David Barnes @ Packt
I'm an acquisition editor for Packt Publishing. I specialize in "Beginner's Guide" tutorials.
Please contact me with your book ideas and proposals. I will read them and send you my feedback and advice as best I can. Mail:
davidb@packtpub.com. Twitter:
@drb.
About me.
Evolution of Monkey Island characters -- games 1 - 4, attempt 2
With a new Monkey Island game on the way, let’s see how advances in computer graphics and storage lead the characters to evolve. The early ones use great economy of design so that we can read a lot of ourselves and our own prejudices into each character. In sequels, the characters gradually conform more to the artist’s vision and less our own.
Guybrush
The Guybrush character has to be two things at once. He’s a character in the story — and a fairly stupid one. Also, he’s you. As a character he should look stupid. But as a representation of the player, you have to project on to him. So you mustn’t look down on him too much. The early versions use their lack of detail to make this work. In the later images he looks too stupid and it becomes harder to identify with him.
Elaine
In the early shots she looks like a fiesty and adventurous piratess. Is there anything more fanciable? First with hands on hips, then striding decisively into the future. Wow. In the later episodes she too becomes more realistic and annoying. By the end, she looks like a nag. (Errrrrr… not that all realistic women are annoying.) I recollect that her character went in that direction too. Let’s hope she’s more of an active character in the new adventures.
LeChuck
The second image is by far my favorite. The green pixelated skin does a great job of representing decomposing, rotten flesh. You can almost smell him. As the character develops he becomes less of an unpleasant adversary and arch enemy, and more of an elemental force of nature. His menace and malicious nature has translated into simple, raw power.
Where are they now?
The good news is that early pics and videos of Tales of Monkey island have a less dimwitted Guybrush, a fiestier Elaine, and a green, rotting Le Chuck. Just what I wanted.
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Evolution of Monkey Island characters -- games 1 - 4
With a new Monkey Island game on the way, let’s see how advances in computer graphics and storage lead the characters to evolve. The early ones use great economy of design so that we can read a lot of ourselves and our own prejudices into each character. In sequels, the characters gradually conform more to the artist’s vision and less our own.
Guybrush
The Guybrush character has to be two things at once. He’s a character in the story — and a fairly stupid one. Also, he’s you. As a character he should look stupid. But as a representation of the player, you have to project on to him. So you mustn’t look down on him too much. The early versions use their lack of detail to make this work. In the later images he looks too stupid and it becomes harder to identify with him.
Elaine
In the early shots she looks like a fiesty and adventurous piratess. Is there anything more fanciable? First with hands on hips, then striding decisively into the future. Wow. In the later episodes she too becomes more realistic and annoying. By the end, she looks like a nag. (Errrrrr… not that all realistic women are annoying.) I recollect that her character went in that direction too. Let’s hope she’s more of an active character in the new adventures.
LeChuck
The second image is by far my favorite. The green pixelated skin does a great job of representing decomposing, rotten flesh. You can almost smell him. As the character develops he becomes less of an unpleasant adversary and arch enemy, and more of an elemental force of nature. His menace and malicious nature has translated into simple, raw power.
Where are they now?
The good news is that early pics and videos of Tales of Monkey island have a less dimwitted Guybrush, a fiestier Elaine, and a green, rotting Le Chuck. Just what I wanted.
See and download the full gallery on posterous
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Want to write an XNA book? Here are some XNA topics I'm exploring...
If you or somebody you know is an XNA games builder with a penchant for writing, please put them in touch with me.
