5 comments about DirectX9 User Interfaces: Design and Implementation (Wordware Game Developer's Library).

1. I read it once and i liked it a lot but then the second time i started Coding along the lines. And i am sorry that i have to say this but the code just doenst work the way its in the book.
   
   The Code on the CD is a bit better but still there are things in that code that just wont let me compile it. I checked the Msdn and everything and its just not right.
   
   I wish this book had a website with corrections because the book itself is good and thats what leads me to write this. I liked reading the book and wanted to program the stuff so bad and so i expected more from the code in it.
   
   
   I hope this helps



2. First off, the book is good at learning how to design a GUI. It goes over all of the necessary information that will let you create a functional GUI.
   
   However, there are problems with this book that others have stated. The code in the book and the code on the CD are VERY different. What you see in the book (screen shots of the examples) is not what you see on your screen when you run the code (the graphics used are very different too). This makes trying to learn some things very hard as you can't look at the code in the book and compare to it the code on the CD. If you have a question about how or why the code is doing something, a lot of the times, the answer is not in the book because the code is different.
   
   There is also errors with the code on the CD. It compiles and runs, but the textures do not display correctly (they seem to have some wierd scaling going on). A 100x50 texture will not display as 100x50 on your screen using the code in the book, and there is no explaination in the book on how to draw the textures to their scale.
   
   The best way to use this book is to use it as a guide to design your own GUI in your own graphics engine. Just using the UI code provided by the book is not something I would recommend.



3. Being very favourable it could be called a code listing. But the code is incomplete, the naming of the variables and methods seem almost purposefully misleading and the actually logic in some of the code is just off.
   
   Avoid.



4. Many other reviews covered this but I will briefly restate what others have said.
   
   PROS (not many)
   - Easy reading book.
   - Doesn't assume too much on the part of the reader. DirectX basics that are used was covered, etc.
   - I don't agree with all of the control messaging system but the author's coverage/design is not too bad.
   
   CONS
   - As stated before, code in book does not match code on CD. Code on CD has some compilation issues that upon investigation are fairly straight forward to fix. Fixing requires knowledge beyond the basics of programming.
   - The compiled executable examples, with very little happening on the screen, run very very poorly. I believe one of the basic issues with performance is with the overall design. That's a problem because then the book is pretty much useless. I suppose to be fair the writer might have been targeting a larger audience and not just gamers. WM_PAINT posted messages are done. That's slow. No respecting game engine will post paint messages, they will gain full control over rendering the window or full screen and "talk" directly to the Direct 3D device interface.
   - (This one is personal) I do not like the coding style. Also, anytime a C++ programmer use "this->" the "this" pointer within the object itself doesn't fully understand that you don't need to fully qualify the pointer.
   
   If you're looking for decent code with somewhat decent comments then save yourself some money and just download the DirectX SDK. In it, you will get many examples of UI things. Microsoft created a CustomUI application which runs very, very fast and handles GUI things very similarly to this book. But Microsoft's runs much faster. The problem with that is you won't find a very detailed writeup on "why" things are done the way they are. At least I haven't found it.



5. This book is really out of date and is not the GUI toolkit I hoped it would be. I bought this book hoping that I would be able to copy and paste in the code into my project but that isn't going to happen. The code was rushed together and isn't very impressive. There's much more in the GUI sample that displays all the Directx ui widgets in the DirectX SDK.

5 comments about .NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0.

1. eI am not sure if I am the only one who researched before I bought, but I found this book to be precisely what I expected, to a degree, but more on that in a moment. Some of the other comments are unfair to say the least. A sprite can inherit from a monkey if I want it to. This does not make it any more or less OO and those who say it does I feel lack the abstract vision...no point in bashing, the book does what it is designed to do and code-nazis will never be happy with anything that doesn't fit their narrow perception of 'the right way.'
   
   I would say this book is really good for those who have written a lot of code, are at least somewhat comfortable with .net and know how to debug. That is because you will do a lot of debugging. I have no idea what went on, but the editing is horrendous, to be very kind. They will suddenly rename objects a page after they declared them, they will completely forget to inform you that you have to include a method and you only realize it when it is referenced later, they (and this is completeley unexcusable) have syntax errors that don't even make it past the copiler. The actual code in the text as a sample is completley useless unless you view it as psuedocode.
   
   That being said, I found this book to be fairly uselful when I accepted the psuedocode notion above. If you know how to get around the text issues, this book does a pretty good job at intorducing many concepts of game programming. The DirectX info is good and let's be honest, how many other books are out there covering game coding in VB? I can churn out three complete, working apps (even taking into account all the textual errors) in the time it takes to muck through a C++ direct3D lib. It has been a fantastic 'jump start' on my game programming and you get to experiment and tweak where in other cases you spend the entire week just chunking out the code. It is just to bad the text is riddled with issues, because there are so many talented programmers who learned completely through working with VB, it is sad this title will not enable those same self-visionary-types to do the same with games.



