Game Development Patterns and Best Practices. Better games, less hassle

John P. Doran, Matt Casanova

You’ve learned how to program, and you’ve probably created some simple games at some point, but now you want to build larger projects and find out how to resolve your problems. So instead of a coder, you might now want to think like a game developer or software engineer. To organize your code well, you need certain tools to do so, and that’s what this book is all about. You will learn techniques to code quickly and correctly, while ensuring your code is modular and easily understandable.To begin, we will start with the core game programming patterns, but not the usual way. We will take the use case strategy with this book. We will take an AAA standard game and show you the hurdles at multiple stages of development. Similarly, various use cases are used to showcase other patterns such as the adapter pattern, prototype pattern, flyweight pattern, and observer pattern. Lastly, we’ll go over some tips and tricks on how to refactor your code to remove common code smells and make it easier for others to work with you. By the end of the book you will be proficient in using the most popular and frequently used patterns with the best practices.

Game Development Patterns with Unreal Engine 5. Build maintainable and scalable systems with C++ and Blueprint

Stuart Butler, Tom Oliver, Christopher J. Headleand

Design patterns serve as a toolkit of techniques and practices that enable you to write code that’s not only faster, but also more manageable. With this book, you’ll explore a range of design patterns and learn how to apply them to projects developed in Unreal Engine 5.You’ll begin by delving into the foundational principles of coding and develop a solid understanding of the concepts, challenges, and benefits of using patterns in your code. As you progress, you’ll identify patterns that are woven into the core of Unreal Engine 5 such as Double Buffer, Flyweight, and Spatial Partitioning, followed by some of the existing tool sets that embody patterns in their design and usage including Component, Behavior Tree, and Update.In the next section of the book, you’ll start developing a series of gameplay use cases in C++ to implement a variety of design patterns such as Interface and Event-based Observers to build a decoupled communications hierarchy. You’ll also work with Singleton, Command, and State, along with Behavioral Patterns, Template, Subclass Sandbox, and Type Object. The final section focuses on using design patterns for optimization, covering Dirty Flag, Data Locality, and Object Pooling.By the end, you’ll be proficient in designing systems with the perfect C++/Blueprint blend for maintainable and scalable systems.

Game Programming using Qt 5 Beginner's Guide. Create amazing games with Qt 5, C++, and Qt Quick - Second Edition

Pavel Vladimirovich Strakhov

Qt is the leading cross-platform toolkit for all significant desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms and is becoming popular by the day, especially on mobile and embedded devices. It's a powerful tool that perfectly fits the needs of game developers. This book will help you learn the basics of Qt and will equip you with the necessary toolsets to build apps and games.The book begins by how to create an application and prepare a working environment for both desktop and mobile platforms. You will learn how to use built-in Qt widgets and Form Editor to create a GUI application and then learn the basics of creating graphical interfaces and Qt's core concepts.Further, you'll learn to enrich your games by implementing network connectivity and employing scripting. You will learn about Qt's capabilities for handling strings and files, data storage, and serialization.Moving on, you will learn about the new Qt Gamepad module and how to add it in your game and then delve into OpenGL and Vulcan, and how it can be used in Qt applications to implement hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics. You will then explore various facets of Qt Quick: how it can be used in games to add game logic, add game physics, and build astonishing UIs for your games. By the end of this book, you will have developed the skillset to develop interesting games with Qt.

Getting Started with LLVM Core Libraries. Get to grips with LLVM essentials and use the core libraries to build advanced tools

Rafael Auler, Bruno Lopes

Getting Started with Qt 5. Introduction to programming Qt 5 for cross-platform application development

Benjamin Baka

Qt is a cross-platform application framework and widget toolkit that is used to create GUI applications that can run on different hardware and operating systems. The main aim of this book is to introduce Qt to the reader. Through the use of simple examples, we will walk you through building blocks without focusing too much on theory.Qt is a popular tool that can be used for building a variety of applications, such as web browsers, media players such as VLC, and Adobe Photoshop. Following Qt installation and setup, the book dives straight into helping you create your first application.You will be introduced to Widgets, Qt's interface building block, and the many varieties that are available for creating GUIs. Next, Qt's core concept of signals and slots are well illustrated with sufficient examples. The book further teaches you how to create custom widgets, signals and slots, and how to communicate useful information via dialog boxes. To cap everything off, you will be taken through writing applications that can connect to databases in order to persist data.By the end of the book, you should be well equipped to start creating your own Qt applications and confident enough to pick up more advanced Qt techniques and materials to hone your skills.

