Download or read book Flappy Bird written by Pixel Guides and published by Pixel Trash LLC. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flappy Bird - available previously on Andoid and iOS operating systems. The highly controversial game is just now catching on after almost a year after its initial release and demand for ways to get better at it haven't been higher. This guide will hopefully teach and help you succeed at getting your Flappy Bird through many pipes within the structured level. Note: This is a guide and not the game. The game is a free app and can be found in various places on the internet. It is not available anymore on any store.

Download or read book Real Games written by Mia Consalvo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we talk about games as real or not-real, and how that shapes what games are made and who is invited to play them. In videogame criticism, the worst insult might be “That's not a real game!” For example, “That's not a real game, it's on Facebook!” and “That's not a real game, it's a walking simulator!” But how do people judge what is a real game and what is not—what features establish a game's gameness? In this engaging book, Mia Consalvo and Christopher Paul examine the debates about the realness or not-realness of videogames and find that these discussions shape what games get made and who is invited to play them. Consalvo and Paul look at three main areas often viewed as determining a game's legitimacy: the game's pedigree (its developer), the content of the game itself, and the game's payment structure. They find, among other things, that even developers with a track record are viewed with suspicion if their games are on suspect platforms. They investigate game elements that are potentially troublesome for a game's gameness, including genres, visual aesthetics, platform, and perceived difficulty. And they explore payment models, particularly free-to-play—held by some to be a marker of illegitimacy. Finally, they examine the debate around such so-called walking simulators as Dear Esther and Gone Home. And finally, they consider what purpose is served by labeling certain games “real."

Download or read book App Quality written by jason arbon and published by Jason Arbon. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "App Quality: Secrets for Agile App Teams" gives agile and lean app teams an edge in building well-received apps, and accelerates them on the way to 5-stars. The book is written for app developers, testers and product managers. The book uses real world examples and data-driven techniques that any app team can apply to their designs, code, agile sprints, and product planning. "App Quality" gives your app team access to the best practices and hard-earned lessons from analyzing hundreds of millions of app store reviews, thousands of app testers testing hundreds of top apps, and conversations with top app teams. Included: Top 10 App Quality Monsters Top 10 Quality Attributes Tips for Developers, Testers, and Product Managers The book is aimed at both "Agile" and "Lean" app teams. The book is focused on analytics and practical, real-world examples of quality issues, and practical solutions to those quality issues. Whether the team is just starting to plan their next great app, or improving an existing one, following the recommendations and system outlined in this book will help get your app to 5 stars. "App Quality" walks through the "Top 10 App Quality Monsters". These are the top sources of quality issues in today's modern apps: App Deployment and Distribution, Device State and Fragmentation, Users, Real World, Reviews, Metrics, Competition, Security and Privacy, User Interface, and Agile Mobile Teams themselves. Each quality monster is described in detail, with specific best practices and tips for Developers, Testers, and Product Managers. The book also describes the "Top 10 Quality Attributes", learned from app store review analysis and app testing: Content, Elegance, Interoperability, Performance, Pricing, Privacy, Satisfaction, Security, Stability, and Usability. Each quality attribute is described in detail, with real world app examples, with specific best practices and tips Developers, Testers, and Product Managers and pointers to tools and services to improve app quality. Prepare for a deep dive on app store reviews. Deep analytics of what types of feedback people are leaving in the apps store reviews, by type, by frequency, per-category, etc. The book outlines ways to leverage this data to build a higher quality app, improve star ratings, and make users happier. Some myths about Agile for app teams are also debunked. Techniques for leveraging app store reviews for competitive analysis are also described in detail. App store reviews are critical to building a high quality app that is also perceived as high quality. Putting it all together, the book then walks through an example of applying all these great tips, best practices, and data, to a real-world app. See how an expert applies these techniques to a real world app, and see how it can easily apply to your app. See the impact on test planning, development practices, and product prioritization. Armed with the latest best practices, tips, and data-driven quality analysis, app teams can build solid apps with minimal effort and time. The secrets in "App Quality" gives agile and lean teams an edge in building well-received apps, and accelerate them on the way to 5-stars.

