Lee Stemkoski

Graeco-Latin Squares and a Mistaken Conjecture of Euler.

Euler once conjectured that Graeco-Latin squares of order 4n + 2 do not exist. We discuss the history of this problem and repeated attempts at proof and disproof. In addition, we survey a variety of mathematical techniques that were developed as a result during the following 200 years, culminating in a complete refutation of Euler’s conjecture.

Introduction to 3D Graphics and Games

This chapter will introduce some of the 3D graphics capabilities of LibGDX. Along the way, you’ll learn about the concepts and classes necessary to describe and render a three-dimensional scene. To simplify and streamline this process, you’ll both adapt some old classes and write some new classes to accomplish the various tasks involved. Next, to understand 3D movement, you’ll create a simple interactive demo that enables players to control both an object within the scene and the camera viewing the scene. Finally, you’ll create the game Starfish Collector 3D, shown in Figure 16-1, which once again features a turtle on a quest to collect all the starfish that it can. For simplicity, this game will actually use 2.5D techniques: the game will render three-dimensional graphics, while the underlying gameplay (movement and collisions) will occur in two dimensions.

Text and User Interfaces

In this chapter, you will learn how to display text, create buttons that display an image or text, and design a user interface using tables. First, you will be introduced to these skills by adding these features to the Starfish Collector game from Chapter 3, as shown in Figure 5-1. Then, you will build on and strengthen these skills while learning how to create cutscenes (sometimes called in-game cinematics) that provide a narrative element to your games; a cutscene for Starfish Collector is shown in Figure 5-2.

Drag-and-Drop Games

In this chapter, you will learn how to add drag-and-drop functionality to your games: the ability to click on an object and, while the mouse button is held down, have the selected object move along with the mouse until the button is released. Since this functionality is useful in many contexts, you will create an extension of the BaseActor class, called DragAndDropActor, containing the related code. To demonstrate the flexibility of this new class, you will create two new games that make use of this class. The first will be a jigsaw-puzzle game, shown in Figure 9-1, which consists of an image that has been broken into pieces and must be rearranged correctly on a grid. The second will be a solitaire card game called 52 Card Pickup, shown in Figure 9-2, where a standard deck of playing cards must be correctly arranged in a set of piles.

Shoot-em-up games

In this chapter, you will create an entirely new game: Space Rocks, shown in Figure 4-1 and inspired by the classic arcade game Asteroids. You will make extensive use of the framework you created in the previous chapter (the BaseGame, BaseScreen, and BaseActor classes) and add a few new features along the way. The most significant addition will be the ability to handle discrete events: actions that should occur only once each time a key is pressed.

Side-Scrolling Games

In this chapter, you will create a side-scrolling action game called Plane Dodger, shown in Figure 7-1, inspired by modern smartphone games such as Flappy Bird and Jetpack Joyride. Along the way, you will create an endless scrolling background effect, simulate gravity using acceleration settings, and implement a difficulty ramp that increases the challenge difficulty as time passes.

Bouncing and Collision Games

In this chapter, you will create a ball-bouncing, brick-breaking game called Rectangle Destroyer, shown in Figure 8-1, inspired by arcade and early console games such as Breakout and Arkanoid. New features that will be implemented in this game include bouncing off of objects and power-up items.

Advanced 2D Graphics

In this chapter, rather than create a new game, you will learn two techniques for incorporating sophisticated graphics into your projects. The first section will introduce particle systems, which can create special effects such as explosions, which will be incorporated into the Space Rocks game in place of the spritesheet-based animation. The second section will introduce shader programs, which manipulate the pixels of the rendered image to create effects such as blurring or glowing, which will be incorporated into the Starfish Collector game.

Getting Started with Construct 2

Welcome to the exciting world of game design and development! In this chapter, you will learn all about Construct 2, the program you will be using to develop games throughout this book.

The LibGDX Framework

This chapter will introduce many of the major features of the LibGDX library. It will illustrate how to use them in the process of creating a game called Starfish Collector , where you help the player’s character, a turtle, swim around the ocean floor while looking for a starfish. A screenshot of this game in action appears in Figure 2-1. At first, you will create a basic, functional game. Following a motivational discussion of object-oriented design principles, you will rewrite parts of this project using some of the LibGDX classes to improve the organization of the code. Future chapters will revisit this example and use it as a basis to introduce new game-design principles and features of LibGDX.