5 comments about Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD (The Premier Press Game Development Series).

1. Prima Press has the merit of being the first company to heavily invest only in publications of game-programming books.. I find that game-programming is one of the most fascinating and well, fun
   area of programming and CS in general.. so any effort in this direction is welcome to me.. but I have seen too many titles from this publisher who were too superficial to do any good, or just plain rubbish. This title stands out for the professionality and competence of the author and for the level of detail and completeness of presentation. If you are a programmer with decent C/C++ skills, a curiosity about how games like Diablo work, and a LOT of patience and enthusiasm for game programming by all means get this book. It won't enable you to write the next episode of Diablo or Dungeon Siege but still if you work your way through it studying carefully the text and especially the code presented, in the end you will know enough to create a small
   2D/3D adventure game on the diablo style.

   Beware this book is thick and dense, and will take time to absorb but you cannot help it if you want to learn something interesting and enjoyable about game programming.
   The second edition is coming out, probably updated to the latest
   release of DirectX, so watch out for it!




2. It amazes me that people post reviews stating, "Don't buy this book," or "3 stars (but should be less in my opinion)," among many others, because the book doesn't have the quote un-quote "advanced" information they were looking for. According to one reviewer this "advanced" information he was looking for was "a non-Final Fantasy type combat system." This book TEACHES you the IDEAS behind how game programming works, with an emphasis and examples on ROLE PLAYING GAMES. What's the most popular type of role playing game? Final Fantasy type. If you are an "advanced" game programmer and this book didn't help you, then you should be able to use your own knowledge and program your OWN combat system. It seems like you were looking for a book that offered the solution (combat system) that you wanted to cut and paste into your "advanced and superior code." For those that want a book to help their imagination grow and problem solving nodes start firing away after seeing some real-life examples, this book is for you. If you want to buy a book that contains code you are just going to cut and paste into your own source, then you're right, this book is not "advanced" enough.



3. I had a specific objective in mind when I bought this book. I'm in the process of writing a hobby level multi-user RPG for me and maybe up to a hundred or so other players (not many hundreds or thousands). I have a solid background in C++, less so in DirectX.
   
   I've bought many books on game programing to help me with this process and to my surprise I've found this one simply amazing while most of the others I've found to be little more than expensive doorstops. :)
   
   Like all the books of this nature, I read it in very much a "pick and choose" manner, focussing on chapters I liked and extracted code from the CD for places where it helped me. I found the material covered and, more importantly, the code representation of that material to be extremely helpful in my coding process.
   
   I believe the tips and code the book provides (which all compile and provide very reasonable and practical applications for the ideas demonstrated) saved me (literally) hundreds of hours of research (not to mention trial and error) finding methods that work and work well and covered all of the core componenets I would want in a role-playing game. It covered multi-player over the internet, 2d and 3d rendering in directX, how to construct combat, spells, chat, and inventory systems and a variety of other items.
   
   Naturally, I had to do a lot of customization to make the game do what I wanted it to do and I had to merge several of the ideas discussed into my own framework (for example the multi player network section is covered more or less stand alone where clearly other parts of the book need to be integrated with it to form a real game), but the result is I have a basic game up and running in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, which no other book has ever really brought me.



4. This book is alright, i bought this book some time ago, but one thing is this. ITS NOT FOR NOOB. you need to know a good amount of C or C++. if not then this is not for you. now that i go back to it, its not so bad BUT!!! code is sloppy and not really that great, i suggest buying something else if you are a noob.



5. I loved how the book explained everything. I have used DirectX books before and just done "what in the world..." because of how the information is organized. You have pieces of code and huge, long-winded explanations that complicate things. This book on the other hand explains everything well. Straight to the point and usually only gives you the history lesson when it's needed.
   
   Problem is... the source code. I tried things as the book explained them into the compiler. Some of the functions do not even work. You get a lot of:
   
   // g_pD3DDevice is a pre-initialized 3-D Device Object
   
   which doesn't help much since it was explained only once.
   
