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.

R Graphs Cookbook. Over 70 recipes for building and customizing publication-quality visualizations of powerful and stunning R graphs

Jaynal Abedin, Jaynal Abedin, Hrishi Mittal

Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects. Build immersive, real-world VR applications using UE4, C++, and Unreal Blueprints

Kevin Mack, Robert Ruud

Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is a powerful tool for developing VR games and applications. With its visual scripting language, Blueprint, and built-in support for all major VR headsets, it's a perfect tool for designers, artists, and engineers to realize their visions in VR. This book will guide you step-by-step through a series of projects that teach essential concepts and techniques for VR development in UE4. You will begin by learning how to think about (and design for) VR and then proceed to set up a development environment. A series of practical projects follows, taking you through essential VR concepts. Through these exercises, you'll learn how to set up UE4 projects that run effectively in VR, how to build player locomotion schemes, and how to use hand controllers to interact with the world. You'll then move on to create user interfaces in 3D space, use the editor's VR mode to build environments directly in VR, and profile/optimize worlds you've built. Finally, you'll explore more advanced topics, such as displaying stereo media in VR, networking in Unreal, and using plugins to extend the engine. Throughout, this book focuses on creating a deeper understanding of why the relevant tools and techniques work as they do, so you can use the techniques and concepts learned here as a springboard for further learning and exploration in VR.

Moodle 1.9 Testing and Assessment. Develop and evaluate quizzes and tests using Moodle modules

Moodle Trust, Jason Myrick

Moodle is a free Course Management System (CMS), which is a web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. Moodle also has many effective modules and assessment techniques for testing that can be used for any subject. Computer-based testing is inevitable in any online teaching course. As you consider the benefits of computer-based testing you will want to easily create tests and instantaneously assess them.Moodle 1.9 Testing and Assessment puts together a variety of modules and activities that allow us to easily create and deliver a variety of tests on any subject. It is a step-by-step guide that will assist you to develop and assess simple as well as complex quizzes and tests.You will initially learn to create different types of questions such as short answer questions, multiple choice questions, and so on. After you have learned to create questions, you will learn to integrate all of them in a Moodle quiz to create a complete test by tweaking the various options. Next you will learn to create and set up a Lesson, which you can use to create simple vocabulary or flash card tests or complex tests.You will learn to test and assess students through work submitted using Moodle Workshop. This module also provides an opportunity for self- and peer-assessment of your student's work. Then you will learn skill-specific tests such as listening, reading, speaking, and writing tests that will help you to judge a person's ability in a particular field. At the end of this book you will learn how you can grade tests using Moodle Gradebook.This hands-on guide helps you to establish optimal tests that can be graded using Moodle modules.

Instant jQuery Boilerplate for Plugins. Get started with jQuery plugin development with this rapid-paced guide

Jonathan Fielding

jQuery plugins helps you to extend jQuery's prototype object. jQuery plugins are used to achieve a specific task with a collection of elements, they are modular and reusable across several projects.Instant jQuery Boilerplate for Plugins is a hands on guide to writing your own plugins. The recipes in this book will guide you through the steps of plug-in development.Each recipe is a short tutorial within itself that will help you explore different options available within jQuery by providing a clear explanation on what jQuery Boilerplate has to offer. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to write a plugin and will be ready to start writing plugins of your own.

Mastering .NET Machine Learning. Use machine learning in your .NET applications

Jamie Dixon

.Net is one of the widely used platforms for developing applications. With the meteoric rise of Machine learning, developers are now keen on finding out how can they make their .Net applications smarter. Also, .NET developers are interested into moving into the world of devices and how to apply machine learning techniques to, well, machines.This book is packed with real-world examples to easily use machine learning techniques in your business applications. You will begin with introduction to F# and prepare yourselves for machine learning using .NET framework. You will be writing a simple linear regression model using an example which predicts sales of a product. Forming a base with the regression model, you will start using machine learning libraries available in .NET framework such as Math.NET, Numl.NET and Accord.NET with the help of a sample application. You will then move on to writing multiple linear regressions and logistic regressions.You will learn what is open data and the awesomeness of type providers. Next, you are going to address some of the issues that we have been glossing over so far and take a deep dive into obtaining, cleaning, and organizing our data. You will compare the utility of building a KNN and Naive Bayes model to achieve best possible results.Implementation of Kmeans and PCA using Accord.NET and Numl.NET libraries is covered with the help of an example application. We will then look at many of issues confronting creating real-world machine learning models like overfitting and how to combat them using confusion matrixes, scaling, normalization, and feature selection. You will now enter into the world of Neural Networks and move your line of business application to a hybrid scientific application. After you have covered all the above machine learning models, you will see how to deal with very large datasets using MBrace and how to deploy machine learning models to Internet of Thing (IoT) devices so that the machine can learn and adapt on the fly.