Godot Engine Game Development Projects. Build five cross-platform 2D and 3D games with Godot 3.0

Chris Bradfield

Godot Engine Game Development Projects is an introduction to the Godot game engine and its new 3.0 version. Godot 3.0 brings a large number of new features and capabilities that make it a strong alternative to expensive commercial game engines. For beginners, Godot offers a friendly way to learn game development techniques, while for experienced developers it is a powerful, customizable tool that can bring your visions to life.This book consists of five projects that will help developers achieve a sound understanding of the engine when it comes to building games.Game development is complex and involves a wide spectrum of knowledge and skills. This book can help you build on your foundation level skills by showing you how to create a number of small-scale game projects. Along the way, you will learn how Godot works and discover important game development techniques that you can apply to your projects.Using a straightforward, step-by-step approach and practical examples, the book will take you from the absolute basics through to sophisticated game physics, animations, and other techniques. Upon completing the final project, you will have a strong foundation for future success with Godot 3.0.

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence with Unreal Engine. Everything you want to know about Game AI using Blueprints or C++

Francesco Sapio

Learning how to apply artificial intelligence ( AI ) is crucial and can take the fun factor to the next level, whether you're developing a traditional, educational, or any other kind of game. If you want to use AI to extend the life of your games and make them challenging and more interesting, this book is for you.The book starts by breaking down AI into simple concepts to get a fundamental understanding of it. Using a variety of examples, you will work through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts and features related to game AI in UE4. You will learn to work through the built-in AI framework in order to build believable characters for every game genre (including RPG, Strategic, Platform, FPS, Simulation, Arcade, and Educational). You will learn to configure the Navigation, Environmental Querying, and Perception systems for your AI agents and couple these with Behavior Trees, all accompanied with practical examples. You will also explore how the engine handles dynamic crowds. In the concluding chapters, you will learn how to profile, visualize, and debug your AI systems to correct the AI logic and increase performance.By the end of the book, your AI knowledge of the built-in AI system in Unreal will be deep and comprehensive, allowing you to build powerful AI agents within your projects.

Hands-On C++ Game Animation Programming. Learn modern animation techniques from theory to implementation with C++ and OpenGL

Gabor Szauer

Animation is one of the most important parts of any game. Modern animation systems work directly with track-driven animation and provide support for advanced techniques such as inverse kinematics (IK), blend trees, and dual quaternion skinning.This book will walk you through everything you need to get an optimized, production-ready animation system up and running, and contains all the code required to build the animation system. You’ll start by learning the basic principles, and then delve into the core topics of animation programming by building a curve-based skinned animation system. You’ll implement different skinning techniques and explore advanced animation topics such as IK, animation blending, dual quaternion skinning, and crowd rendering. The animation system you will build following this book can be easily integrated into your next game development project. The book is intended to be read from start to finish, although each chapter is self-contained and can be read independently as well.By the end of this book, you’ll have implemented a modern animation system and got to grips with optimization concepts and advanced animation techniques.

