Recommended literature for an aspiring game-developer

[Morientes]

I am currently a computer science student about to begin the master part of the education.
I am pretty confident using several programming languages as well as in the general workings of computers.
I would like, however, to begin studying the technique of creating computer games, I am of course thinking especially of the programming part (not creating graphics) and particularly AI and how 3d-engines work. Also some info on general practices in game development would be nice.

I wonder if anyone could recommend some literature I could buy as a good way to begin studying these subjects?

[ZylGadis]

There have not been any particularly good books in the past one or two years, but on the other hand, the old ones teach you pretty much everything you need to know - the rest is just following the latest APIs (e.g., the current version of OpenGL) and, if you feel that way, devising new algorithms for AI, for example. The best advice I can give you is to subscribe to O'Reilly's Safari at http://safari.oreilly.com/ , if you don't already have access through your university. It is an online collection of thousands of books, some of which are pure gems.

I develop games in Java, so I recommend the following: "Killer Game Programming in Java" by Andrew Davison (2005), and "Developing Games in Java" by Brackeen, Barker, and Vanhelsuwe (2003).

If you are more into using already existing engines (OGRE, Irrlicht, and the like), then look at their documentation.

Finally, if you are into creating innovative games as opposed to simply programming somebody else's ideas, you should look into books on game design. Andrew Rollings and Chris Crawford have several excellent books on the subject. I own a paper copy of "Game Architecture and Design" by Rollings and Morris and its first chapter is worth the entire book price by itself. Unfortunately it is not available on Safari, but other books by the above authors are - they give similar insights.

[badrunner]

Learn by doing, honestly. You can read and read, but just actually start making little games. If you dont have an original idea write a tetris game, then see how you like it.

To do any ai you need a solid background in logic, and especially game theory, but you would be amazed how good you can make ai appear just by hacking together random ideas. If you are a computer science graduate i would have expected you to have at least touched on these subjects, and have a basic enough knowledge to pick up the rest as you go.

If you want 3d graphics, you really need to understand 3d geometry (obviously) and matrices, again i would expect you to have knowledge of both from your degree.

Books wise, the red book (opengl reference) is the best thing you can have on your desk for 3d graphics. Only the great carmack doesnt need the reference book.

But like i say at the start, just dive in. Don't expect to write a 3d mmorpg with a self modifying world in one weekend, but you should expect to be able to write a tetris clone in a few hours, and work from there.

[Morientes]

Thank you for the advice!

I have of course touched some of the subjects in my education but not enough to feel totally confident. I don't know much about AI - other than simple ways of implementing it in a very primitive fashion - like e.g. finite state machines.

I guess you are right in the "learn by doing" approach. Would still like any book recommendations though! I am going to check out the ones you posted, thanks.