I’m exploring specific, focused topics for serious developers. Here are some topics I have on my mind:
- 3D Lighting - an Introduction to HLSL using XNA
- 2D Platforming and Physics in XNA
- Immersive RPG dialogue and interactions using XNA Game Studio
- Advanced Particle Systems in XNA
- XNA Game Studio and C#: Managed Games for the C/C++ Programmer
Is this kind of thing up your alley? Contact me! By email, Twitter, or the forms to your right. And if you’re looking for different XNA topics, the comments are open…
I’ve always wanted to do games development books. :D
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
How Dan Roam's Visual Codex Works for Words too
The centerpiece of Dan Roam’s excellent book
The Back of the Napkin is his visual codex. It helps you to choose the right kind of picture for anything that you want to show:
Even if you use words instead of pictures, the framework is very useful… it doesn’t matter much whether you want to describe something in words or shapes.
When an author introduces a concept to a reader they usually describe what the concept
is either at a simple or elaborate level. You can see this right in the top left hand corner of the diagram… a (word) portrait of whatever the concept is. You’re telling the reader
what the concept is. Just about every Wikipedia article is like this — it goes into reasonable detail, describing the topic.
But that’s only one way. And when the concept is unfamiliar, it might be one of the
worst approaches. Today I’ve been trying to get a grip on what F# (the programming language) is all about. I can find plenty of descriptions, clearly aimed at beginners, but none of them really help me. That’s not because they’re bad descriptions — but because a description is not the right approach.
Here are some other possibilities:
- A comparison — show how the new concept is similar to and different from something the reader already knows. So a simple comparison of how F# is different from or similar to VB.NET or C# would help me get a handle on it. If you’re introducing a technical concept to a non technical person, compare it to something in the real world.
- Show where the concept fits in with familiar problems and ideas. This could be as simple as saying “F# is perfect for….” and then listing certain kinds of application. This helps me put F# on “the map” that I carry around in my head.
- Show how it fits into a process. This is like flowchart, where one of the components is F#. “Say you want to build an application that [blank]. You realize it will need the following features: […….]. When you come to build the app, you use F# because [show how F# offers a great fit with the requirements].
- Show why it’s useful. “F# will help reduce development time in the following circumstances […….] because it [……].
This is a case where choosing what to say is more important than the way you say it. Even a poorly written comparison might be far more useful to the average reader than a polished, perfect description.
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
"Advanced Techniques"
I’m not that keen when books have a section of “advanced techniques”.
Often “advanced” really means “hard to do”. A book should show how to get a job done. If you need to know it, you have to cover it — and the fact that its “advanced” makes no difference. If you don’t need to know it, then you can either cut it out or — if it’s fun / useful — include it near the end. Again, the fact that it’s advanced makes no difference.
If you mean by advanced “optional, but useful”. If that’s the case, call it that. Or if it means “impressive stuff”, then that’s even better
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Ditch the "History of the Internet" chapters
Your book doesn’t need to cover
the history of the Internet. Unless you happen to be writing a book called “The History of the Internet”. If you are, good luck to you.
History of the Internet chapters usually appear when a new technology makes use of a whole bunch of preceding technologies. The author can’t conceive that anybody could understand this new tool, without learning about all the old technologies that it relies on.
Readers
hate it when books start this way. Readers are fickle creatures, swift to judge — and if the first chapter reads like a history text book then they’ll assume the whole book does.
Cut out the history chapters. Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Shoulda, woulda, coulda
It’s easy to think of things that everybody should be doing. There’s probably a million things you should be doing right now, instead of reading this post. There are a million things I should be doing instead of writing it.
Rarely do people buy books about things they
should do. Even if the argument is unassailable and the eventual benefits immeasurable.
If you want to write computer books that sell, look for things that people want to do and are trying to figure out. That’s where the sales are.
These human beings just don’t know what’s good for them.
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Tweequalizer: I #WANT a graphic equalizer for Twitter (@mahemoff would this do the job?)
All the Twitter clients just show your whole stream in various different ways.
I want a way to filter tweets while still giving a sense of randomness… and a graphic equalizer interface is the way to do it. As you adjust the knobs, the Tweequalizer application hides the tweets that aren’t a good fit for your needs.
If you just want Tweets from your close contacts, adjust the sliders so you are looking at people who follow few and are followed by few people. There could also be a slider for “people who reply to you”.
