C++ Game Development By Example. Learn to build games and graphics with SFML, OpenGL, and Vulkan using C++ programming

Siddharth Shekar

Although numerous languages are currently being used to develop games, C++ remains the standard for fabricating expert libraries and tool chains for game development. This book introduces you to the world of game development with C++.C++ Game Development By Example starts by touching upon the basic concepts of math, programming, and computer graphics and creating a simple side-scrolling action 2D game. You'll build a solid foundation by studying basic game concepts such as creating game loops, rendering 2D game scenes using SFML, 2D sprite creation and animation, and collision detection. The book will help you advance to creating a 3D physics puzzle game using modern OpenGL and the Bullet physics engine. You'll understand the graphics pipeline, which entails creating 3D objects using vertex and index buffers and rendering them to the scene using vertex and fragment shaders. Finally, you'll create a basic project using the Vulkan library that'll help you get to grips with creating swap chains, image views, render passes, and frame buffers for building high-performance graphics in your games.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready with 3 compelling projects created with SFML, the Vulkan API, and OpenGL, and you'll be able take your game and graphics programming skills to the next level.

Getting Started with UDOO. Become an efficient maker by designing and building amazing prototypes with the UDOO platform and Android

Maurizio Caporali, Emanuele Palazzetti

Learning QGIS. Create great maps and perform geoprocessing tasks with ease - Third Edition

Anita Graser

QGIS is a user-friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years.Learning QGIS Third Edition is a practical, hands-on guide updated for QGIS 2.14 that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises to help you apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Through clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS quickly and painlessly.This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS to handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatialdata and create data from scratch. You will get to know important plugins, perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them with Processing.We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. Finally, you will learn how to extend QGIS using Python and even create your own plugin.

Blockchain for Decision Makers. A systematic guide to using blockchain for improving your business

Romain Tormen

In addition to cryptocurrencies, blockchain-based apps are being developed in different industries such as banking, supply chain, and healthcare to achieve digital transformation and enhance user experience. Blockchain is not only about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, but also about different technologies such as peer-to-peer networks, consensus mechanisms, and cryptography. These technologies together help sustain trustless environments in which digital value can be transferred between individuals without intermediaries.This book will help you understand the basics of blockchain such as consensus protocols, decentralized applications, and tokenization. You'll focus on how blockchain is used today in different industries and the technological challenges faced while implementing a blockchain strategy. The book also enables you, as a decision maker, to understand blockchain from a technical perspective and evaluate its applicability in your business. Finally, you'll get to grips with blockchain frameworks such as Hyperledger and Quorum and their usability.By the end of this book, you'll have learned about the current use cases of blockchain and be able to implement a blockchain strategy on your own.

Multiplayer Game Development with Unreal Engine 5. Create compelling multiplayer games with C++, Blueprints, and Unreal Engine's networking features

Marco Secchi

If you’re fascinated by the immersive gaming experiences that enable multiple users to engage in collaborative or competitive gameplay, this Unreal Engine 5 game development book is for you.In this book, you’ll learn the foundational principles behind multiplayer games. Starting with a sample project, you’ll learn how to set up a networked system and make it work. Once the prototype of the project is functional, you’ll start adding game logic, including obstacles and AI opponents, to heighten the challenges and engagement, offering a captivating experience for players. Next, you’ll learn how to debug and optimize the project, before finally deploying the game build and integrating it with cloud services such as the Epic Online Services system.By the end of this book, you’ll have the confidence to develop and manage multiplayer experiences using the Unreal Engine environment, taking your newfound programming skills in your upcoming projects.

Professional Image Editing Made Easy with Affinity Photo. Apply Affinity Photo fundamentals to your workflows to edit, enhance, and create great images

Jeremy Hazel

In this book, you’ll explore the Affinity Photo program through practice-based learning as you make popular photo edits, learning the tools and techniques in conjunction with the workflow concept. Instead of comprehensive description of the tools, you’ll learn through practical application and understand why they work, not just how they work. This is neither a technical manual nor a workbook but a project-based hybrid approach that provides a deeper understanding of how to use each tool to achieve your goal.Starting with the fundamentals of navigating the interface, understanding layers, and making your first edit, this Affinity Photo book gradually increases the complexity of projects. You’ll go from single-layer edits, composites, and RAW development to putting together a complex composition using the tools that you've learned along the way. Additionally, you’ll learn the best practices used by expert photo editors for a flawless finish.By the end of this book, you’ll have a good body of work, be able to evaluate the edits you want to make, and achieve desired results with Affinity Photo.