Protocol Buffers Handbook. Getting deeper into Protobuf internals and its usage

Clément Jean

Explore how Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) serialize structured data and provides a language-neutral, platform-neutral, and extensible solution. With this guide to mastering Protobuf, you'll build your skills to effectively serialize, transmit, and manage data across diverse platforms and languages.This book will help you enter the world of Protocol Buffers by unraveling the intricate nuances of Protobuf syntax and showing you how to define complex data structures. As you progress, you’ll learn schema evolution, ensuring seamless compatibility as your projects evolve. The book also covers advanced topics such as custom options and plugins, allowing you to tailor validation processes to your specific requirements. You’ll understand how to automate project builds using cutting-edge tools such as Buf and Bazel, streamlining your development workflow. With hands-on projects in Go and Python programming, you’ll learn how to practically apply Protobuf concepts. Later chapters will show you how to integrate data interchange capabilities across different programming languages, enabling efficient collaboration and system interoperability.By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid understanding of Protobuf internals, enabling you to discern when and how to use and redefine your approach to data serialization.

Learning Unreal Engine Game Development. A step-by-step guide that paves the way for developing fantastic games with Unreal Engine 4

Joanna Lee

Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful game development engine that provides rich functionalities to create 2D and 3D games across multiple platforms. Many people know what a game is and they play games every day, but how many of them know how to create a game? Unreal Engine technology powers hundreds of games, and thousands of individuals have built careers and companies around skills developed using this engine.Learning Unreal Engine 4 Game Development starts with small, simple game ideas and playable projects that you can actually finish. The book first teaches you the basics of using Unreal Engine to create a simple game level. Then, you'll learn how to add details such as actors, animation, effects, and so on to the game. The complexity will increase over the chapters and the examples chosen will help you learn a wide variety of game development techniques. This book aims to equip you with the confidence and skills to design and build your own games using Unreal Engine 4. By the end of this book, you'll have learnt about the entire Unreal suite and know how to successfully create fun, simple games.

Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to. Build better business intelligence with this practical guide to creating Excel data models with PowerPivot

Leo Taehyung Lee, Taehyung Lee

Microsoft PowerPivot is a free software designed to enhance Microsoft Excel. It allows the user to make extensive use of his/her computer's powers to draw data from various sources, do analysis across millions of rows of data, and present results in a very unique format.Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to is a concise and to-the-point guide that helps you get a jump start on using this strong business intelligence tool, while still working in an environment similar to Excel. You will begin with data generation and manipulation, learning a new feature at each step by building onto the old file, and ultimately creating a comprehensive file.Instant Creating Data Models with PowerPivot How-to will guide the user through database installation, importing data from various sources, creating pivot charts and tables, utilizing a unique feature of PowerPivot called slicers,adding custom columns, and setting custom relationships between data to generate the ultimate customized dataset for analysis. By the end of the book and all the sections of Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel, the reader will be fully experienced and ready to utilize this powerful software.

