Mike McShaffry - Game coding complete

Mom and Grandma Hawker
Thanks for never saying Id never amount to anything, playing games all the time;
you believed in me, and it paid off.

Dad and Lynn
Thanks for showing me I should never be afraid of hard work.

Phil Hawker
Thanks for giving me a sense of humorI think I put it to good use here.

Warren Spector and Richard Garriott
Thanks for believing a geeky college kid could help make the games I loved to play.

Third Edition Guest Authors and Extra Help
James Clarendon, Jeff Lake, Quoc Tran, David (Rez) Graham, Chris Shelley

Third Edition Beta Testers
Sascha Friedmann, Vincent Magiya

Third Edition Publisher and Editor
Thanks to Heather Hurley for picking up the book for a third edition.
Thanks to my editor Marta Justak for making me look like a writer.

Mike McShaffry, aka Mr. Mike, started programming games as soon as he could tap a keyboardin fact, he somehow skipped seventh grade math entirely in favor of writing games in BASIC on an ancient Commodore Pet. In his single-minded pursuit of programming knowledge, he signed up for an extended stay at the University of Houston. To his surprise of himself and the Dean of Mathematics, he actually graduated five and one-half years later. Shortly after graduation, he entered the boot camp of the computer game industry: Origin Systems. He worked for Warren Spector and Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, on Martian Dreams, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Ultima VIII: Pagan, Ultima IX: Ascension, and Ultima Online.

Exactly seven years from the day he was hired, Mike arranged his escape and in 1997 formed his first company, Tornado Alley. Tornado Alley was a garage start-up whose goal was to create No Grownups Allowed, a massively multiplayer world for childrensomething that was sure to land Mike and anyone else at Tornado Alley front and center of a Congressional hearing. While No Grownups never left the tarmac, a kids activity program called Magnadoodle by Mattel Media did, and in record development time.

The entrepreneurial bug, a ravenous and insatiable beast, finally devoured enough of Mikes remaining EA stock to motivate him to take a steady gig at Glass Eye Entertainment, working for his friend Monty Kerr, where he produced Microsoft Casino. Ten short months later, Monty asked Mike and his newly assembled team to start their own company called Compulsive Development, which worked exclusively with Microsoft on casual casino and card games.

Mike served as the primary coffee brew master and head of studio, and together with the rest of the Compulsive folks, 20 great people in all, produced three more casual titles for Microsoft until August 2002. Compulsive was acquired by Glass Eye Entertainment to continue work on Glass Eyes growing online casual games business.

Mike was hungry for AAA console work, and in 2003 he got what he wanted: Ion Storms Thief: Deadly Shadows team called Mike in to create their third-person camera technology and work on fine-tuning character movement at the 11th hour. What started as a two-week contract turned into almost a year of labor working side-by-side with programmers who used to call Mike boss."

While it was great to be one of the boys again, it couldnt last forever. Mike was recruited to start an Austin studio for Maryland-based Breakaway Games. Breakaway Austins focus was AAA console development and high-end simulations for the U.S. military and DoD contractors. Mike and three of the BreakAway Austin team actually visited the USS Harry S. Truman, one of the U.S. Navys CVN class Nuclear Aircraft Carriers. They flew out, landed on the carrier, spent four days and nights with the officers and crew, and got launched to go back home. Afterwards, they created 24 Blue, a training simulator that mimics the insane environment of the deck of the carrier, jets and everything.

After BreakAway Austin, Mike founded a consulting company called MrMike. He figured that nearly 18 years in the gaming industry was enough to firmly establish that as a good identity for the company. For nearly two years, he helped small game companies choose their game technology, firm up their production practices, and pitch game ideas to industry publishers like Microsoft, EA, THQ, and others. One of his clients, Red Fly Studio, made him an offer he couldnt refuse, and he jumped back into a full-time gig.

Mike took the position of Executive Producer and helped ship Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. He is currently working on Ghostbusters for the Wii and two unannounced titles. He still makes coffee and tries to give good advice to the programmers, artists, designers, audio guys, and producers working for him.

He still writes code when he canmost recently working with his friend Quoc creating some nifty plug-ins for Microsoft Project, called MrMikes Addins.

If Mikes fingers arent tapping away at a keyboard, hes probably either downhilling on his mountain bike or enjoying good times with his friends in Austin, Texas.

The Cover Artist
The cover was created by my friend and co-worker Kris Taylor.
He is currently the Art Director of Red Fly Studio in Austin, Texas.

James Clarendon, Author of ,
Scripting With Lua
Id like to thank Mr. Mike for this opportunity as well as all the good times (and bad!)
weve shared in this crazy industry.
A special thanks to Edith, who has kept me sane during many of these times.

Jeff Lake, Co-author of ,
Collision and Simple Physics
To Larry Lake: Its no EOR, but its close.

David Rez Graham, Author of ,
An Introduction to Game AI
Steph Laberis for her constant encouragement.
My father for giving me my first programming book.
My mother for never telling me to stop wasting my life playing games.
My grandfather for his sage wisdom.
And last but not least, my good friend Mike McShaffry for giving me this opportunity.

Quoc Tran, Author of ,
A Simple Game Editor in C#"
Dr. Bruce Naylor for inspiring me to become a game developer.
Peter Freese for giving me my first break in the industry as a programmer.
My lovely wife, whose patience and support helped me maintain my tenuous grip on sanity.

2009 Course Technology, a part of Cengage Learning.

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