Download or read book Average Joe written by Shawn Livermore and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-09-09 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book covers numerous tech entrepreneurial founders and software developers, and the exciting brands or products that they created. It goes deep on a handful of them, narrowly divulging exactly how a few software developers and startup founders created breakthrough tech products like Gmail, Dropbox, Ring, Snapchat, Bitcoin, Groupon, and more. It highlights and unpacks the general hero-worship that the media and our own minds practice about tech founders and tech entrepreneurs. This idealization of tech success can create a paradox, preventing average tech professionals from their own successful journeys. This book provides hard evidence that anyone in tech can create, and anyone on the peripheral of tech can break through to the center where innovation, creativity, and opportunity meet. The anecdotes, stories, evidence, facts, arguments, logic, principles, and techniques provided in this book have helped individuals and businesses engage in slow creation cycles, improve the morale of their development teams, and increased their delivery potential of their technology solutions overall. Average Joe covers: Genius - The systematic deconstruction and debunking of the commonly held assumptions in the tech industry around supreme intelligence, and how that intelligence has been worshipped and sought after, despite the facts. Slow Creation - How to force-manufacture creative ideation. How conscious and subconscious cycles of patterns, details, and secrets can lead to breakthrough innovations, and how those P.D.S. cycles, and systematic mental grappling, can be conjured and repeated on a regular basis. Little-C Creativity - The conscious and miniature moments of epiphany that leak into our active P.D.S. cycles of Slow Creation. Flow - Why it's great, but also - why it's completely unreliable and unnecessary. How to perpetually innovate without relying on a flow state. Team Installation - How teams and companies can engage their employees in Slow Creation to unlock dormant ideas, stir up creative endeavors, and jumpstart fragile ideas into working products. User Manipulation - How tech products are super-charged with tricks, secret techniques, and neural transmitters like Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Cortisol; how those products leverage cognitive mechanisms and psychological techniques to force user adoption and user behaviors. Contrarianism - How oppositional and backward-thinking leaders create brand-new categories and the products which dominate those categories. Showmanship - How tech players have presented their ideas to the world, conjured up magic, manufactured mystique, and presented compelling stories that have captured their audiences. Sustainable Mystique Triad – A simple model for capturing audiences consistently without relying on hype and hustle.

Download or read book Computer Supported Education written by H. Chad Lane and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-08 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes selected, revised and extended papers from the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, CSEDU 2020, held as a virtual event in May 2020. The 25 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 190 submissions. The presented papers contribute to the understanding of relevant trends of current research on Computer Supported Education, including learning analytics, intelligent tutoring systems, virtual and augmented reality, MOOCs, and automated assessment systems.

Download or read book Connected Gaming written by Yasmin B. Kafai and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-12-23 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity. Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming—coding, collaboration, and creativity—and the move from “computational thinking” toward “computational participation.” Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industry's acceptance, and even promotion, of “modding” and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.

Download or read book Write Code Like a Pro written by Sarah Guthals and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CODERS ARE ROCK STARS Coders are the people who are building the future. You can stake your own claim on the future by learning pro coding techniques. Take a look inside to figure out how and why coders think a bit differently, the basics of building a working application with a professional coding language, and how to test your app to make sure it works. Get a jump on your future as a rock-star coder today! See the big picture – get a grip on how pro coders start and finish a project Know the code – get your hands on a pro coding language and put it to work Make things happen – create a working application you can share with friends

Download or read book Kivy Blueprints written by Mark Vasilkov and published by Packt Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended for programmers who are comfortable with the Python language and who want to build desktop and mobile applications with rich GUI in Python with minimal hassle. Knowledge of Kivy is not strictly required—every aspect of the framework is described when it's first used.

Download or read book Procedural Generation in Game Design written by Tanya Short and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-06-12 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a game can be an intensive process, and if not planned accurately can easily run over budget. The use of procedural generation in game design can help with the intricate and multifarious aspects of game development; thus facilitating cost reduction. This form of development enables games to create their play areas, objects and stories based on a set of rules, rather than relying on the developer to handcraft each element individually. Readers will learn to create randomized maps, weave accidental plotlines, and manage complex systems that are prone to unpredictable behavior. Tanya Short’s and Tarn Adams’ Procedural Generation in Game Design offers a wide collection of chapters from various experts that cover the implementation and enactment of procedural generation in games. Designers from a variety of studios provide concrete examples from their games to illustrate the many facets of this emerging sub-discipline. Key Features: Introduces the differences between static/traditional game design and procedural game design Demonstrates how to solve or avoid common problems with procedural game design in a variety of concrete ways Includes industry leaders’ experiences and lessons from award-winning games World’s finest guide for how to begin thinking about procedural design

Download or read book The Best Non Violent Video Games written by James Batchelor and published by White Owl. This book was released on 2023-10-30 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there were video games that weren’t about killing things? The world’s biggest entertainment medium has come under decades of scrutiny because of its violent content. But here’s a little known fact: from the very beginning, non-violent video games have done as much, if not more, to shape the industry than violent ones. The Best Non-Violent Video Games is the first ever guide to the full breath of interactive entertainment. Discover the true variety the medium has to offer and learn how developers constantly find new ways to engage people by challenging their minds, testing their reflexes, and even tugging at the heartstrings. Take a journey through more than three hundred video games, stretching back to the very dawn of the industry and extending right up to modern day indie hits. You’ll learn more about the origins of some of gaming’s biggest franchises, discover underrated gems from developers of all sizes, and perhaps even find some new favorites. Written by a journalist with over 15 years of industry experience and more than 30 years of gaming experience, this guide is for anyone seeking something truly different from the video games space without dealing with guns and gore, or those simply looking for a change of pace.

