I find it really hard to get books on game development here in Australia. Are there any particular stores or websites you would recommend that are quite comprehensive?
I?ve found McGills in Brisbane to be a fantastic bookstore for game related topics. I?ve found some great programming texts in there, though I find the art stuff no overly useful. And they seem to have plenty of general game design books available also. But regardless of your interests they usually cover all bases.
God, I could easily spend thousands of dollars in that place if I had the cash.
Oh yeah, and you don't have to be in Brisbane, I'm pretty sure you can order things delivered.
[url]https://www.mcgills.com.au/cgi-bin/mcgills.storefront/[/url]
There aren't very many bookstores around with a decent game development library (McGills is good, Borders is pretty good as well).
However, I usually order books from amazon.com. If you've got a credit card, and you don't mind waiting 2 weeks or so for delivery, you can save a lot of money. I've bought about a dozen gamedev books from amazon.com collectively saving me hundreds of dollars. Most books that you find in Australian technical bookstores for $120 - $150 can be found at around USD$30 - USD$60 on amazon.com.
I usually get my game dev books from [url]http://www.bookware.com.au[/url]. They are an online computer bookstore and have a lot of game dev books as well.
I'm a programmer, and live in Melb. I usually go around the local bookshops like Dymocks, Techical Bookshop, etc. But the varieties of books are just very limited and they are expensive (around $100-$150). You're better off getting it from Amazon, but then you have to wait for so long, I'm so reluctant to order. There's just no easy way eh? [:(]
Yeah, waiting for international shipping is a pain, and I usually order two or three books at a time so that I only make a few orders in a year. I've ordered books by express shipping as well, which is about an extra USD$5 per book, arrives in about a week and a half, and is still much cheaper than shopping at dymocks.
The other great thing about amazon is that they often have bundle deals with related titles, so I sometimes save money on a pair of books that I was planning to buy together anyway.
No, that's not quite right. If you pay over $1000 then you have to get a "formal Customs Import Entry" and automatically have to pay duty.
However, if the duty+GST is going to be $50 or more you still have to pay. Duty is 5% and is applicable to the cost of the goods. The GST is 10% and is applicable to the cost of the goods plus the postage.
It's complicated but you can check out some examples here: [url]http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=4376#e987[/url]
$200 worth of goods plus $50 postage is safe. Damn I wish I did this research before ordering...
Since I'm already typing I'd also add that however difficult or expensive it might be to get your hands on quality books these days it is a lot better than in years gone by. I remember, once upon a time, having to make a lot of phone calls and driving around a fair bit when I was after the Amiga reference manuals. [:)]
pb
For 3d books i usually visit two place .. i first goto www.getonce.com.au and do a search on the book i want if i know the title, most of the time i'm able to find a book from amazon here. If i don't know the title of the book i head to http://www.elx.com.au/cat/books/gimp, which is an australian online store with the biggest selection of 3d books i've seen in australia.
still on the subject but a bit more of a personal anecdote; i was in borders today to pick up a book because ive won the IT award at my school and you consequently get a free book on that subject (im in yr12 and yes its now apparently official that im the biggest IT nerd that the school has to offer) and going through the IT section i noticed there was sections for programming and sections for various multimedia software aswell as just a game theory section which included a few interesting topics beyond the typical like about two or three books that were devoted how to guides for console modding. Its expensive but it seems borders is the place to go if you actually want to walk into a store (as opposed to shopping online)
my advice is be more specific, are you after game design? programming? building art related content in a particular program? if you have direction like that and you hit a store like borders youll turn up much better results. That being said theres two books that stand out as sort of general game development books "Game design: secrets of the sages" and "game creation and careers: insider secrets form industry experts" (allthough the second might be more of a revision of the first, not entirely sure on that one). They are rather design based, but do touch on other areas and have a absolute ton of industry big names talkin it up. Its also kinda nice to have it all clearly laid out in book form but ofcourse you can find all sorts of odds and ends all over the internet, http://www.gamasutra.com/ is the sort of game industry news hub.