Power Up Your PowToon Studio Project. The ultimate PowToon project guide – get hints, tips, and ideas to turbocharge your PowToon Studio project

Bruce Graham

Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices. Improve your Backbone.js skills with this step-by-step guide to patterns and best practice. It will help you reduce boilerplate in your code and provide plenty of open source plugin solutions to common problems along the way

Swarnendu De

The Art of Micro Frontends. Build websites using compositional UIs that grow naturally as your application scales

Florian Rappl, Lothar Schöttner

Micro frontend is a web architecture for frontend development borrowed from the idea of microservices in software development, where each module of the frontend is developed and shipped in isolation to avoid complexity and a single point of failure for your frontend.Complete with hands-on tutorials, projects, and self-assessment questions, this easy-to-follow guide will take you through the patterns available for implementing a micro frontend solution. You’ll learn about micro frontends in general, the different architecture styles and their areas of use, how to prepare teams for the change to micro frontends, as well as how to adjust the UI design for scalability. Starting with the simplest variants of micro frontend architectures, the book progresses from static approaches to fully dynamic solutions that allow maximum scalability with faster release cycles. In the concluding chapters, you'll reinforce the knowledge you’ve gained by working on different case studies relating to micro frontends.By the end of this book, you'll be able to decide if and how micro frontends should be implemented to achieve scalability for your user interface (UI).

Neo4j Graph Data Modeling. Design efficient and flexible databases by optimizing the power of Neo4j

Mahesh Lal, Mahesh K Lal

Learn AWS Serverless Computing. A beginner's guide to using AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and services from Amazon Web Services

Scott Patterson

Serverless computing is a way to run your code without having to provision or manage servers. Amazon Web Services provides serverless services that you can use to build and deploy cloud-native applications. Starting with the basics of AWS Lambda, this book takes you through combining Lambda with other services from AWS, such as Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Step Functions. You’ll learn how to write, run, and test Lambda functions using examples in Node.js, Java, Python, and C# before you move on to developing and deploying serverless APIs efficiently using the Serverless Framework. In the concluding chapters, you’ll discover tips and best practices for leveraging Serverless Framework to increase your development productivity. By the end of this book, you’ll have become well-versed in building, securing, and running serverless applications using Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda without having to manage any servers.

Domain-Driven Design with Java - A Practitioner's Guide. Create simple, elegant, and valuable software solutions for complex business problems

Premanand Chandrasekaran, Karthik Krishnan, Neal Ford, Brandon Byars, ...

Domain-Driven Design (DDD) makes available a set of techniques and patterns that enable domain experts, architects, and developers to work together to decompose complex business problems into a set of well-factored, collaborating, and loosely coupled subsystems.This practical guide will help you as a developer and architect to put your knowledge to work in order to create elegant software designs that are enjoyable to work with and easy to reason about. You'll begin with an introduction to the concepts of domain-driven design and discover various ways to apply them in real-world scenarios. You'll also appreciate how DDD is extremely relevant when creating cloud native solutions that employ modern techniques such as event-driven microservices and fine-grained architectures. As you advance through the chapters, you'll get acquainted with core DDD’s strategic design concepts such as the ubiquitous language, context maps, bounded contexts, and tactical design elements like aggregates and domain models and events. You'll understand how to apply modern, lightweight modeling techniques such as business value canvas, Wardley mapping, domain storytelling, and event storming, while also learning how to test-drive the system to create solutions that exhibit high degrees of internal quality.By the end of this software design book, you'll be able to architect, design, and implement robust, resilient, and performant distributed software solutions.

Hands-On Low-Code Application Development with Salesforce. Build customized CRM applications that solve business challenges in just a few clicks

Enrico Murru

Low-code platforms allow users to focus on business logic to create solutions without getting trapped in programming complexities. Thanks to its powerful features for designing, developing, and deploying apps without having to hand-code, Salesforce is at the forefront of the low-code development revolution. This book will guide you in building creative applications for solving your business problems using the declarative framework provided by Salesforce.You’ll start by learning how to design your business data model with custom objects, fields, formulas, and validation rules, all secured by the Salesforce security model. You’ll then explore tools such as Workflow, Process Builder, Lightning Flow, and Actions that will help you to automate your business processes with ease. This book also shows you how to use Lightning App Builder to build personalized UIs for your Salesforce applications, explains the value of creating community pages for your organization, and teaches you how to customize them with Experience Builder. Finally, you'll work with the sandbox model, deploy your solutions, and deliver an effective release management strategy.By the end of this Salesforce book, you’ll be ready to customize Salesforce CRM to meet your business requirements by creating unique solutions without writing a single line of code.