Download or read book Vintage Games 2 0 written by Matt Barton and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-05-08 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Super Mario Bros. Doom. Minecraft. It’s hard to imagine what life would be like today without video games, a creative industry that now towers over Hollywood in terms of both financial and cultural impact. The video game industry caters to everyone, with games in every genre for every conceivable electronic device--from dedicated PC gaming rigs and consoles to handhelds, mobile phones, and tablets. Successful games are produced by mega-corporations, independent studios, and even lone developers working with nothing but free tools. Some may still believe that video games are mere diversions for children, but today’s games offer sophisticated and wondrously immersive experiences that no other media can hope to match. Vintage Games 2.0 tells the story of the ultimate storytelling medium, from early examples such as Spacewar! and Pong to the mind blowing console and PC titles of today. Written in a smart and engaging style, this updated 2nd edition is far more than just a survey of the classics. Informed by hundreds of in-depth personal interviews with designers, publishers, marketers, and artists--not to mention the author’s own lifelong experience as a gamer--Vintage Games 2.0 uncovers the remarkable feats of intellectual genius, but also the inspiring personal struggles of the world’s most brilliant and celebrated game designers--figures like Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, and Roberta Williams. Ideal for both beginners and professionals, Vintage Games 2.0 offers an entertaining and inspiring account of video game’s history and meteoric rise from niche market to global phenomenon. Credit for the cover belongs to Thor Thorvaldson.

Download or read book Persuasive Technology written by Alexander Meschtscherjakov and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2016, held in Salzburg, Austria, in April 2016. The 27 revised full papers and 3 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 73 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections on individual differences, theoretical reflections, prevention and motivation, methods and models, games and gamification, interventions for behavior change, and design strategies and techniques.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Python written by Andrea Lonza and published by Packt Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Develop self-learning algorithms and agents using TensorFlow and other Python tools, frameworks, and libraries Key FeaturesLearn, develop, and deploy advanced reinforcement learning algorithms to solve a variety of tasksUnderstand and develop model-free and model-based algorithms for building self-learning agentsWork with advanced Reinforcement Learning concepts and algorithms such as imitation learning and evolution strategiesBook Description Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular and promising branch of AI that involves making smarter models and agents that can automatically determine ideal behavior based on changing requirements. This book will help you master RL algorithms and understand their implementation as you build self-learning agents. Starting with an introduction to the tools, libraries, and setup needed to work in the RL environment, this book covers the building blocks of RL and delves into value-based methods, such as the application of Q-learning and SARSA algorithms. You'll learn how to use a combination of Q-learning and neural networks to solve complex problems. Furthermore, you'll study the policy gradient methods, TRPO, and PPO, to improve performance and stability, before moving on to the DDPG and TD3 deterministic algorithms. This book also covers how imitation learning techniques work and how Dagger can teach an agent to drive. You'll discover evolutionary strategies and black-box optimization techniques, and see how they can improve RL algorithms. Finally, you'll get to grips with exploration approaches, such as UCB and UCB1, and develop a meta-algorithm called ESBAS. By the end of the book, you'll have worked with key RL algorithms to overcome challenges in real-world applications, and be part of the RL research community. What you will learnDevelop an agent to play CartPole using the OpenAI Gym interfaceDiscover the model-based reinforcement learning paradigmSolve the Frozen Lake problem with dynamic programmingExplore Q-learning and SARSA with a view to playing a taxi gameApply Deep Q-Networks (DQNs) to Atari games using GymStudy policy gradient algorithms, including Actor-Critic and REINFORCEUnderstand and apply PPO and TRPO in continuous locomotion environmentsGet to grips with evolution strategies for solving the lunar lander problemWho this book is for If you are an AI researcher, deep learning user, or anyone who wants to learn reinforcement learning from scratch, this book is for you. You’ll also find this reinforcement learning book useful if you want to learn about the advancements in the field. Working knowledge of Python is necessary.

