Gaming Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
Book Review
Gaming Hacks:
100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
Book Review
 By
Dale Farris, Vice PresidentGolden Triangle PC Club December 2004 General Overview It doesn't take long for an avid, or just wickedly clever gamer to be chafed by the limitations of videogame software or hardware. If you want to go far beyond the obvious, whether you want to modify your console controller to work on other consoles, create your own text adventure, or modify your Game Boy, there is an awful lot of fun you can have for cheap or free, using the creative exploits of the gaming gurus. Gaming Hacks is the indispensable guide to cool things gamers can do to create, modify, and hack videogame hardware and software. Everything from social exploits and tips to be used in MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) to soldering-iron heavy hardware hacks is covered in this extreme-cool hack guide written by gamers for gamers. Gaming Hacks offers a stunning variety of hacks, exploits, and other creative acts on both modern and archaic console hardware and today's PC hardware. One hundred detailed, ingenious hacks are included. Gaming Hacks also includes detailed software-based looks at MMO (massively multiplayer) titles, FPS (first-person shooter) games, machinima (real-time movies created using game engines), emulation, save-game hacking, and many other miscellaneous subgenres and topics. Gaming Hacks shows hardcore gamers how to configure the best FPS peripherals, hack the Nuon DVD Player/Gaming System, modify their Game Boy, watch movies and listen to music and their Sega Dreamcast, and much, much more. Gaming Hacks shows you how to do things you didn't know could be done. If you want more than your average gamer, if you want to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, or make your games do what you want them to do Gaming Hacks will show you how. You don't need to be gaming guru to pick up Gaming Hacks, but you will be one when you put it down. Hacks Discussed in the Book Play classic games just as you remember them Take your games on the road (without dragging an extension cord) Become a hero, villain, or tycoon online Seek out, buy, and play real arcade games in real arcade cabinets Play imported games without hardware restrictions Write, direct, and film your own movies inside of games Create and play your own games in less than a week Hack, mod, and overclock your favorite console Table of Contents The 100 gaming hack tips are organized in eight (8) chapters, including the following: Ch 1: Playing Classic Games Ch 2: Playing Portably Ch 3: Playing Well with Others Ch 4: Playing with Hardware Ch 5: Playing with Console and Arcade Hardware Ch 6: Playing Around the Game Engine Ch 7: Playing Your Own Games Ch 8: Playing Everything Else Target Readers This is a fascinating book that is filled with 100 clever, important hacks for gamers from game developers, expert players, and fans, representing dozens of rabbit holes related to playing, collecting, modifying, and enjoying the world of video games. Some hacks cover classic games, while others explore modern game console machines, and others cover PC games. There is something for everyone, from an old idea in a new dress to an unknown concept or wacky idea you would never have considered, until now. This book explores and celebrates 100 of the most interesting nooks and crannies of the electronic gaming world, whether new, old, or positively ancient. Among game enthusiasts, the term hack refers to a "quick and dirty" solution to a problem or a clever way to do something. The term hacker is very much a compliment, praising someone for being creative and having the technical chops to get things done. O'Reilly's important, successful Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the ways people are hacking in a good way, and pass on the hacker ethic of creative participation to a new generation of hackers. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a new technology. The material assumes some degree of comfort with electronics and electrical engineering, although you do not of course have to be an electrical engineer to perform the hacks. You will need to be comfortable with working with integrated circuits, electrical assembly, soldering wires, and dis-assembling electronic devices. Of course, you will also need to be comfortable with possibly ruining beyond repair the discussed device, if you fail to successfully complete the described hacks. This is a highly specialized book that specifically targets a unique audience, namely those confident in their skills and abilities to follow the excellent hacking instructions that are replete throughout this important book. Book Contents 462 pages; paperbound; acknowledgements; foreword by Marc Laidlaw, writer, Half-Life Series, Valve Software; preface; tons of additional tips and warnings; code examples; index; cover colophon Author Simon Carless About the Author Simon Carless is an editor, writer, and former videogame designer who hails from London, England, but now lives and works in San Jose, California. He helps edit the popular tech web site slashdot.org, notably concentrating on the Slashdot Games section, and also writes regularly for the online arm of Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra, as well as helping with software and music-related projects at the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco. ISBN October 2004 - First Edition 0-596-00714-0 List Price $24.95 $36.95 CAN About O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media is the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company's books, conferences, and web sites bring to light the knowledge of technology innovators. O'Reilly books, known for the animals on their covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building the next generation of software. O'Reilly conferences and summits bring alpha geeks and forward-thinking business leaders together to shape the revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to XML, open source, .NET, Java, and web services, O'Reilly puts technologies on the map. O'Reilly Media creates products that they
want to use. Whatever form it takes--book, conference, online product--they
want anything produced with the O'Reilly name to be useful, interesting, and
truthful. And O'Reilly Media believes that there are plenty of intelligent,
discriminating people in the world who value those qualities as deeply as
they do. |