   I got lost quite a few times because the book hardly had any complete sets of code. In a lot of books, there'd be code sections with compilable example code (that works) that shows you an application of the code being explained. There isn't much of that in this book. There are code examples on the CD-Rom, but they don't seem to fit the material in the book. I had to supplement the examples from material from Microsoft's MSDN pages.
   
   If you get this book, be prepared to use supplemental material (other book, online, etc). It explains how to do things well, but the source code inside wasn't very conducive to learning for me.

No comments about Calculus & Mathematica: Approximations : Measuring Nearness.

No comments about The Complete Idiot's Guide to Web Animation.

2 comments about Software Engineering and Computer Games.

1. This is the guy who taught LaMothe at California State University, San Jose.
   The book is about 608 pages thick (small size). For beginners, this is the perfect introduction.The author published the source code utilized in the book as Open Source.
   So anyone can download it from his website for free.
   Getting back to the book:
   Negatives: Code is sprinkled with small bits of MFC and OpenGL.(instead of the industry standard Direct X).
   Positives: Rudy Rucker does a better job of teaching game programming inside of the c/c++ framework.
   Read a good c++ book first,then read (SE&CG).
   After that you can read LaMothe: Game Programming for dummies.
   This book covers object oriented programming,2d,3d techniques,UML,physics.
   This is cgp101: computer game programming(intro to game programming).
   All of the programs run inside of a MFC created window(frameset). But if you read the book,cover to cover, you will have the skills-set to "break out of this window".
   I couldn't get the picture out of my mind during the whole time I was reviewing this book of thinking back to a past Star Wars episode when Luke was fighting Darth Vader with the "lightening swords". And Luke is trying his best to kick Darth arse. And Darth looks at Luke and says: "Give up Luke, you are but a learner, but I am the Masta".
   If you really want to "get it", buy the book.



2. This book is written by a person who has no idea in which direction the game industry has been heading in the last 8 to 10 years. It is a ridiculous attempt at writing a book on a subject the author is singularly inept.

   The traditional practices of Software Engineering are usefull in game development but you should take a look at some articles at www.gamasutra.com written by REAL game developers to understand the amazing amount of misinformation in this book.

   In my opinion it is impossible today (with current technology in mind) to write a book about game development without considering the usage of DirectX which is the most fequently used development platform. The author has based his work on MFC (when was the last time you saw that in a game???) and a miniscule amount of work on OpenGL, which is impossible to understand.

   I believe the author should do a lot more reading about game development before he writes about it and actually learn what on earth is going on today in the world!!

No comments about On the Computational Geometry of Pocket Machining (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

No comments about Multimedia Mania.

3 comments about Symmetry Analysis of Differential Equations with Mathematica.

1. A good book. If you know Mathematica 3 or later, a little of differential geometry, is a good way to do symmetries in differential equations.



2. I regret the time and money expended in acquiring the following information. In no way can I recommend this book to any reader.

   This work is incoherent and reflects the incoherence of the design of the MathLie Mathematica Package. The text is neither an adequate introduction to the package nor a suitable reference. Descriptions of functions are locally incomplete and globally scattered throughout the book. Only after considerable searching does one find that, in fact, there is little functionality for the solution of any but the most trivial systems.
   As a tool to learn applications of Lie Groups to Differential Equations, this text is useful only insofar as it represents the thinnest introduction to the material, suitable neither for the expert nor the novice.
   As a tool to expand the capabilities of Mathematica, it is a pointless exercise in using essentially undocumented encrypted code with no evident organizational principle. One may well do better to seek help from a divining rod.




3. Before giving my opinion I would like to point out that there is a very negative review of this book by Dr. P.A. Clarkson. It appered in SIAM Review, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 549-581.
   
   Now for my opinion.
   
   I am doing research in nonlinear PDEs. What I need is a good Mathematica package to take me through the tedious calculations. Unfortunately, MathLie package included with the book does not meet my needs. I have often encounterd very cryptic error messages produced by the package internal functions. I could not find the root causes of those errors, because these functions are not accessible. This makes the results of the calculations suspect. In some cases they do not agree with published results. Dr. Clarkson in his above-mentioned review reports similar experience.
   
   Most importantly, the book really does not help to interpret the output produced by the package. The online help is very inadequate.
   