Download or read book Handmade Pixels written by Jesper Juul and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of independent video games—creative, personal, strange, and experimental—and their claims to handcrafted authenticity in a purely digital medium. Video games are often dismissed as mere entertainment products created by faceless corporations. The last twenty years, however, have seen the rise of independent, or “indie,” video games: a wave of small, cheaply developed, experimental, and personal video games that react against mainstream video game development and culture. In Handmade Pixels, Jesper Juul examine the paradoxical claims of developers, players, and festivals that portray independent games as unique and hand-crafted objects in a globally distributed digital medium. Juul explains that independent video games are presented not as mass market products, but as cultural works created by people, and are promoted as authentic alternatives to mainstream games. Writing as a game player, scholar, developer, and educator, Juul tells the story of how independent games—creative, personal, strange, and experimental—became a historical movement that borrowed the term “independent” from film and music while finding its own kind of independence. Juul describes how the visual style of independent games signals their authenticity—often by referring to older video games or analog visual styles. He shows how developers use strategies for creating games with financial, aesthetic, and cultural independence; discusses the aesthetic innovations of “walking simulator” games; and explains the controversies over what is and what isn't a game. Juul offers examples from independent games ranging from Dys4ia to Firewatch; the text is richly illustrated with many color images.

Download or read book The Nature of Code written by Daniel Shiffman and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All aboard The Coding Train! This beginner-friendly creative coding tutorial is designed to grow your skills in a fun, hands-on way as you build simulations of real-world phenomena with “The Coding Train” YouTube star Daniel Shiffman. What if you could re-create the awe-inspiring flocking patterns of birds or the hypnotic dance of fireflies—with code? For over a decade, The Nature of Code has empowered countless readers to do just that, bridging the gap between creative expression and programming. This innovative guide by Daniel Shiffman, creator of the beloved Coding Train, welcomes budding and seasoned programmers alike into a world where code meets playful creativity. This JavaScript-based edition of Shiffman’s groundbreaking work gently unfolds the mysteries of the natural world, turning complex topics like genetic algorithms, physics-based simulations, and neural networks into accessible and visually stunning creations. Embark on this extraordinary adventure with projects involving: A physics engine: Simulate the push and pull of gravitational attraction. Flocking birds: Choreograph the mesmerizing dance of a flock. Branching trees: Grow lifelike and organic tree structures. Neural networks: Craft intelligent systems that learn and adapt. Cellular automata: Uncover the magic of self-organizing patterns. Evolutionary algorithms: Play witness to natural selection in your code. Shiffman’s work has transformed thousands of curious minds into creators, breaking down barriers between science, art, and technology, and inviting readers to see code not just as a tool for tasks but as a canvas for boundless creativity. Whether you’re deciphering the elegant patterns of natural phenomena or crafting your own digital ecosystems, Shiffman’s guidance is sure to inform and inspire. The Nature of Code is not just about coding; it’s about looking at the natural world in a new way and letting its wonders inspire your next creation. Dive in and discover the joy of turning code into art—all while mastering coding fundamentals along the way. NOTE: All examples are written with p5.js, a JavaScript library for creative coding, and are available on the book's website.

Download or read book How to Talk about Videogames written by Ian Bogost and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Videogames! Aren’t they the medium of the twenty-first century? The new cinema? The apotheosis of art and entertainment, the realization of Wagnerian gesamtkunstwerk? The final victory of interaction over passivity? No, probably not. Games are part art and part appliance, part tableau and part toaster. In How to Talk about Videogames, leading critic Ian Bogost explores this paradox more thoroughly than any other author to date. Delving into popular, familiar games like Flappy Bird, Mirror’s Edge, Mario Kart, Scribblenauts, Ms. Pac-Man, FarmVille, Candy Crush Saga, Bully, Medal of Honor, Madden NFL, and more, Bogost posits that videogames are as much like appliances as they are like art and media. We don’t watch or read games like we do films and novels and paintings, nor do we perform them like we might dance or play football or Frisbee. Rather, we do something in-between with games. Games are devices we operate, so game critique is both serious cultural currency and self-parody. It is about figuring out what it means that a game works the way it does and then treating the way it works as if it were reasonable, when we know it isn’t. Noting that the term games criticism once struck him as preposterous, Bogost observes that the idea, taken too seriously, risks balkanizing games writing from the rest of culture, severing it from the “rivers and fields” that sustain it. As essential as it is, he calls for its pursuit to unfold in this spirit: “God save us from a future of games critics, gnawing on scraps like the zombies that fester in our objects of study.”

Download or read book In Real Life written by Jon Mitchell and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology can help us with some of our most difficult work. It can also offer us endless distractions. Can technology help us, as individuals and communities, in our most important task, that of being a good person? Jon Mitchell sets out to identify and explore the ways in which we can develop a more thoughtful relationship with technology. Rather than only using our technological devices as a medium for connecting with the world, he recommends we rethink our relationship with technology, and see it as a resource that allows us to have a more intimate and personal relationship with ourselves and the world around us. Mitchell offers concrete practices for streamlining and improving the way we use technology in our daily lives. Writing in a relatable, conversational, easy-to-read style, Mitchell draws on his years of experience as a tech journalist and mindfulness practitioner to propose a rethinking of both the design of technology and its use.