If you want the goss on trending topics, ramp up the “trending” slider. If you don’t, sling it down.
Want to see the latest from Twitter celebrities? Ramp the “lots of followers” and “RT’d a lot” up.
You could also have a VOLUME control — turn the volume low and the filter is applied strongly. Turn it up and most tweets are displayed, even if they don’t fit the filters you’ve set up.
Why hasn’t anybody built this? It would be a REAL innovation in Twitter clients, especially for heavy users.
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Packt Towers Hygiene in Jeopardy: A whole shelf of fancy toiletries but not a single bottle of hand wash
… and that’s not because they’re out of stock either. Our local Tesco sells several brands of shampoo, bubble bath, eye liner remover, nail varnish remover, hair sculpting products, deodorants, antiperspirants, shaving gels, shaving creams, spot creams, moisturizing creams, haemorrhoid creams, and antiviral wipes — but not a single bottle of ordinary, stick it next to the sink hand wash.
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Deeper or Wider: The Buffet Approach to Computer Book Marketing
Seth posted a few weeks ago about buffets and choosing whether to go deeper or wider.
Going deeper or wider is about the only way to compete in a crowded market, even for books.
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Deeper — find some aspect of the topic that some readers are obsessed with, and focus entirely on that
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Wider — figure out what puts people off the existing choices, and create a book that will appeal to more people
In computer book publishing, Dummies is the most successful “Wider” play. They knock down the main factors that put people off buying computer books. In any category they are usually the cheapest and easiest and most fun-looking option. So anybody who’s thinking “these books are too expensive” or “this looks hard” or “this looks boring” will go for Dummies.
And Dummies is the leader in just about every category they enter. The flip side is that revenue per title is low, and the up front investment is high. So if they don’t win in the category, they don’t win as a business.
“Wider” does not mean expanding the scope of the book — it means expanding the scope of the audience.
Deeper means getting obsessive about a few key aspects of the topic and being the ONLY book that zooms in on those. When you see Packt books on “Joomla! Templates” or “Drupal Extensions” you know we’re playing that game. These will never sell as many copies as “Joomla! for Dummies” — but they don’t have to, because everybody who needs them will buy them.
“Better” is not an option. It’s rare that a book wins by being “better” or more comprehensive or more complete. So if you’re pitching a book to a publisher — any publisher — focus on a clear “depth” or “breadth” way of competing. That’s the sort of thinking publishers will understand.
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Apply the Fish Philosophy to your book -- how to create a book people want to buy and read
Last Friday we had a course here at Packt Towers on the Fish Philosophy. The Fish Philosophy is all about boosting morale in business. Now it’s hard to imagine that morale at Packt could be boosted any further without exploding. Even so, the course was very interesting.
Anybody aiming to write a book that people want to buy and read can learn something from the 4 pillars of Fish: Be there, Play, Make their day, and Choose your attitude.
Read on to find out how…
Be there A non-fiction book is about a relationship — the relationship between you, your reader, and your topic. Draw close to the reader (but not too close… let’s stay professional here), and show them and their needs as much respect as you show your topic.
Play I never read a review that said the book wasn’t boring enough. Readers love to grin while they read even if it’s a boring topic. Playful writing chooses amusing examples and word pictures to make a point. Show how to have fun with the ideas, concepts, and tools that your book covers.
Make their day Serve and delight your readers. Put something on every page of every chapter that readers will be immediately glad to learn. Solve a problem that’s been nagging for ages, show them how to do something that they’ll want to do straight away, or give them something interesting to say at their next staff meeting / Ignite evening.
Choose your attitude The Fish principle here is basically “be cheerful”. As an author, you can be more sophisticated and adopt an attitude or character that is appropriate to your topic. You can convey the attitude of being serious and solution focused in dealing with serious topics. Or you can adopt an excitable attitude to all of the new possibilities you’re sharing. Or a mad scientist throwing ingredients together for no other reason than the joy of experimenting. Even a grouchy attitude can work for some things. Pick an attitude for your writing that fits the topic and surprises your readers.