Hands-On Computer Vision with Julia. Build complex applications with advanced Julia packages for image processing, neural networks, and Artificial Intelligence

Dmitrijs Cudihins

Hands-On Computer Vision with Julia is a thorough guide for developers who want to get started with building computer vision applications using Julia. Julia is well suited to image processing because it’s easy to use and lets you write easy-to-compile and efficient machine code..This book begins by introducing you to Julia's image processing libraries such as Images.jl and ImageCore.jl. You’ll get to grips with analyzing and transforming images using JuliaImages; some of the techniques discussed include enhancing and adjusting images. As you make your way through the chapters, you’ll learn how to classify images, cluster them, and apply neural networks to solve computer vision problems. In the concluding chapters, you will explore OpenCV applications to perform real-time computer vision analysis, for example, face detection and object tracking. You will also understand Julia's interaction with Tesseract to perform optical character recognition and build an application that brings together all the techniques we introduced previously to consolidate the concepts learned.By end of the book, you will have understood how to utilize various Julia packages and a few open source libraries such as Tesseract and OpenCV to solve computer vision problems with ease.

Hands-On Concurrency with Rust. Confidently build memory-safe, parallel, and efficient software in Rust

Brian L. Troutwine

Most programming languages can really complicate things, especially with regard to unsafe memory access. The burden on you, the programmer, lies across two domains: understanding the modern machine and your language's pain-points. This book will teach you to how to manage program performance on modern machines and build fast, memory-safe, and concurrent software in Rust. It starts with the fundamentals of Rust and discusses machine architecture concepts. You will be taken through ways to measure and improve the performance of Rust code systematically and how to write collections with confidence. You will learn about the Sync and Send traits applied to threads, and coordinate thread execution with locks, atomic primitives, data-parallelism, and more.The book will show you how to efficiently embed Rust in C++ code and explore the functionalities of various crates for multithreaded applications. It explores implementations in depth. You will know how a mutex works and build several yourself. You will master radically different approaches that exist in the ecosystem for structuring and managing high-scale systems. By the end of the book, you will feel comfortable with designing safe, consistent, parallel, and high-performance applications in Rust.

Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust. Learn programming techniques to build effective, maintainable, and readable code in Rust 2018

Claus Matzinger

Rust has come a long way and is now utilized in several contexts. Its key strengths are its software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications, servers, and performance-critical applications, not forgetting its importance in systems' programming. This book will be your guide as it takes you through implementing classic data structures and algorithms in Rust, helping you to get up and running as a confident Rust programmer. The book begins with an introduction to Rust data structures and algorithms, while also covering essential language constructs. You will learn how to store data using linked lists, arrays, stacks, and queues. You will also learn how to implement sorting and searching algorithms. You will learn how to attain high performance by implementing algorithms to string data types and implement hash structures in algorithm design. The book will examine algorithm analysis, including Brute Force algorithms, Greedy algorithms, Divide and Conquer algorithms, Dynamic Programming, and Backtracking. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications.

Hands-On Dependency Injection in Go. Develop clean Go code that is easier to read, maintain, and test

Corey Scott

Hands-On Dependency Injection in Go takes you on a journey, teaching you about refactoring existing code to adopt dependency injection (DI) using various methods available in Go.Of the six methods introduced in this book, some are conventional, such as constructor or method injection, and some unconventional, such as just-in-time or config injection. Each method is explained in detail, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses, and is followed with a step-by-step example of how to apply it. With plenty of examples, you will learn how to leverage DI to transform code into something simple and flexible. You will also discover how to generate and leverage the dependency graph to spot and eliminate issues. Throughout the book, you will learn to leverage DI in combination with test stubs and mocks to test otherwise tricky or impossible scenarios.Hands-On Dependency Injection in Go takes a pragmatic approach and focuses heavily on the code, user experience, and how to achieve long-term benefits through incremental changes.By the end of this book, you will have produced clean code that’s easy to test.