   I cannot recommend this book as either a textbook (too cryptic) or a research reference/tool (results are suspect).
   
   In summary, I agree with Dr. Clarkson that "this book should have never been published". I only wish I saw his review before making a mistake of purchasing it.
   
   Instead of this book I recommend "Introduction to Symmetry Analysis" by B. Cantwell, which is much more readable and provides a Mathematica package.

5 comments about Real-Time 3D Terrain Engines Using C++ and DirectX 9 (Game Development Series) (Game Development Series).

1. Beware purchasing this book. It's written in such a way that only makes sense if you wrote it, particularly the code (a maze of jargon completely lacking in any clear explaination). And believe me, sticking with it until you can understand it does NOT help. Not only are the methods overly-complicated, they are also piss-poor in terms of performance and flexibility. Three months later, and I'm still angry I bought this book.



2. I'm not a native english speaker. But I used to live in US for a while. And also Andre Lamothe's books make big senses to me.
   
   With this background, I conclude that the author of this book doesn't know how to explain something. For example, while explaining quadtree, he doesn't talk anything about setting up quadtree for a terrain data. Instead, suddenly he talks about moving objects around quadtree. Even worse, that moving objects around quadtree doesn't make any sense either. Even worse, he says "oh my terrain engine works". I really don't know what he wants to show us.
   
   It's almost like "focus on terrain ..." book written by a high school kid.
   I'd rather dig internet for terrain handling algorithms than buy those two books.



3. While I do not doubt that Gregory Snook is a very talented programmer, the code shown in this book and on the accompanying CD are proof enough, I believe that this book is of no use to anyone except for the most experienced professionals who have weeks of time to burn learning about Terrain Engines. I am not the most experienced programmer, having only worked with C++ and DX for 4 years now, but the problem with this book is not in complex concepts, but in content. All of the fundamentals of creating and rendering terrain are covered, but the example code and the engine (Gaia) on the CD are overly complex for any sort of educational book. Possibly every single library that Snook referenced has special wrapper functions and classes around them, making an examination of any code snippet next to useless unless the reader has spent days going through dozens of wrapper classes learning all of Snook's syntax. While I do enjoy owning this book as a conceptual reference, I am afraid that it is next to useless as an aid in practical programming scenarios.



4. There are a great many terrain rendering white papers and other resources available online. Greg Snook's book helps you to take a lot of that information and put it together into a workable terrain engine. If you just picked up a compiler yesterday, or don't know the difference between an x-axis and a z-axis, this book isn't going to help you. While he does offer some primer material, the focus of the book is on the terrain engine.
   
   This isn't a hand-holding book, either. Snook explains the topics at a level that is understandable and digestable. It's not abstract, like white papers, but neither is it paint-by-numbers. If you are the sort of person who requires step-by-step code samples, this book is beyond your level. Snook knows what he is talking about and he explains it well.
   
   Each topic is covered in detail. When examining the terrain rendering algorithms, Snook discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each. He spends whole sections explaining error metrics and split levels. Never have I seen a book that covers terrain rendering in such detail. It's well worth the price you pay for it.
   
   I know that some people like code they can just copy and paste. Most example code that accompanies a book is just that and, usually, isn't at all optimized. Often error handling is left out "for clarity". Snook takes no short cuts. This terrain engine he developed isn't just a bunch of example code, it's the real deal. Studying some of the support code, such as the resource system, is a lesson itself. There is much to learn from this book and the Gaia engine beyond terrain rendering.



5. Although the author may be a good programmer, I wouldn't recommend his book.

No comments about Japan in Pictures (Visual Geography. Second Series).

1 comments about Fractal Programming in C.

1. This is a real cool book, not really any application for me professionally, but it was fun to try to make the examples. It was a fun exercise in a completely different realm of C than I am used to. Kind of like a cross-word puzzle based on a genre you were totally unfamiliar with, but A fun learning process just the same. Had I seen the picture of the Author prior to purchasing this book I would have clearly known that this was a science text as he just has that "scientist" look about him. I would recommend this to any C programmer that has extra time on their hands, really loves C and wants to try something way out there more on the scientific side of C or if fractal programming does apply to your profession.