2. I was lucky enough NOT to buy this book. I sat down in Barnes & Noble this weekend and read the first 60 pages and skimmed briefly through the rest. I would hate to try and recommend this book to anyone. A beginner may learn a few things, but it's riddled with errors and some terrible programming techniques, that I would hate to see a beginner pick those techniques up as "the way to do it."
   
   I think authors should take more care in the editing procedure. Even a casual re-reading by the author would have, I should think, exposed many problems, which could have been fixed before going to press.
   
   A couple errors:
   
   - Saying you'll take errors if you try and use a certain technique with indexed pixel formats, like JPEG. Excuse me? JPEG is not, never has been, and never will be an indexed pixel format image. Sorry!
   
   - Saying "In .NET all the arrays must be defined without boundaries, which are later assigned in the code.
   So we must always use Redim before assigning values to an array." What?! Are you nuts??
   
   The biggest chuckle I got was when, in the first chapter, he is careful to code his own "Rectangle" storage so that he can save an addition (+) operation. But, if you look at the code for drawing the blocks, he is as inefficient as you can get: creating and destroying entire device contexts for EACH BLOCK. Yeah, for each (X,Y) block, he calls "ArrGameField(X, Y).Show(WinHandle)", which in turn does "Graphics.FromHwnd(WinHandle)". Crazy!!



3. This book teaches some useful concepts and techniques when it comes to game programming. It is getting me started on Direct3D okay, which is why I bought the book. There are some serious problems, however.
   
   The book (thank god) comes with a CD with working source code. This code will often not agree with the book. The book contains syntax errors. The author forgets to inform you of many variables and functions that need to be defined. He flips back and forth between VB6-style and VB.Net program flow mechanisms and commands, using Err.Raise, On Error Goto, MsgBox, and FunctionName = ReturnValue in one function, then Structured exception handling, MessageBox.Show, and Return ReturnValue in the next function. In the function I am looking at right now, a for/next loop is needed, but the for and next lines are simply omitted from the source in the book! The code doesn't appear even make sense until you open the source from the CD to see what is missing. He uses incorrect DirectX function, class and enumeration names (on the page open in front of me, he declares a texture object as a "Direct3DTexture8" rather than the correct "Texture"... I am beginning to wonder if all this code is not ported from VB6 and DirectX 8).
   
   I copied one of the games (River Pla.Net) to my hard drive, and compiled and played it. It (intentially) runs at about 6 FPS, with the entire playing field scrolling one row of tiles per frame. It works, but it looks... bad. In five minutes I looked around, modified 15 lines of code, tops, and I had the game running with smooth scrolling and waaaay smoother controls. Why would the author not take the extra five minutes to make his game look 100% better?
   
   I have to admit, though, that I am now capable of creating a Direct3D, tile-based game, which was my goal, which is why I would give the book 3 stars rather than one. A less experienced programmer, however, might not be able to fix the errors found in the code in the book. If you find any other book that suits your needs, I recommend swaying away from this one.



4. There is no reason to buy this book. There are much better books for managed DirectX and game programming. As a programmer, I was embarrassed by the poor coding in this book. Trying to learn from this book is pretty hopeless.



5. Alexandre Santos Lobao and Ellen Hatton, .NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 (Apress, 2003)
   
   The best thing about this book is the theory; Lobao and Hatton lay out the basics of working with DirectX, etc., in simple, easy-to-understand language for those of us whose programming experience is limited to, say, database access, and have never had a use for graphics.
   
   The code, on the other hand, is deeply flawed, not to mention not all here (the authors refer us repeatedly to the book's CD, which is all right-- unless you're borrowing yours from the library and the CD is smashed into seven or eight pieces). I've tried copying some of it straight from the book into VB.NET, with, shall we say, questionable success. I've been able to debug a good deal of it myself because I do code for a living, but I can't imagine a beginner, who's never coded anything before, doing anything but being thoroughly puzzled by the errors.
   
   The rating is given mostly for Chapter 3, which is valuable. ***

3 comments about Assembly Modeling with SolidWorks 2006.

1. Great intermediate SolidWorks book focused on Assembly Modeling using advance techniques. I purchased their, "Planchard & Planchard" Engineering Design SW book last year and was very happy with the layout, illustrations, models, and easy to following step by step procedures.
   This book, Assembly Modeling does an awesome job in describing and addressing issues from simple to complex Mates, and SmartMates, standard to custom Fasteners and Smart Fasteners along with providing great industry models using both top-down and bottom up assembly methods.
   Mate References, Load References, In-Content Relations, External References and InPlane Mates are all presented in a simple but concise manner with illustrations, easy to follow procedures, and just the right amount of reading information. To obtain additional detail reading information, the book references the SW online help tutorials. I like this very much. Numerous configurations and equations are created from the supplied and created models in the CD incorporated in the book.



