Building an RPG with Unity 2018. Leverage the power of Unity 2018 to build elements of an RPG. - Second Edition

Vahé Karamian

In a role-playing game (RPG), users control a character, usually in the game's imaginary universe. Unity has become a top choice for developers looking to create these kinds of immersive RPGs.Building an RPG with Unity 2018, based on building some of the most common RPG features, teaches you tips, tricks, and techniques that can be applied to your own game.To start with, the book guides you through the fundamentals of role-playing games. You will learn the necessary aspects of building an RPG, such as structuring the game environment, customizing characters, controlling the camera, and designing other attributes such as inventory and weapons. You will also explore designing game levels by adding more features. Once you have understood the bigger picture, you will understand how to tackle the obstacles of networking in Unity and implement multiplayer mode for your RPG games.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon the core RPG framework elements to create your own immersive games.

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x. Get to grips with building the foundations of an RPG using Unreal Engine 4.x

Alan R. Stagner, Steve Santello

Now that Unreal Engine 4 has become one of the most cutting edge game engines in the world, developers are looking for the best ways of creating games of any genre in the engine. This book will lay out the foundation of creating a turn-based RPG in Unreal Engine 4.12. The book starts by walking you through creating a turn-based battle system that can hold commands for party members and enemies. You’ll get your hands dirty by creating NPCs such as shop owners, and important mechanics, that make up every RPG such as a currency system, inventory, dialogue, and character statistics. Although this book specifically focuses on the creation of a turn-based RPG, there are a variety of topics that can be utilized when creating many other types of genres.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon core RPG framework elements to create your own game experience.

Building Analytics Teams. Harnessing analytics and artificial intelligence for business improvement

John K. Thompson, Douglas B. Laney

In Building Analytics Teams, John K. Thompson, with his 30+ years of experience and expertise, illustrates the fundamental concepts of building and managing a high-performance analytics team, including what to do, who to hire, projects to undertake, and what to avoid in the journey of building an analytically sound team. The core processes in creating an effective analytics team and the importance of the business decision-making life cycle are explored to help achieve initial and sustainable success.The book demonstrates the various traits of a successful and high-performing analytics team and then delineates the path to achieve this with insights on the mindset, advanced analytics models, and predictions based on data analytics. It also emphasizes the significance of the macro and micro processes required to evolve in response to rapidly changing business needs.The book dives into the methods and practices of managing, developing, and leading an analytics team. Once you've brought the team up to speed, the book explains how to govern executive expectations and select winning projects.By the end of this book, you will have acquired the knowledge to create an effective business analytics team and develop a production environment that delivers ongoing operational improvements for your organization.

Building and Automating Penetration Testing Labs in the Cloud. Set up cost-effective hacking environments for learning cloud security on AWS, Azure, and GCP

Joshua Arvin Lat

The significant increase in the number of cloud-related threats and issues has led to a surge in the demand for cloud security professionals. This book will help you set up vulnerable-by-design environments in the cloud to minimize the risks involved while learning all about cloud penetration testing and ethical hacking.This step-by-step guide begins by helping you design and build penetration testing labs that mimic modern cloud environments running on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Next, you’ll find out how to use infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions to manage a variety of lab environments in the cloud. As you advance, you’ll discover how generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can be leveraged to accelerate the preparation of IaC templates and configurations. You’ll also learn how to validate vulnerabilities by exploiting misconfigurations and vulnerabilities using various penetration testing tools and techniques. Finally, you’ll explore several practical strategies for managing the complexity, cost, and risks involved when dealing with penetration testing lab environments in the cloud.By the end of this penetration testing book, you’ll be able to design and build cost-effective vulnerable cloud lab environments where you can experiment and practice different types of attacks and penetration testing techniques.

Building and Delivering Microservices on AWS. Master software architecture patterns to develop and deliver microservices to AWS Cloud

Amar Deep Singh, Jeff Carpenter

Reliable automation is crucial for any code change going into production. A release pipeline enables you to deliver features for your users efficiently and promptly. AWS CodePipeline, with its powerful integration and automation capabilities of building, testing, and deployment, offers a unique solution to common software delivery issues such as outages during deployment, a lack of standard delivery mechanisms, and challenges faced in creating sustainable pipelines.You’ll begin by developing a Java microservice and using AWS services such as CodeCommit, CodeArtifact, and CodeGuru to manage and review the source code. You’ll then learn to use the AWS CodeBuild service to build code and deploy it to AWS infrastructure and container services using the CodeDeploy service. As you advance, you’ll find out how to provision cloud infrastructure using CloudFormation templates and Terraform. The concluding chapters will show you how to combine all these AWS services to create a reliable and automated CodePipeline for delivering microservices from source code check-in to deployment without any downtime. Finally, you’ll discover how to integrate AWS CodePipeline with third-party services such as Bitbucket, Blazemeter, Snyk, and Jenkins.By the end of this microservices book, you’ll have gained the hands-on skills to build release pipelines for your applications.

Building Android Games with Cocos2d-x. Learn to create engaging and spectacular games for Android using Cocos2d-x

Raydelto Hernadez, Raydelto Hernandez

Building Android UIs with Custom Views. Build amazing custom user interfaces with Android custom views

Raimon Rafols Montane

To build great user interfaces for your Android apps that go beyond the standard UI elements, you need to use custom Android views. With these, you can give your app a distinctive look and ensure that it functions properly across multiple devices. This book will help you construct a great UI for your apps by teaching you how to create custom Android views. You will start by creating your first Android custom view and go through the design considerations. You will then see how the right choices will enable your custom view to perform seamlessly across multiple platforms and Android versions. You will create custom styleable attributes that work with Android XML layouts, learn to process touch events, define custom attributes, and add properties and events to them. By the end of this book, you will be able to create apps with custom views that are responsive and adaptable to make your app distinctive and an instant hit with its users.

Building Apple Watch Projects. Click here to enter text

Stuart Grimshaw

With Apple’s eagerly anticipated entry into the wearable arena, the field is wide open for a new era of app development. The Apple Watch is one of the most important technologies of our time. This easy-to-understand book takes beginners on a delightful journey of discovering the features available to the developer, right up to the completion of medium-level projects ready for App Store submission. It provides the fastest way to develop real-world apps for the Apple Watch by teaching you the concepts of Watch UI, visual haptic and audio, message and data exchange between watch and phone, Web communication, and finally Visual, haptic as well as audio feedback for users.By the end of this book, you will have developed at least four fully functioning apps for deployment on watchOS 2.