Bash Shell Scripting for Pentesters. Master the art of command-line exploitation and enhance your penetration testing workflows

Steve Campbell, David Kennedy

Bash shell scripting is essential for penetration testing because it’s versatile and efficient and integrates thoroughly with the Unix-based systems commonly used in cybersecurity assessments. In this book, the author leverages his decades of experience in IT and pentesting to help you automate repetitive tasks, rapidly analyze data, and craft sophisticated exploits, boosting your effectiveness and productivity.You’ll get to grips with Bash basics, set up a hacking environment, and create basic scripts, before exploring file management, text processing, and manipulation. The chapters will guide you through advanced topics such as networking, parallel processing, and regular expressions. From there, the book will move on to practical applications, walking you through reconnaissance, web application and infrastructure pentesting, privilege escalation, persistence, and pivoting, all using Bash scripting. You’ll also get a solid understanding of advanced topics, including evasion and obfuscation tactics, integrating AI into penetration testing workflows, and implementing DevSecOps practices.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with Bash shell scripting techniques tailored to penetration testing scenarios.

Hudson 3 Essentials. Here is a book that makes life easier for Java developers or administrators by teaching you how to automate application testing using Hudson 3. Fast-paced and hands-on, the guide covers everything from installation to writing plugins

Lloyd H. Meinholz

Continuous integration (CI) with automated test execution has been widely adopted in recent years. The concept behind CI has changed how companies look at Build Management, Release Management, Deployment Automation, and Test Orchestration. Hudson is a CI solution that provides executives, business managers, software developers, and architects with a better sense of the development progress and code quality of projects throughout their development life cycle.A fast-paced and hands-on introduction to the key features of Hudson 3. You will be introduced to tools that can be used to improve the quality of software development projects. You will also learn how to install and secure Hudson in a variety of IT environments. Staring with a brief introduction to Hudson and how it helps many IT organizations deliver high quality software, Hudson 3 Essentials will show you how Hudson can be installed and deployed in various environments. You will also be guided through the different methods of securing your Hudson installation. Moving on from the basics, you will be introduced to several important Hudson plugins and learn how to extend its functionality by developing your own plugins. You will be shown how Hudson can be used to build different types of applications and how it can deploy a web application to an application server. Finally, you will discover how Hudson can be used to perform automated testing on software applications, and how to generate reports that describe the results.

C# 8 and .NET Core 3 Projects Using Azure. Build professional desktop, mobile, and web applications that meet modern software requirements - Second Edition

Paul Michaels, Dirk Strauss, Jas Rademeyer

.NET Core is a general-purpose, modular, cross-platform, and opensource implementation of .NET. The latest release of .NET Core 3 comes with improved performance and security features, along with support for desktop applications. .NET Core 3 is not only useful for new developers looking to start learning the framework, but also for legacy developers interested in migrating their apps. Updated with the latest features and enhancements, this updated second edition is a step-by-step, project-based guide.The book starts with a brief introduction to the key features of C# 8 and .NET Core 3.You'll learn to work with relational data using Entity Framework Core 3, before understanding how to use ASP.NET Core. As you progress, you’ll discover how you can use .NET Core to create cross-platform applications. Later, the book will show you how to upgrade your old WinForms apps to .NET Core 3. The concluding chapters will then help you use SignalR effectively to add real-time functionality to your applications, before demonstrating how to implement MongoDB in your apps. Finally, you'll delve into serverless computing and how to build microservices using Docker and Kubernetes.By the end of this book, you'll be proficient in developing applications using .NET Core 3.

Generative AI on Google Cloud with LangChain. Design scalable generative AI solutions with Python, LangChain, and Vertex AI on Google Cloud

Leonid Kuligin, Jorge Zaldívar, Maximilian Tschochohei, Harrison Chase

The rapid transformation and enterprise adoption of GenAI has created an urgent demand for developers to quickly build and deploy AI applications that deliver real value. Written by three distinguished Google AI engineers and LangChain contributors who have shaped Google Cloud’s integration with LangChain and implemented AI solutions for Fortune 500 companies, this book bridges the gap between concept and implementation, exploring LangChain and Google Cloud’s enterprise-ready tools for scalable AI solutions.You'll start by exploring the fundamentals of large language models (LLMs) and how LangChain simplifies the development of AI workflows by connecting LLMs with external data and services. This book guides you through using essential tools like the Gemini and PaLM 2 APIs, Vertex AI, and Vertex AI Search to create sophisticated, production-ready GenAI applications. You'll also overcome the context limitations of LLMs by mastering advanced techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and external memory layers.Through practical patterns and real-world examples, you’ll gain everything you need to harness Google Cloud’s AI ecosystem, reducing the time to market while ensuring enterprise scalability. You’ll have the expertise to build robust GenAI applications that can be tailored to solve real-world business challenges.

