Fante Bukowski

This is a small book. It is also a comic. So I read it in one pass. Fante is a writer who is having problems getting published. He writes short stories that get rejected by publishers. He is also working on his first book.

Fante is not his real name. He changed his name to match a famous writer that inspired him. Fante's dad is a rich and successful businessman. Fante strives to be successful too in order to impress his dad. Unfortunately, Fante has a beg his mom for money each month.

Fante lives in a cheap motel. He tries to network with agents. But they only want to represent someone who is already published. Fante makes a friend at a bar. But his friend dies of seemingly old age. Fante also gets a girlfriend who is an author. Even she cannot hook him up with an agent.

Eventually Fante checks out of the hotel. He takes the advice given to him from his old deceased friend. He leaves the town to go somewhere he can breathe. Unfortunately he encounters a weirdo giving him a ride. Then he heads to the outdoors and is spooked by wildlife. It is a rough life.

Game Programming All In One

I got this book to read a few interesting chapters in it like game design, artificial intelligence, and publishing. Even though I got the updated version of the book, it was still an old book (2007).

The book did not teach you about Windows programming or Direct X. It tried to steer you towards using a framework called Allegro which allowed you to publish the game to many platforms. The author believes that you need a whole team these days to produce a game. He likens game development to making a movie. The author also believes that console games will overtake PC games.

The author states that adventure games have fallen out of style. You should only do a beta test when there are no bugs and 100% of the functionality is done. If you do a prototype of your game, you can use that as your game demo. Some tasks such as the game installer, manual, and web site are saved for the post production phase.

Only the briefest introduction was provided for artificial intelligence. The book touched on expert systems, fuzzy logic, and neural networks. Can't go into detail about these topics and do them justice here.

Your game must be graphically attractive to be worth publishing. The sounds must match the actions in the game. The author recommends you start doing small games through small publishers first to build a name for yourself. You should attend game conferences such as E3 or GDC. You can sell/publish games by yourself. Just be sure to choose a site that can handle payments for yourself. If you do team up with a publisher, hire a lawyer to represent you at contract time.