Giveaway: Starling Game Development Essentials

Daniel Sperl on January 17, 2014

The first Starling book came out shortly after the framework’s official launch, more than two years ago. Seeing a complete book about my work being written and published — it always felt unreal to me and left me speechless!

Now, you can imagine how exhilarating it was when I found out that yet another book was about to be created! As one of its technical reviewers, I was able to closely follow its development and help shape it up.

That book is called Starling Game Development Essentials and more or less picks you up where Thibault finished: describing the advanced techniques that you need for more ambitious projects. The book, written by the experienced Starling Developer Juwal Bose, takes you step-by-step through the development of a sophisticated Isometric game: from the first prototype up to deployment to web and mobile.

Here is an overview of the topics that are covered:

• Learn about game states and the game loop which are an integral part of any game
• Apply isometric transformation equations and logic for converting 2D grid-based levels into 3D isometric view
• Set up an Isometric level editor that exports level data, thereby easing level creation and speeding up development
• Configure the game for same device multiplayer
• Use Pathfinder for AI path finding which will help the enemy soldiers track their destinations
• Integrate Flox to track the game’s usage and for online leaderboards
• Organize deployment to the App Store and Google Play with all the necessary icons, certificates, and launch images

More information can be found on the book’s official page.

I want to use this opportunity to thank the book’s author, Juwal Bose, for all his efforts. He patiently listened to my advice and criticism and always went the extra mile to make the book easy to follow and full of useful strategies. Thanks for your great work, Juwal!

Thanks goes also to Packt Publishing who initiated the whole project. When Packt sells a book written on an open source project, they pay a royalty directly to that project; and that’s the case with Starling, too!

Win a free copy!

Furthermore, we have teamed up with Packt to organize a giveaway of the book! All you need to do is to leave a comment below, telling us which topic of the book interests you the most. We will then randomly select three readers and send them each an e-book.

The contest will close on 24th of January. Winners will be contacted by email, so be sure to use your real email address when you comment!

Update 2014/01/24: The winners are chosen!

First of all, thanks a lot for the amazing response to our giveaway! Almost 90 comments, that’s definitely a new record on gamua.com!

I found it appropriate to let “Math.random()” pick the lucky winners, and here they are! Congratulations to the readers “bitlaslt”, “Bali” and “Roberto Capuano” — you will get an e-mail shortly with the information about how to claim your prize. Have fun with the book!

To all the others: we’ll try to make similar giveaways in the future, promised! Be sure to follow our Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus feeds to stay in touch.