Game-Development Links

This is a collection of useful game-development links including, but not restricted to, development with MonoGame.

During the process of developing our game I came across a large variety of websites that I found very useful.
This page is a collection of all of them baring a short description. I will check in every month or so and update this list accordingly.
Let me mention that I didn't record those links in any particular order and that the sites, I link to in this section, may contain much more than the description of the link suggests. Chances are that I didn't even look through each and every page of every single site before finding it helpful and bookmarking it. These are just the pages I found searching for solutions for the problems in the various fields of interest you inevitably stumble over when starting to write a game.

I tried to sort every link-table it in a way that should benefit your learning curve (most complex subjects last).

If you want to contribute just fork this repo, make changes and then a pull request.

Contributions are welcome!

If you like this repo, please don't forget to star it. Thank you.

Table of Contents

• Theory
  • Link Lists
  • Tutorial Sites
    • Lookup Tables
    • Mathematics And Stuff
    • Programming Guides
      • General
      • AI
      • XNA
      • Graphics And Effects
    • Networking
      • Spatial Partitioning
      • HLSL Shaders
      • Audio
    • Procedural Generation
• Practice
  • Components
  • Libraries
    • Game Engines
    • Physics
    • UI
    • Shadows And Lighting
    • Map Editors
    • Networking
    • Connectors
  • Tools
    • Installers And Setup
  • Legal Stuff And Licenses
    • Copyright
    • Copyleft
  • Artistic Material
    • Mixed
    • Graphics
    • Fonts
    • Sounds
  • Open Sourced Games

Theory

Link Lists

Here are other link-lists to browse.

• Awesome-MonoGame - This one contains a large list of MonoGame related projects on GitHub. Thx to the awesome Alois Deniel.
• The Big List Of Indie Game Marketing - On this page you will find a collection of handpicked articles about indie game marketing.
• Useful MonoGame Related Links - A nice collection of, as the title states, useful links around and about making games with MonoGame. Maintained my MrValentine.

Tutorial Sites

No specific order.

• Shawn Hargreave's Blog - This is a must-read for every XNA developer. The blog of the Master himself.
• XNAdevelopment - Great beginners tutorials around XNA game development.
• Catalin Zima's Blog - You should all know this one (and you will, I promise). Good examples. I would say that most of the content in here is for the advanced beginner.
• Riemer's XNA Tutorials - Flood of useful tutorials. I found it a bit untidy in a way. (archive)
• digitalerr0r - HLSL tutorials for every level of expertise. Nice guy but sort of retired, sadly.
• Kyle Schouviller's Blog - Good tutorials. Focus on content and tooling.
• RB Whitaker's Wiki - Extremely versatile. Covers almost every aspect of XNA game development. Many thanks.
• Threading in C# - A must-read for every programmer.
• XNA Game Tutorials - Some XNA game tutorials (2D collision, etc…)
• The Darkside of MonoGame - New tutorial series delivering both Video and Text tutorials on the latest MonoGame content
• Basic 2D Platformer Physics - Nice series by Daniel Branicki.
• Game Programming Adventures - A blog with some MonoGame/XNA game tutorials.
• Scott Lilly's site - Some C# tutorials, with a focus on making an RPG game with windows forms/WPF.

Lookup Tables

This section contains tables that I found useful during game-development.

• Color Charts - You want to set a color, but you can't see it? This site has proven most useful for me. There is not a single day that I don't visit it. It contains all the named colors you may use directly in XNA (or windows respectively), sorted the way you want. He has some more stuff going on at his blog, but frankly I didn't have the time to look into it.
• File Format Lookup Table - Extremely useful lookup-page for all possible file-formats along with detailled information about them. Thx to AcidFaucent for pointing that one out.

Mathematics And Stuff

This section contains articles about mathematical problems. You can't do without.

• Sketching with Math and Quasi Physics - Extremely nice graphical representations of much of the math you're gonna be using when developing a game.
• Trajectory Calculations - Want your bullet to fly the right way? These links show you how to do the necessary math for a 3D trajectory.
• Solving Ballistic Trajectories - Nice article that contains all the math and explains it very well. Features a GitHub repo containing all the code.
• Ballistic Trajectory
• Curve-Path
• Calculate a bounce-angle - Want your ball to bounce off the wall? This StackOverflow topic shows you how to do the necessary math.
• 2D AABB Collision Detection and Response - A nice primer from HopefulToad on that matter. Nice write-up.
• Collision Detection Overview in XNA - You want the monster to die, when you hit it? This is a good and very general overview. It describes the procedure using XNA-datastructures (which isn't always the best choice), but I think that this is a "must read".
• Line Intersection - You have intersecting lines but you don't know the intersection point? Helpful formulas when wanting to know the intersection-point of lines in general.
• Intersection Tests - You want to know the point where the bullet hit the plane? This is THE site containing an abundance of intersection tests for various geometric primitives. Must read. Thank you very much Miguel Gomez.
• Wiki-page for SAT - Good explanation with some helpful diagrams.
• Separating Axis Theorem (SAT) - You want to know, if the ray hit the polygon? By the way: AABB means Axis-Aligned-Bounding-Box. This is a very interesting and helpful technique (and straight forward).
• And another tutorial on the SAT - Great diagrams. Nice read.
• SAT - Explained - And another one. You should be able to tell that this one is important from the number of articles here. This one has nice diagrams and a really good explanation.
• Swept AABB Collision Detection And Response - Your sprites are moving through each other? Then you need sweep tests. This article here explains the stuff using Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes and shows a few possibilities on how to react on such collisions as well.
• Swept AABB Collision Using Minkowski Difference - This one contains an Ray-to-AABB sweep test.
• Intersection Tests in 2D - A nice overview over the various methods you can do collision detection with, including sweep testing.
• Collision Detection And Response - A very nice art