly, while others remain fun for years? How do games serve as fundamental and powerful l...

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date.

Developers, take note: databases aren't just for the IS group any more. You can build database-backed applications for the desktop, Web, embedded systems, or operating systems without linking to heavy-duty client-server databases such as Oracle and MySQL. This book shows how you to use SQLite, a small and lightweight database that you can build right into your application during development. Applications that handle data have an enormous advantage today, and with SQLite, you'll discover how t...

Processing opened up the world of programming to artists, designers, educators, and beginners. This short book gently introduces the core concepts of computer programming and working with Processing. Written by the co-founders of the Processing project, Reas and Fry, Getting Started with Processing shows you how easy it is to make software and systems with interactive graphics.

If you're an artist looking to develop interactive graphics programs or a programmer on your way to becoming an arti...

The Student's Guide to VHDL is a condensed edition of The Designer's Guide to VHDL, the most widely used textbook on VHDL for digital system modeling. The Student's Guide is targeted as a supplemental reference book for computer organization and digital design courses.Since publication of the first edition of The Student's Guide, the IEEE VHDL and related standards have been revised. The Designer's Guide has been revised to reflect the changes, so it is appropriate that The Student's Guide al...

User interface (UI) design rules and guidelines, developed by early HCI gurus and recognized throughout the field, were based on cognitive psychology (study of mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language), and early practitioners were well informed of its tenets. But today practitioners with backgrounds in cognitive psychology are a minority, as user interface designers and developers enter the field from a wide array of disciplines. HCI practitioners today have enough expe...