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40 Free and Essential Web Design and Development Books from Goog Google Books is perhaps one of the most untapped design and development resources…time to change all that. In this post there are over 40 web design and development books freely available from Google, they range from CSS, HTML, XHTML, DHTML, Actioscript, Javascript, Ajax, Perl, Ruby, MooTools, jQuery, Firefox and evem iPhone development. Not all books are complete, but offer plenty of information to help with your development. CSS Cookbook CSS Cookbook » By Christopher Schmitt The CSS Cookbook provides more than quick code solutions to pressing problems. The explanation that accompanies each recipe enables readers to customize the formatting for their specific purposes, and shows why the solution works, so you can adapt these techniques to other situations.

8 Steps To Great Digital Storytelling Stories bring us together, encourage us to understand and empathize, and help us to communicate. Long before paper and books were common and affordable, information passed from generation to generation through this oral tradition of storytelling. Consider Digital Storytelling as the 21st Century version of the age-old art of storytelling with a twist: digital tools now make it possible for anyone to create a story and share it with the world. WHY Digital Storytelling?

Essential ActionScript 3.0 ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are considerable. Essential ActionScript 3.0 focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, along with the Flash Player API. Essential ActionScript has become the #1 resource for the Flash and ActionScript development community, and the reason is the author, Colin Moock. Many people even refer to it simply as "The Colin Moock book." And for good reason: No one is better at turning ActionScript inside out, learning its nuances and capabilities, and then explaining everything in such an accessible way.

Fanzingo Analysis: Portal and the Deconstruction of the Institution [In this in-depth analysis, Daniel Johnson discusses games, language and sociology with regard to Valve's Portal - please note that the article contains story spoilers for the game.] In 1959 Erving Goffman released The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; a book that went on to heavily influence future understanding of social interactions within the sociology discipline. In it, he discusses social intercourse under the metaphor of actors performing on a stage. Achievements Considered Harmful? - Chris Hecker's Website "The intrinsic reward for knifing dudes is knifing dudes." I waded into the debate on game achievements with my lecture at the 2010 Game Developers Conference titled Achievements Considered Harmful?, with a strong emphasis on the "?". Since the game industry seems to be careening head first into a future of larding points and medals and cute titles on players for just starting up a video game, I wanted to raise awareness of the large body of research studying the impact on motivation from various types of rewards. Trying to be "fair and balanced", I delved into what the data show and what they don't show.

Features - Lifting The Designer's Curse [Relic Entertainment studio design director Alexandre Mandryka outlines a framework for looking at how game design is handled, which he argues will both allow the discipline to grow in value and expertise while ensuring it serves the needs of projects.] Over my 10 years in the video game industry as a designer, including three years as studio design director for Ubisoft Montreal, I've had the opportunity to collaborate on numerous projects from different companies and cultures. While visuals and programming are better controlled, difficulty in anticipating, analyzing, and generally understanding the added value resulting from game design persists. While it is essential to game creation, this discipline is not clearly established and expertise is very rarely recognized. This puts designers under so much pressure and gives them so little opportunity for reward and growth that they are trapped in a vicious circle of being at the same time paramount and overlooked.

The Game Maker's Companion So here we are, about to embark on another journey into the world of game development. You may have joined us last time in The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Apress, 2006), or perhaps you taught yourself the basics of Game Maker under your own steam. Either way, we invite you to dust off your trusty keyboard and loosen up your mouse-arm as you join us in The Game Maker’s Companion. The path ahead is an exciting one and we have a host of new challenges in store to enhance your skills as a game developer. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to undertake such a journey without making suitable preparations first. Each of you will bring your own unique skills to the journey ahead, but you won’t get very far without some level of background knowledge.

Michael Jungbluth's Blog - Adding Weight to Your Game Design Part 1: Squash & Stretch The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Part 1 - Squash and Stretch : Part 2 - Anticipation : Part 3 - Staging Part 4 - Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose : Part 5 - Follow Through & Overlapping Action

The Declaration of Game Designer Independence On a cool, clear Austin weekend, a group of experienced game designers gathered for their yearly retreat. At night they swapped stories of an industry in turmoil. As social games and mobile games rewrite the landscape, power struggles between business and design dominate and designers find themselves being sidelined or abused. Ribbon Hero turns learning Office into a game This post has two goals. One, I want to share with you something amazing; a thing that according to most views of the tech universe should not exist. Two, I want to talk about a coming revolution in application design. The amazing thingImagine Microsoft Office turned into a video game. One where learning a productivity app is a delight.

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