The non fiction books that I like, computer or not, do this in spades. Want to sell a lot of copies? Follow their lead.
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Looking very thoughtful with my ukulele
The beard has gone now but the ukulele hasn’t.
My wife is 50% happier. ;-)
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Grammar rules are made to be broken. Selectively breaking the rules wakes up the brain and draws extra attention to your message.
Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, says that this “ungrammatical and somehow provocative use of ‘like’ instead of ‘as’ created a minor sensation” in 1954 and implies that the phrase itself was responsible for vaulting the brand to second place in the U.S. market. Winston overtook Pall Mall cigarettes as the #1 cigarette in the United States in 1966, while the advertising campaign continued to make an impression on the mass media.
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_tastes_good_like_a_cigarette_should#Grammar_controversy Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
Where is "FireOffice -- the Firefox of OpenOffice.org"? The secret to succeeding with Open Sorce desktop tools... (tags: openoffice.org, open source, firefox)
In January 2004 there wasn’t much hope for Mozilla browsers. Mozilla had a 5.5% share — 1.5% more than it had in January 2003. By the end of the year,
Mozilla had tripled its numbers and had a share of 16.5%.
As you know, this extra 10% of users were not using Mozilla — they were using Firefox, a brand new pared down browser based on Mozilla’s code.
Firefox gave up trying to beat the incumbent Internet Explorer on features, standards compliance, or power. Instead, it did a few key things in a clearly better, easier way. You could pitch Firefox to anybody in a few seconds:
- It was faster and more stable
- It had tabs
- It had built in search
… it was quick to install
and it worked well alongside IE — so there was not much risk if you didn’t like it. You’d “download it and give it a try”. I remember there were even plugins that would use the IE display engine on sites that didn’t play nice with Firefox.
OpenOffice is in a similar position to Mozilla in 2003. OpenOffice
should be irresistable — it does nearly everything MS Office can do, in some cases better, and it’s free. But the pitch fails because most Windows users already have Office, or would know how to get it if they wanted. OpenOffice.org’s own
why OpenOffice.org is not especially compelling if you already have MS Office installed — it just sounds like the same product.
FireOffice — the FireFox of OpenOffice.org — would do a few things so obviously differently from MS Office that people wouldn’t be able to help but try it out.
Here are the features that I want in FireOffice:
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Loads faster than MS Office — I don’t mind it 90% fewer features, because if I need to break out the big guns I can load MS Office (or the full OpenOffice.org). Just get my document open faster.
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Handles multiple open documents better — a tabbed interface with the option to have documents, spreadsheets, presentations open in different tabs on the same window.
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1 or 2 killer interesting, time saving features — that I haven’t thought of
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Lightweight, fun and interesting extensions — like import photos from Flickr to illustrate presentations, upload my documents to Scribd easily, and so on. Not serious stuff that turned it back into a heavy app, but fun things that made me want to show FireOffice to my friends.
FireOffice wouldn’t try to stop me
owning MS Office. It would try to get me
using it less. It would make my core day to day tasks go by faster and be more fun.
Please somebody, fork OpenOffice.org and build FireOffice — I am waiting and ready to use a lightweight open source office suite.
Posted via email from Tumbling Dave | Comment »
Are your readers looking for medicine or candy?
Is your book trying to make something painful go away? Solve a nagging problem, get rid of an irritating, time consuming process? Remedy fear, uncertainty, or doubt?
Or is giving the reader something new, fun, and tasty? Is it about exploring an opportunity and broadening horizons? Are you giving them exciting new skill that they can’t wait to get their teeth into?
Whichever it is, it will impact the way you plan, write, and market your book or tutorial. Choose one direction and build the book around that.
Posted via email from David Barnes @ Packt | Comment »
