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Comment by darkmatterrat | Hacker News Reader

I was hoping it would be a list about game design, game programming, history or anything substantive. Unfortunately nothing really of substance there.

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Recently I read Game Programming Patterns by Bob Nystrom. Written in a really conversational tone but still includes pseudo code outlining each pattern. Really enjoyed it.

Master's of Doom is a little over-reccomended in this category but for good reason. Feels like you're right there with Carmack and Romero as they build id. Another one I love.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I also strongly recommend Game Programming Patterns. I have recently bought it and it has been very helpful for me.

As an experienced developer, but new hobbyist game developer, the book has perfect content density - not too introductory nor too mind-numbingly academic.

I recommend this book to my students, Bob writes so well. His crafting interpreters book https://craftinginterpreters.com/ is also brilliant, I wish I could write so well.

May i recommend Mike Acton? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc&t=1s

https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design

I thought they were ok.

But I used to like to read gamastura post-Mortems. And should add it back to my list (site renamed to the more generic : https://www.gamedeveloper.com/) Although their “pac man dossier” is still on the old site

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossi...

I picked up and “edge” magazine annual at microcenter. Decent read and backstories on some games.

For podcast of old time development stories the “-Apple time warp” is very infrequently updates but can be oddly very good. https://appletimewarp.libsyn.com/

For game design, any or all of these will easily be in most top lists:

- Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop

- Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design A Book of Lenses

- Steve Swink's Game Feel

- Scott Rogers' Level Up

- Skaff & others' Characteristics of Games

- Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun

- Joris Dormans & Ernest Adams' Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design

This one was just published but I'll happily bet on it:

- Richard LeMarchand's A Playful Production Process

I'd recommend Richard Bartle's "Designing Virtual Worlds" if you have any interest in the history and design of MMO's.

You have a very twisted idea of what the words "of substance" mean.

These articles are mostly a hollywoodization of the gaming industry. You can see that each of them could just as well have been written about movies and actors as about games. This seems to be extremely common among journalists in California, but I haven't seen it much elsewhere, I wonder if the problem is cross pollination between them and the movie industry there. Most people who play games doesn't care about games in this way, so to them these articles aren't substantive.

Not at all. Most of this is (IMO) dross and has no practical value.

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