Filled with tips and techniques from veteran game designers at Sony, Blizzard, Disney, LucasArts, Activision, 3DO, and many others!

Plan, design, and create enthralling game environments complete with richly animated characters and objects by applying the expert techniques described in this one-of-a-kind resource. Veteran game developer Tom Meigs covers the foundations of game design, including previsualization, level stubbing and layout, lighting, texturing, behavior scripting, and using particles, and explains in detail each stage of game development and design. Each chapter features an in-depth interview with a game industry expert as well as case a study based on Tom’s real-world experiences working on Sony PlayStation games and various other projects. Plus, you’ll get priceless advice on how to get into the game development industry now with details on the different types of jobs available.

• Develop a comprehensive previsualization process for your game project
• Create topographic maps and reference drawings for level planning and layout
• Build up your game scenes with lighting, texturing, particles, effects, and audio
• Place actors, props, and items and tune specific camera details
• Learn about game design by genre--sports, fighting, RTS, role-playing, FPS, sims, MMOG, and others
• Script action events using JavaScript, Visual Basic, Python, Perl, and other tools
• Develop and design games for wireless devices including PDAs and mobile phones
• Implement a testing loop
• Learn how to avoid mistakes and set yourself up for success

Build games with techniques and insights from a pro. Author and game developer Tom Meigs shows you the finer points of world building and behavior scripting. Learn about level stubbing, lighting, prop and item placement, camera tricks, particle and effects systems, communication loops, Massively Multiplayer Online Games, and much more.

This book was excellent...

Tom Meigs does a great job with this text. It goes over all of the concepts that you need to think about when designing your own levels, characters or even complete games. He includes many interviews with industry pro’s that really "tell it like it is." The best part, I think though, is the last chapter where he gives some examples of the different episodes that have happened at the companies he has worked for. Man, stress can drive some people crazy.

Decent introductory book.

Tom Meigs, Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds (McGraw-Hill, 2003)

While there’s a decent amount of useful information here, the reader of books on game design has seen a good deal of it before in other game design books. If it’s your first game design book, it will likely be quite helpful to you; those who have read two or three other general books on game design are likely to only get anything out of the interviews.

Decent introductory book.

Tom Meigs, Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds (McGraw-Hill, 2003)



While there’s a decent amount of useful information here, the reader of books on game design has seen a good deal of it before in other game design books. If it’s your first game design book, it will likely be quite helpful to you; those who have read two or three other general books on game design are likely to only get anything out of the interviews.

Ultimate waste of time!

Ambiguous content with statements such as light can be very useful... AND! This book is of no value to any one who is remotely interested in greating/building actual game worlds. You would be better off giving the book a miss and check the forums out on the internet. I am gutted that I made the mistake of reading and believing the comments made on the books contents which now seems obvious these were placed by the authors friends and relatives. It’s a pity Amazon do not accept returns! As such the book is destined for the bin.

Peak on the other side

If your not in the gaming industry, but want to be, then this book will be a very valuable resource to you. For me, it was a welcome break from reading all software books. Which you must also do to get into gaming, or at least the art or programming jobs. This book reveals little known facts such as getting a job in the QA dept of a game company is a great way to get in if your not an artist or programmer. It also paints a picture of an industry that has its problems like anything else. Great chapters are included that discuss level mapping concepts and design techniques that are sure to boost ones though process as well as good interviews with key gaming gods. It simply does a great job at covering the gamut that is games. The author also gives you some good tips on what game developers "who hire" think like, cause he probably has done it. Must read for any potential game industry people. Harsh reality in many ways.

Practical and solid book on building levels and games

"Ultimate Games Design" There seems to be no shortage of games design books, and they all claim to be the ultimate. All of them wants to deal primarily with the big fluffy ideas of the lead design - the overall idea of the game and so forth. Few of them has anything to say about the actual execution in terms of level design for example.

Untill now. Despite hating the title (and the colour scheme) of this book, I have to bow to the ultimate thing. This is as good a good as you will get right now about actually building game worlds - the level designs, the modelling, the texturing, the lighting and so forth. It also has one of the mandatory chapters on getting into the industry, where Tom Meigs goes beyond the usual war stories from the pros and repetitive listing of roles in the games industry, to actually offer the reader a good ammount of introspective questions to ponder and sage advice to gear up for the bumpy ride ahead.

So from hating it, this book has become one of my absolute favourites on games design. Well done Tom Meigs, whoever you are!

Best Game Design Overview Available...

I really enjoyed this book! I have some limited experience in game development, and this book really helped fill in the blanks for me. It was highly recommended by a friend who already works in the game industry -- and on several websites. I wasn’t disappointed. I think it’s the best book available. The book flowed easily from chapter to chapter.

Previsualization - Level Planning and Building - Lighting - Texturing - Particles - Effects - Actors - Props - Audio
Camera Control - Genre Design - Scripting - QA - MMOGs - Wireless

It’s all covered in pretty balanced detail. I finally feel like I understand how all this stuff relates in building a game and no single book had helped me this way before.

I bought several other books on game design - but they were either too general or didn’t really seem to cover the stuff you need to really get going in this area. Highly recommended!