Game Coding Complete
Product Description
Game Coding Complete, Second Edition is the essential hands-on guide to developing commercial quality games written by master game programmer, Mike McShaffry. This must-have second edition has been expanded from the bestselling first edition to include the absolute latest in exciting new techniques in game interface design programming, game audio programming, game scripting, 3D programming, network game programming and game engine technology. All of the code in the … More >>
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JJ4America said :
February 4, 2010 at 11:39 am
For a complete book it is heavily lacking in many areas… if you want something more complete check out the Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 book, its much better. This book is way too much theory and hype by the old Ultima online designers and their poor coding tales.
Rating: 1 / 5
Francisco Torres Ortiz said :
February 4, 2010 at 12:03 pm
While I’m still going over the pages of the book, so far I’ve had sort of a mixed experience.
Being an aficionado, I bought the book to get a glimpse at how games are designed and built. And the author does a good job at that. It shows that he has been in the industry working on several titles, and the book is packed with tips based on his professional experience.
However I’m a bit surprised to see that the book has not been updated as I would have expected. Here are some examples:
- the code is based on DirectX 9, while DirectX 10 has been around since the end of 2006. Probably this is a conscious decision, since Directx 10 is not supported in WinXP, but I don’t think this is mentioned in the book.
- (consistently), the section about 3D scenes still speaks about (DirectX) X files, which are marked as ‘legacy’ in the documentation included in MIcrosoft web pages
- in chapter 1, the PS3, XBox360 and Wii are still referred to as “next-gen” consoles (?)
Couple this with the fact that the accompanying code for the book is still not available in the author’s web page, and what you get is a bit of a dissapointment.
I’d give this book 2,5 stars, but since it is not possible, it gets 2 stars, since for me the minuses slightly outweigh the pluses.
Rating: 2 / 5
Anonymous said :
February 4, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Although the author, in his comment below, points out that correctly-running code is available at his web site, he neglects to note that this code will only work with Visual Studio .NET, the latest-greatest-and-most-expensive release from Microsoft. I would guess that most people who would be interested in this book would be more likely to own Visual Studio 6.0, but the source code won’t compile under that product. The web site offers little more than a suggestion that the user without the megabucks to get the new Visual Studio should simply rewrite the source code to get it to run under 6.0…but I would suspect that, if you have the programming skills to do that, you probably don’t need this book! To my mind, it borders on the unconscionable to release a book with code that only a few well-heeled readers will be able to afford to use, then shrug off that barrier by suggesting that the rest of us should simply “roll your own.”
Rating: 2 / 5
M. Bateman said :
February 4, 2010 at 1:59 pm
The book covers many topics. I was interested in more info on how to use Lua and was glad to see some pages about it (about 50 pages worth). The code is neat and easy to read. You may not like the idea of having to download the code though. All coding is done using DirectX. Was hoping to see some use of obj (even better fbx) file loading of meshes and wanted more info on XAudio2 or XACT3 but no such luck. So, it has a dated feel about it. Otherwise still a good book. BTW Thief was a good game.
Rating: 4 / 5
cdietschrun said :
February 4, 2010 at 4:32 pm
This book has lots of pertinent information for designing/coding games from an industry veteran. The book discusses many aspects of the process including handling input, user interface issues, networking, all the things that go into making a game.
The problem is that he is a bit schizophrenic at times in his audience. At some points he talks at baby programming level, and then he can jump to talking about things that he never explicitly assumes you have knowledge of (graphics programming, for example) and makes a trite statement at the end of a section like “That is also why this model is a negative z-buffer axis model rotational handle function, of course”. Which just makes close to 0 sense.
But it’s a good book to have and I wish I have version 3 for more up to date ideas in making games.
Rating: 4 / 5