Unity 2017 Game AI programming. Leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence to program smart entities for your games - Third Edition

Raymundo Barrera

Unity 2017 provides game and app developers with a variety of tools to implement Artificial Intelligence. Leveraging these tools via Unity's API or built-in features allows limitless possibilities when it comes to creating your game's worlds and characters. This third edition with Unity will help you break down Artificial Intelligence into simple concepts to give you a fundamental understanding of the topic to build upon. Using a variety of examples, the book then takes those concepts and walks you through actual implementations designed to highlight key concepts, and features related to game AI in Unity 5. Further on you will learn to distinguish the state machine pattern and implement one of your own. This is followed by learning how to implement a basic sensory system for your AI agent and coupling it with a Finite State Machine (FSM).Next you'll learn how to use Unity's built-in NavMesh feature and implement your own A* pathfinding system. You will then learn how to implement simple flocks and crowd's dynamics, key AI concepts. Moving on, you will learn how to implement a behavior tree through a game-focused example. Lastly, you'll combine fuzzy logic concepts with state machines and apply all the concepts in the book to build a simple tank game.

VMware vSphere 5.5 Cookbook. A task-oriented guide with over 150 practical recipes to install, configure, and manage VMware vSphere components

Abhilash G B

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook. This is a brilliantly accessible book, packed with practical examples, that's perfect for business professionals who want to make more of the advanced features of Dynamics AX to save money and increase management efficiency

Murray Fife

Dynamics AX is built on a number of foundation products from Microsoft that are used to make it bigger, better, and stronger than the average business system. Taking advantage of these products will make your life easier. Use these tools to maximize the efficiency of your business management, taking advantage of a powerful and centralized tool set.Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook will show you how to use tools that you already have to extend out Dynamics AX and discover potential new directions. You will be surprised at what you can do on a shoestring budget. The book will allow you to streamline your work processes, and use the system's powerful and centralised features to the advantage of your organization.Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook will show you how to maximize the potential of Dynamics AX with common and popular tools to enhance your business management systems. We will begin by exploring how to extend Dynamics AX out with SharePoint. After this, the book will guide you through important elements in maximizing business management efficiency, focusing on key aspects like reports, dashboards, and workflows. The book will then finish by teaching you how to customize your management systems, achieving a comprehensive coverage of the most important extension processes relevant to you and your business with very little programming.This is a book for those of you that want to make the most out of Dynamics AX by using what you already have, and without breaking the bank.

Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 Essentials. Design and deliver an optimal user experience for all devices

Alex Libby, Gaurav Gupta, Asoj Talesra

Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience—providing easy reading and navigation with minimum resizing, panning, and scrolling—and all of this across a wide range of devices from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones. Responsive web design is becoming more important as the amount of mobile traffic now accounts for more than half of the Internet’s total traffic.This book will give you in depth knowledge about the basics of responsive web design. You will embark on a journey of building effective responsive web pages that work across a range of devices, from mobile phones to smart TVs, with nothing more than standard markup and styling techniques.You'll begin by getting an understanding of what RWD is and its significance to the modern web. Building on the basics, you'll learn about layouts and media queries. Following this, we’ll dive into creating layouts using grid based templates. We’ll also cover the important topic of performance management, and discover how to tackle cross-browser challenges.

Building a Recommendation System with R. Learn the art of building robust and powerful recommendation engines using R

SURESH K GORAKALA, Michele Usuelli, Suresh Kumar Gorakala

Automotive Cybersecurity Engineering Handbook. The automotive engineer's roadmap to cyber-resilient vehicles

Dr. Ahmad MK Nasser

Replete with exciting challenges, automotive cybersecurity is an emerging domain, and cybersecurity is a foundational enabler for current and future connected vehicle features. This book addresses the severe talent shortage faced by the industry in meeting the demand for building cyber-resilient systems by consolidating practical topics on securing automotive systems to help automotive engineers gain a competitive edge.The book begins by exploring present and future automotive vehicle architectures, along with relevant threats and the skills essential to addressing them. You’ll then explore cybersecurity engineering methods, focusing on compliance with existing automotive standards while making the process advantageous. The chapters are designed in a way to help you with both the theory and practice of building secure systems while considering the cost, time, and resource limitations of automotive engineering. The concluding chapters take a practical approach to threat modeling automotive systems and teach you how to implement security controls across different vehicle architecture layers.By the end of this book, you'll have learned effective methods of handling cybersecurity risks in any automotive product, from single libraries to entire vehicle architectures.

VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials. Learn how to quickly and efficiently virtualize your applications with ThinApp 4.7 with this book and

Peter Bjork

VMware ThinApp 4.7 is an application virtualization and portable application creator which allows users to package conventional applications so that they are portable.VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials shows you how to deploy ThinApp packages in order to improve the portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed.Application virtualization improves the portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed.VMware ThinApp 4.7 is an application virtualization and portable application creator which allows users to package conventional applications so that they are portable. ThinApp eliminates application conflicts, reducing the need and cost of recoding and regression testing.In this book you will learn about how application virtualization works and how to deploy ThinApp packages. You will learn how to update and tweak ThinApp Projects before distribution. This book will then cover design and implementation considerations for future ThinApp projects.

Oracle E-Business Suite R12.x HRMS - A Functionality Guide. Design, implement, and build an entire end-to-end HR management infrastructure with Oracle E-Business Suite

Pravin S Ingawale

Svelte 3 Up and Running. A fast-paced introductory guide to building high-performance web applications with SvelteJS

Alessandro Segala

Svelte is a modern JavaScript framework used to build static web apps that are fast and lean, as well as being fun for developers to use. This book is a concise and practical introduction for those who are new to the Svelte framework which will have you up to speed with building apps quickly, and teach you how to use Svelte 3 to build apps that offer a great app user experience (UX).The book starts with an introduction to Svelte 3, before showing you how to set up your first complete application with the framework. Filled with code samples, each chapter will show you how to write components using the Svelte template syntax and the application programming interfaces (APIs) of the Svelte framework. As you advance, you’ll go from scaffolding your project and tool setup all the way through to production with DevOps principles such as automated testing, continuous integration, and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Finally, you’ll deploy your application in the cloud with object storage services and a content delivery network (CDN) for best-in-class performance for your users.By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build and deploy apps using Svelte 3 to solve real-world problems and deliver impressive results.

Optimizing Salesforce Industries Solutions on the Vlocity OmniStudio Platform. Implementing OmniStudio best practices for achieving maximum performance

Dmitri Khanine

Salesforce Industries brings out-of-the-box solutions tailored to specific industries, making it easy for customers to install, configure, and slash their time-to-value. It stands as one of Salesforce's strategic pillars with the number of installations growing rapidly.While customizing the out-of-the-box solutions can pose performance challenges, this book provides a fail-safe system with proven best practices, tools, and precise metrics to enhance performance and scalability for efficient outcomes.Kicking off with an overview of the Salesforce Industries Vlocity platform and OmniStudio, you’ll explore the tools and techniques used to manage code and measure performance. Delving into performance optimization, you’ll uncover methods for improving performance in OmniStudio's Service Layer (Integration Procedures and DataRaptors) and Presentation Layer (OmniScripts and FlexCards). Further, the book will guide you through achieving maximum performance by leveraging best practices in both layers.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered the intricacies of Salesforce Industries on the Vlocity OmniStudio Platform, enhancing your skills to navigate and optimize tailored solutions effectively.

Hands-On Simulation Modeling with Python. Develop simulation models for improved efficiency and precision in the decision-making process - Second Edition

Giuseppe Ciaburro

Simulation modelling is an exploration method that aims to imitate physical systems in a virtual environment and retrieve useful statistical inferences from it. The ability to analyze the model as it runs sets simulation modelling apart from other methods used in conventional analyses. This book is your comprehensive and hands-on guide to understanding various computational statistical simulations using Python. The book begins by helping you get familiarized with the fundamental concepts of simulation modelling, that’ll enable you to understand the various methods and techniques needed to explore complex topics. Data scientists working with simulation models will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide. As you advance, you’ll dive deep into numerical simulation algorithms, including an overview of relevant applications, with the help of real-world use cases and practical examples. You'll also find out how to use Python to develop simulation models and how to use several Python packages. Finally, you’ll get to grips with various numerical simulation algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Processes, Monte Carlo methods, and bootstrapping techniques.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to construct and deploy simulation models of your own to overcome real-world challenges.