Hands-On Design Patterns with C++. Solve common C++ problems with modern design patterns and build robust applications

Fedor G. Pikus

C++ is a general-purpose programming language designed with the goals of efficiency, performance, and flexibility in mind. Design patterns are commonly accepted solutions to well-recognized design problems. In essence, they are a library of reusable components, only for software architecture, and not for a concrete implementation.The focus of this book is on the design patterns that naturally lend themselves to the needs of a C++ programmer, and on the patterns that uniquely benefit from the features of C++, in particular, the generic programming. Armed with the knowledge of these patterns, you will spend less time searching for a solution to a common problem and be familiar with the solutions developed from experience, as well as their advantages and drawbacks. The other use of design patterns is as a concise and an efficient way to communicate. A pattern is a familiar and instantly recognizable solution to specific problem; through its use, sometimes with a single line of code, we can convey a considerable amount of information. The code conveys: This is the problem we are facing, these are additional considerations that are most important in our case; hence, the following well-known solution was chosen.By the end of this book, you will have gained a comprehensive understanding of design patterns to create robust, reusable, and maintainable code.

Hands-On Embedded Programming with C++17. Create versatile and robust embedded solutions for MCUs and RTOSes with modern C++

Maya Posch

C++ is a great choice for embedded development, most notably, because it does not add any bloat, extends maintainability, and offers many advantages over different programming languages. Hands-On Embedded Programming with C++17 will show you how C++ can be used to build robust and concurrent systems that leverage the available hardware resources.Starting with a primer on embedded programming and the latest features of C++17, the book takes you through various facets of good programming. You’ll learn how to use the concurrency, memory management, and functional programming features of C++ to build embedded systems. You will understand how to integrate your systems with external peripherals and efficient ways of working with drivers. This book will also guide you in testing and optimizing code for better performance and implementing useful design patterns. As an additional benefit, you will see how to work with Qt, the popular GUI library used for building embedded systems.By the end of the book, you will have gained the confidence to use C++ for embedded programming.

Hands-On Embedded Programming with QT. Develop high performance applications for embedded systems with C++ and Qt 5

John Werner

Qt is an open source toolkit suitable for cross-platform and embedded application development. This book uses inductive teaching to help you learn how to create applications for embedded and Internet of Things (IoT) devices with Qt 5.You’ll start by learning to develop your very first application with Qt. Next, you’ll build on the first application by understanding new concepts through hands-on projects and written text. Each project will introduce new features that will help you transform your basic first project into a connected IoT application running on embedded hardware. In addition to gaining practical experience in developing an embedded Qt project, you will also gain valuable insights into best practices for Qt development and explore advanced techniques for testing, debugging, and monitoring the performance of Qt applications. The examples and projects covered throughout the book can be run both locally and on an embedded platform.By the end of this book, you will have the skills you need to use Qt 5 to confidently develop modern embedded applications.

Hands-On Full Stack Development with Go. Build full stack web applications with Go, React, Gin, and GopherJS

Mina Andrawos

The Go programming language has been rapidly adopted by developers for building web applications. With its impressive performance and ease of development, Go enjoys the support of a wide variety of open source frameworks, for building scalable and high-performant web services and apps. Hands-On Full Stack Development with Go is a comprehensive guide that covers all aspects of full stack development with Go.This clearly written, example-rich book begins with a practical exposure to Go development and moves on to build a frontend with the popular React framework. From there, you will build RESTful web APIs utilizing the Gin framework. After that, we will dive deeper into important software backend concepts, such as connecting to the database via an ORM, designing routes for your services, securing your services, and even charging credit cards via the popular Stripe API. We will also cover how to test, and benchmark your applications efficiently in a production environment. In the concluding chapters, we will cover isomorphic developments in pure Go by learning about GopherJS. As you progress through the book, you'll gradually build a musical instrument online store application from scratch.By the end of the book, you will be confident in taking on full stack web applications in Go.

Hands-On Functional Programming in RUST. Build modular and reactive applications with functional programming techniques in Rust 2018

Andrew Johnson

Functional programming allows developers to divide programs into smaller, reusable components that ease the creation, testing, and maintenance of software as a whole. Combined with the power of Rust, you can develop robust and scalable applications that fulfill modern day software requirements. This book will help you discover all the Rust features that can be used to build software in a functional way.We begin with a brief comparison of the functional and object-oriented approach to different problems and patterns. We then quickly look at the patterns of control flow, data the abstractions of these unique to functional programming. The next part covers how to create functional apps in Rust; mutability and ownership, which are exclusive to Rust, are also discussed. Pure functions are examined next and you'll master closures, their various types, and currying. We also look at implementing concurrency through functional design principles and metaprogramming using macros. Finally, we look at best practices for debugging and optimization. By the end of the book, you will be familiar with the functional approach of programming and will be able to use these techniques on a daily basis.