2. I used an earlier version of this book in 2003 and it was satisfactory. I needed a quick way to refresh my skills with the latest version of SW. So I used this most recent version of the book and found that the authors had greatly improved it. Many of the advanced features are covered very well (BOM, Design Tables, and Equations). One area I wanted a better understanding was on the use of SW Explorer that supports the file structure and eases the difficulty with changing of file names while maintaining file references and the book did it very clearly.
   
   I was able to complete the book in about 3 weeks working a few hours a day. Being that I was familiar with the vocabulary I was able to understand many details that I missed when I first read the book. Details like design recommendations and standards were skipped the first time.
   
   Projects that cover chapter to chapter make them interesting. Parts created in the first chapter as well as other parts and assembles created in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th chapters are used in the 5th chapter. This introduces complexes that reflect the real world.
   
   Great Book !!!



3. I have just completed Chapter 1 and am now able to follow the book's layout. The content so far is very good and I am learning some great features that I would not otherwise have discovered myself.
   
   However I found the style a bit off-putting at first - it lacks narration to lead me from one section to the next. The 'style' is more like a series of exercises/examples/projects that have been pasted one after the other. But I'm an engineer and should be used to this format.
   
   Bottom line - very good content, effective at improving my SolidWorks skills, lacking good technical writing style (-1 star).

1 comments about 3D Modeling and Animation:: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body.

1. At first look the first impression about the book is the cover :JUST PLAIN. And this cover show a real preview about the book :PLAIN!.
   
   When you talk about MODELING then aestheticism is a important matter but this book talk about MATHS. Just theory, nothing practice. You had 3dstudio, Maya, Lightwave or the cheap blender and want to start modeling?, then this book is not for you.
   
   In my time in the university, all books are about equations, differentials and such, later i discovered that the real world is all but maths, usually you don't see a third degreed differential at work and when you saw one, then you can use a program to calculate it. It's the same about this book, you don't need the rotation matrix expressed in a equation, the program (even the old ones or the free ones) made all the job for you.
   
   Modeling?... no way.
   Animation?... just a few theory and not really focused in pro or semi-pro programs.
   Human Body?.. too much about the face and some about the hand but feets and torso and the rest?.

No comments about MPEG-4 Facial Animation: The Standard, Implementation and Applications.

2 comments about Quantum Methods with Mathematica.

1. 
   Quantum methods with Mathematica is one of these concept books that combine a traditional subject with a new and powerfull way of presenting and analysing it. Quantum mechanics due to its mathematical nature is particuarly well suited for a Mathematica face-lift. I think the book is well suited for teaching undergraduate QM since you do things instead of just reading about them and that usually works with students. On a proffesional basis, it is not particularky well suited for heavy duty work but having said that to do such a thing would destroy its usefullness as a textbook. It can act as the starting point for more serious work with Mathematica and QM, and I would recommend it as a reference book or teaching aid with no hesitation.



2. The previous review was for the 1994 edition of the book. I bought the 2002 version of the book. This edition does not have the disk packaged with the book. Instead a broken link to the TELOS web page is given. After much searching on the internet I did find some of the notebooks for the book. But not the notebooks and ASCII text for each chapter. Without the chapter notebooks the 2002 version is just about worthless. It has only been four years since this edition was published and TELOS does not support the book. So I give the book two stars.

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

No comments about Current Controversies - The Middle East (paperback edition) (Current Controversies).

1 comments about Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D.

1. I'm not a huge fan of Walsh's coding techniques, and I would certainly never duplicate them in my own code. His books, however, are very easy to understand and read. Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D was no exception. I think this book was written when Direct3D 8.0 was the standard, but it is still a good introduction none-the-less. You'll need to be familiar with the graphics pipeline before reading this, and a lot of experience with using D3D without shaders will be helpfull.
   
   What I don't like is that Walsh relies heavily upon the D3DX library, especially for things like mesh loading. While certainly this makes it easier for a beginner to follow his code, this book isn't exactly for beginners. I don't think .x mesh files are widely used in the professional industry, so he might have been better of describing vertex use and loading in generic terms rather than specifically using D3DX sample code. Experienced D3D users will be able to look past this, but it might be a crutch for novices.

2 comments about Graphics Programming With Java Second Edition/Book and Cd-Rom (Graphics Series).

1. I Really happy with this book because of its graphical explanations about java classes



2. Mr. Stevens does indeed have a deep knowledge of graphics, but less so of Java and, shall we say, the Java 'way.'

   I have already seen most of the solutions and algorithms put forth here in Mr. Stevens' previous books (C-oriented). They have been somewhat updated to take advantage of Java's graphics capability.

   If you are looking for a first book to help you begin to understand graphics, fine. This is for you, and Java is probably a good language for that.

   However, if you are looking to become a better _Java_ graphics programmer, use other sources. Many of the programming idioms here seem like holdovers from procedural programming days.

   Cheers,

   --SG