Pangea Software Inc. on Friday announced that ” Pangea Software’s Ultimate Game Programming Guide for Mac OS X ” is now shipping — a few weeks early, as it turns out. The book was originally expected to be released in late October. It’s aimed at intermediate to advanced programmers interested in learning about how to leverage Mac OS X technology to build games.
The book was written by Pangea Software founder and president Brian Greenstone, the game programmer behind Nanosaur, Bugdom, Cro-Mag Rally, Enimgo, Otto Matic and other Macintosh games. The book offers information about how to use Mac OS X technologies including HID Manager, OpenGL, OpenAL, Core Graphics, Rendezvous, QuickTime and more. Also included is information on how to write a Maya plug-in, how to do stereoscopic 3D rendering, networking, optimizations for AltiVec, and copy protection. Greenstone also devotes a chapter to marketing and sales strategies for developers interested in publishing their software themselves. A companion CD contains sample Xcode projects including a Maya file exporter, networking code, Vertex Array Range acceleration, threading and more.
You can order the book from Pangea’s Web site, although other vendors — including Amazon.com — will carry it in the coming months. Orders placed on Pangea’s Web site will receive a 20 percent discount over the US$49.95 cover price — including free ground shipping. Schools and military personnel are eligible for discounts.