Hands-On Functional Programming with C++. An effective guide to writing accelerated functional code using C++17 and C++20

Alexandru Bolboaca

Functional programming enables you to divide your software into smaller, reusable components that are easy to write, debug, and maintain. Combined with the power of C++, you can develop scalable and functional applications for modern software requirements. This book will help you discover the functional features in C++ 17 and C++ 20 to build enterprise-level applications.Starting with the fundamental building blocks of functional programming and how to use them in C++, you’ll explore functions, currying, and lambdas. As you advance, you’ll learn how to improve cohesion and delve into test-driven development, which will enable you in designing better software. In addition to this, the book covers architectural patterns such as event sourcing to help you get to grips with the importance of immutability for data storage. You’ll even understand how to “think in functions” and implement design patterns in a functional way.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to write faster and cleaner production code in C++ with the help of functional programming.

Hands-On GPU-Accelerated Computer Vision with OpenCV and CUDA. Effective techniques for processing complex image data in real time using GPUs

Bhaumik Vaidya

Computer vision has been revolutionizing a wide range of industries, and OpenCV is the most widely chosen tool for computer vision with its ability to work in multiple programming languages. Nowadays, in computer vision, there is a need to process large images in real time, which is difficult to handle for OpenCV on its own. This is where CUDA comes into the picture, allowing OpenCV to leverage powerful NVDIA GPUs. This book provides a detailed overview of integrating OpenCV with CUDA for practical applications. To start with, you’ll understand GPU programming with CUDA, an essential aspect for computer vision developers who have never worked with GPUs. You’ll then move on to exploring OpenCV acceleration with GPUs and CUDA by walking through some practical examples.Once you have got to grips with the core concepts, you’ll familiarize yourself with deploying OpenCV applications on NVIDIA Jetson TX1, which is popular for computer vision and deep learning applications. The last chapters of the book explain PyCUDA, a Python library that leverages the power of CUDA and GPUs for accelerations and can be used by computer vision developers who use OpenCV with Python.By the end of this book, you’ll have enhanced computer vision applications with the help of this book's hands-on approach.

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go. Build responsive, cross-platform, graphical applications with the Go programming language

Andrew Williams

Go is often compared to C++ when it comes to low-level programming and implementations that require faster processing, such as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In fact, many claim that Go is superior to C++ in terms of its concurrency and ease of use. Most graphical application toolkits, though, are still written using C or C++, and so they don't enjoy the benefits of using a modern programming language such as Go. This guide to programming GUIs with Go 1.11 explores the various toolkits available, including UI, Walk, Shiny, and Fyne. The book compares the vision behind each project to help you pick the right approach for your project. Each framework is described in detail, outlining how you can build performant applications that users will love. To aid you further in creating applications using these emerging technologies, you'll be able to easily refer to code samples and screenshots featured in the book. In addition to toolkit-specific discussions, you'll cover more complex topics, such as how to structure growing graphical applications, and how cross-platform applications can integrate with each desktop operating system to create a seamless user experience. By delving into techniques and best practices for organizing and scaling Go-based graphical applications, you'll also glimpse Go's impressive concurrency system. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to distribute to the main desktop marketplaces and distribution channels. By the end of this book, you'll be a confident GUI developer who can use the Go language to boost the performance of your applications.

