The Advanced Game Developer's Toolkit

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Getting Started

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 1-3

3. Using Tiled Editor

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 5-34

4. Tile-Based Collision

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 35-66

5. Isometric Maps

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 67-100

6. Pathfinding Basics

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 101-129

7. Finding the Shortest Path

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 131-161

8. More Fun with Tile-Based Games

   • Rex van der Spuy

   Pages 163-182

9. Back Matter

   Pages 183-185

   PDF

Master the most important skills and techniques you need to know for professional HTML5 and JavaScript 2D game development. This book delves into many of the great classic techniques of video game design.

You’ll discover how to develop games and game levels using Tiled Editor, how to implement tile-based collision, how to design advanced pathfinding and enemy AI systems, the fundamentals of broad-phase collision, and how to make isometric games. All the techniques and supporting code are explained in an easy-to-understand manner and written in a general way so that they can be applied to any game engine or technology that you’re comfortable using.

You'll find detailed working examples, with dozens of illustrations and many concepts you can freely apply to your own projects. All the math and programming techniques are elaborately explained and examples are open-ended to encourage you to think of original ways to use these techniques in your own games. You can use what you learn in this book as the basis for making games for desktops, mobile phones, tablets, or the Web.

The Advanced Game Developer's Toolkit is a great next step if you already have some JavaScript game-making- experience, or a great continuation if you've already read Advanced Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript by the same author.

What You'll Learn

• Work with advanced tile-based design techniques for puzzle, platform and maze games
  
• Use Tiled Editor to build game worlds
• Build path-finding and AI systems using Line of Sight and A* (A-Star)
• Make isometric games
• Manage complexity to build games of any size that scale seamlessly

Who This Book Is For 

Video game developers with some experience who want to learn the essential techniques they need to know to take their skills to the next level and for readers who want to understand and fine-tune every line of code they write, without resorting to quick fixes. 

• game development
• javascript
• tiled editor
• game design
• video games

• HAMILTON, Canada

  Rex van der Spuy

Rex van der Spuy is a leading expert on video game design and interactive graphics, and he is the author of the popular Foundation and Advanced series of books about how to make video games. Rex has designed games and done interactive interface programming with Agency Interactive (Dallas), Scottish Power (Edinburgh), DC Interact (London), Draught Associates (London), the Bank of Montreal and TVO (Canada). He’s also built game engines and interactive interfaces for museum installations for PixelProject (Cape Town, South Africa), and built “Ga,” the world’s smallest full-featured 2D game engine, and its full-featured sister engine, “Hexi.” He created and taught advanced courses in game design for many years at the Canadian School of India (Bangalore, India). The highlight of his career was programming video games on the Annapurna glacier at 4,500 meters (which, to his delight, was 1,000 meters higher than the maximum permissible operating altitude of his laptop).

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