The Future of Finance with ChatGPT and Power BI. Transform your trading, investing, and financial reporting with ChatGPT and Power BI

James Bryant, Aloke Mukherjee

In today's rapidly evolving economic landscape, the combination of finance, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) heralds a new era of decision-making. Finance and data analytics along with AI can no longer be seen as separate disciplines and professionals have to be comfortable in both in order to be successful. This book combines finance concepts, visualizations through Power BI and the application of AI and ChatGPT to provide a more holistic perspective.After a brief introduction to finance and Power BI, you will begin with Tesla's data-driven financial tactics before moving to John Deere's AgTech strides, all through the lens of AI. Salesforce's adaptation to the AI revolution offers profound insights, while Moderna's navigation through the biotech frontier during the pandemic showcases the agility of AI-focused companies. Learn from Silicon Valley Bank's demise, and prepare for CrowdStrike's defensive maneuvers against cyber threats. With each chapter, you'll gain mastery over new investing ideas, Power BI tools, and integrate ChatGPT into your workflows.This book is an indispensable ally for anyone looking to thrive in the financial sector. By the end of this book, you'll be able to transform your approach to investing and trading by blending AI-driven analysis, data visualization, and real-world applications.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook. Over 70 clear and incredibly effective recipes to get the most out of the many tools and features of ASP.NET MVC framework

Andrew Siemer, Richard Kimber, Richard J Kimber

ASP.NET MVC, one of the latest web development platforms from Microsoft, brings the power of MVC programming to ASP.NET development. It simplifies the task of application development and maintenance for developers. However, ASP.NET MVC is filled with so many features that developers end up looking for solutions to the many problems that are encountered in their routine development tasks.ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook will provide solutions for the very specific problems that are encountered while developing applications with the ASP.NET MVC platform. It consists of many recipes containing step-by-step instructions that guide developers to effectively use the wide array of tools and features of ASP.NET MVC platform for web development ASP.NET MVC Cookbook is a collection of recipes that will help you to perform your routine development tasks with ease using the ASP.NET MVC platform. In this book you will be walked through the solution to several specific web application development problems. Each recipe will walk you through the creation of a web application, setting up any Visual Studio project requirements, adding in any external tools, and finally the programming steps needed to solve the problem. The focus of the book is to describe the solution from start to finish.The book starts off with recipes that demonstrate how to work effectively with views and controllers – two of the most important ingredients of the ASP.NET MVC framework. It then gradually moves on to cover many advanced routing techniques. Considering the importance of having a consistent structure to the site, the book contains recipes to show how to build a consistent UI and control its look with master pages. It also contains a chapter that is packed with many recipes that demonstrate how to gain control of data within a view.As the book progresses through some exciting recipes on performing complex tasks with forms, you will discover how easy it is to work with forms to jazz up the look of your web site. Building large applications with ease is one of the prime features of the MVC model. Therefore, this book also focuses on tools and features that make building large applications easier to manage. As data plays an important role in the MVC architecture, there are ample recipes dedicated to cover data validation, access, and storage techniques. Finally, the book demonstrates how to enhance the user experience of your visitors by controlling the data at the application, session, caching, and cookie level.By the end of this book, you will have explored a wide array of tools and features available with the ASP.NET MVC platform

Godot 4 Game Development Projects. Build five cross-platform 2D and 3D games using one of the most powerful open source game engines - Second Edition

Chris Bradfield

Godot 4.0 is one of the most sought-after open-source game engines, and if you’re enthusiastic about exploring its features, then this book is for you. Written by an author with over twenty-five years of experience, the Godot 4 Game Development Projects introduces the Godot game engine and its feature-rich 4.0 version. With an array of new capabilities, Godot 4.0 is a strong alternative to expensive commercial game engines. If you’re a beginner, this book will help you learn game development techniques, while experienced developers will understand how to use this powerful and customizable tool to bring their creative visions to life.This updated edition consists of five projects with an emphasis on the 3D capabilities of the engine that will help you build on your foundation-level skills through small-scale game projects. Along the way, you’ll gain insights into Godot’s inner workings and discover game development techniques that you can apply to your projects.Using a step-by-step approach and practical examples, this book covers everything from the absolute basics to sophisticated game physics, animations, and much more. By the time you complete the final project, you’ll have a strong foundation for future success with Godot 4.0 and you’ll be well on your way to developing a variety of games.