Customer Reviews

Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 10.0 (Wordware Game and Graphics Library)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

So, the title of this book is "Advanced 3D Game Programming With DirectX 10.0", which seems to imply that the text is designed for intermediate/experienced programmers who want to up their skills to the next level. This book isn't really "advanced" at all -- it's an introductory DirectX/game programming book. So, keep that in mind if you're looking to buy this.

However, if you're an experienced C++ programmer, but you're a newbie to DirectX game programming, then this book is absolutely perfect. It covers DirectInput -- teaching you the fundamentals for programming input in your game in a very straightforward non-pretentious manner. Direct3D, typically daunting to newbies, is given a very lucid, clear, and succinct treatment. Walsh also covers more advanced topics like scene management (in truth, he glosses over it, so you'll need to do additional reading elsewhere, but it's a good start...), pixel/vertex shaders, and several cool graphics techniques (pre-computed radiosity was especially cool).
Walsh also covers the rudiments of network and sound programming, so your game will be "complete".

I guess what I like most about this book is that while it's not too in-depth with regard to any topic, it goes over the basics of all necessary game programming topics, so that you can start writing basic games immediately (full games, mind you...not just a flyby through a room of cubes). It's a great fundamentals book that, if you read and understand fully, will allow you to transition relatively painlessly to more advanced books/techniques.

While I was tempted to give this book 4 stars for the misleading title, I simply cannot find it within myself to give a book that is so good at what it does lesser than a 5.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, "where do I go next after this book?", here's a list of what I'm using as a hobbyist graphics/game programmer...I hope it helps:

- The ShaderX series (advanced real-time graphics topics)
- GPU Gems series (more advanced, scientific real-time graphics topics)
- "3D Game Engine Design" by David Eberly (great book that teaches you how to design a professional quality game engine)
- Real-Time Rendering, 2nd edition (all the real-time graphics considerations and algorithmic fundamentals are here)
- Game Programming Gems (these are like the ShaderX/GPU Gems, only for general game programming, including math, sound, input, graphics, scene management, etc.)

I hope this review helps anybody interested in becoming a game programmer!

This book explains every part of directX10 and even helps you make a small game engine. Great code encapsulation using classes and catching errors.
One needs to know pretty well C++ to understand all the things explained and used.

This book is great for those that already know a good bit of c++. If covers a bit of windows programming to get up and running to allow a jump into direct x. I recommend this book for beginners to directx but not beginners to c++. Beginners to c++ will just get frustrated so get a c++ book first, read it, write some code, then check out this book. It's really annoying that I've spent a good 3-4 hours thus far troubleshooting the code that is available for download and I still can get it up and running. :(

I have read Peter Walsh's other book about Direct X 9.0 called "The Zen of Direct X Programming" (or something like that) Anyway, that was way better. Actually the previous book mentioned was awesome, that is why I bought the "Advanced version" except the "Advanced version" is by a different publisher who probably said to Peter... "Don't be funny in your book, be boring, don't explain things, anything you do explain, explain it poorly and don't give any good examples." And that is the book for you.

So far I'm over half way through the book page 280. Its been non stop theory, math, and code snippets for UDP code. Nothing fun has happened this whole time, hard as hell to not burn this book in frustration. I have read several book on making games all of which made it fun with little projects and things but this book just dumps tons of theory and code snippets at you and that's it. The only thing that could save this book is a decent project at the end that uses this theory nicely, and then I'll go back and review other wise its just a boring mess of complicated code.

Also the author of this book proudly proclaims to be a well know game programmer. Looking at his list of games hes worked on they are either not notable or were complete fail. A.P.B the MMO was shut down 3 months after launch cause it was terrible no one liked it (they thought it would out sell GTA4 LOL). Considered the biggest fail in modern game history. Medal of honor rising sun was so bad that it nearly killed the medal of honor series. The rest on his list are games I've never heard of and I check game news several times a day.


Anyway back on subject, even though this book is written terribly I do think that there is good info inside these dull pages. I'll give it 3 stars so far on the hope that the end projects will be fun and informative. I'll edit this one or do another review after I suffer through the rest of this book.