Hands-On GUI Programming with C++ and Qt5. Build stunning cross-platform applications and widgets with the most powerful GUI framework

Lee Zhi Eng

Qt 5, the latest version of Qt, enables you to develop applications with complex user interfaces for multiple targets. It provides you with faster and smarter ways to create modern UIs and applications for multiple platforms. This book will teach you to design and build graphical user interfaces that are functional, appealing, and user-friendly.In the initial part of the book, you will learn what Qt 5 is and what you can do with it. You will explore the Qt Designer, discover the different types of widgets generally used in Qt 5, and then connect your application to the database to perform dynamic operations. Next, you will be introduced to Qt 5 chart which allows you to easily render different types of graphs and charts and incorporate List View Widgets in your application. You will also work with various Qt modules, like QtLocation, QtWebEngine, and the networking module through the course of the book. Finally, we will focus on cross-platform development with QT 5 that enables you to code once and run it everywhere, including mobile platforms. By the end of this book, you will have successfully learned about high-end GUI applications and will be capable of building many more powerful, cross-platform applications.

Hands-On High Performance Programming with Qt 5

Mark Krajewski

Achieving efficient code through performance tuning is one of the key challenges faced by many programmers. This book looks at Qt programming from a performance perspective. You'll explore the performance problems encountered when using the Qt framework and means and ways to resolve them and optimize performance.   The book highlights performance improvements and new features released in Qt 5.9, Qt 5.11, and 5.12 (LTE). You'll master general computer performance best practices and tools, which can help you identify the reasons behind low performance, and the most common performance pitfalls experienced when using the Qt framework. In the following chapters, you'll explore multithreading and asynchronous programming with C++ and Qt and learn the importance and efficient use of data structures. You'll also get the opportunity to work through techniques such as memory management and design guidelines, which are essential to improve application performance. Comprehensive sections that cover all these concepts will prepare you for gaining hands-on experience of some of Qt's most exciting application fields - the mobile and embedded development domains.   By the end of this book, you'll be ready to build Qt applications that are more efficient, concurrent, and performance-oriented in nature  

Hands-On Machine Learning with C++. Build, train, and deploy end-to-end machine learning and deep learning pipelines

Kirill Kolodiazhnyi

C++ can make your machine learning models run faster and more efficiently. This handy guide will help you learn the fundamentals of machine learning (ML), showing you how to use C++ libraries to get the most out of your data. This book makes machine learning with C++ for beginners easy with its example-based approach, demonstrating how to implement supervised and unsupervised ML algorithms through real-world examples.This book will get you hands-on with tuning and optimizing a model for different use cases, assisting you with model selection and the measurement of performance. You’ll cover techniques such as product recommendations, ensemble learning, and anomaly detection using modern C++ libraries such as PyTorch C++ API, Caffe2, Shogun, Shark-ML, mlpack, and dlib. Next, you’ll explore neural networks and deep learning using examples such as image classification and sentiment analysis, which will help you solve various problems. Later, you’ll learn how to handle production and deployment challenges on mobile and cloud platforms, before discovering how to export and import models using the ONNX format.By the end of this C++ book, you will have real-world machine learning and C++ knowledge, as well as the skills to use C++ to build powerful ML systems.

Hands-On Microservices with Rust. Build, test, and deploy scalable and reactive microservices with Rust 2018

Denis Kolodin

Microservice architecture is sweeping the world as the de facto pattern for building web-based applications. Rust is a language particularly well-suited for building microservices. It is a new system programming language that offers a practical and safe alternative to C.This book describes web development using the Rust programming language and will get you up and running with modern web frameworks and crates with examples of RESTful microservices creation. You will deep dive into Reactive programming, and asynchronous programming, and split your web application into a set of concurrent actors. The book provides several HTTP-handling examples with manageable memory allocations. You will walk through stateless high-performance microservices, which are ideally suitable for computation or caching tasks, and look at stateful microservices, which are filled with persistent data and database interactions. As we move along, you will learn how to use Rust macros to describe business or protocol entities of our application and compile them into native structs, which will be performed at full speed with the help of the server's CPU.Finally, you will be taken through examples of how to test and debug microservices and pack them into a tiny monolithic binary or put them into a container and deploy them to modern cloud platforms such as AWS.