Beginning Direct3D Game Programming w/CD (Prima Tech's Game Development) [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Wolfgang Engel (Author), Amir Geva (Author)

Book Description

Series: Prima Tech's Game Development | Publication Date: March 15, 2001

Beginning Direct3D Game Programming covers all of the elements that are necessary to create a Direct3D game for your PC! You will learn the essentials of Direct3D game programming, including basic algorithms, texture mapping basics, 3D math, lighting, use of depth buffers, and much more! This book also covers the Transformation & Lighting Pipeline and how to use it to map texture object with different effects, as well as different file formats and how to integrate them into your game engines. You'll go from the basics to hardcore Direct3D game programming in a matter of pages!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Wolfgang Engel is CEO of SoftGroup GmbH and SoftGroup Plska, which offer IT and game development services. These companies produce 3D animations for marketing and advertising activities. Wolfgang holds lectures and workshops on Direct3D programming worldwide and writes tutorials on Direct3D which are presented at www.GameDev.net as well as his own Web site, www.directxgraphics.net. He is the author of "Beginning Direct3D Game Programming" (0761531912).

Amir Geva works for the IBM Haifa Research Lab in Israel. Amir graduated from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, with a degree in computer engineering. He is the owner of The Photon Effect, which includes a game programming SDK and ColDet, a 3D Collision Detection Library.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade; 1 edition (March 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761531912
• ISBN-13: 978-0761531913
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #717,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > DirectX

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do yourself a favor and browse through it before you buy, June 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Beginning Direct3D Game Programming w/CD (Prima Tech's Game Development) (Paperback)

Really, the title of my review says it all. Considering so many other people say it's a great book, it must have its merits but I sure can't see what they are. It's awfully written, it contains on average about one mistake per page, and I don't think it explains the concepts very well --on the contrary. It's incoherent, the index is awful (try looking up terms such as RGBA or RHW), and so is the printing.

I strongly suggest you don't buy it based solely on its rating, as I did. Instead, browse through the book first and see if you like it. I wish I had done that...

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good information, November 20, 2001

By 

Dave Astle (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Direct3D Game Programming w/CD (Prima Tech's Game Development) (Paperback)

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I've been waiting for a long time for a decent Direct3D book to refer beginners to, and this is one of the best so far. On the other hand, being the "best" among Direct3D books really isn't saying much, and this book is far from perfect.

Overall, this book covers a lot of good material, including some of the more advanced aspects of DX8, and the code itself is pretty solid. Unfortunately, the explanations can be a little hard to understand, partially due to the fact that the author isn't a native English speaker (the chapters on physics and collision detection don't suffer this problem, though, being written by someone else), so you may find yourself having to reread things several times.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have some game programming and DirectX knowledge, but I would recommend it for someone who wants to get up to speed on the latest version of D3D, especially if they have used a previous version of Direct3D - or even another 3D API - or if they are willing to put the effort into working through the chapters to dig out the (truly useful) information they contain.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waist your time / money, December 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Beginning Direct3D Game Programming w/CD (Prima Tech's Game Development) (Paperback)

This books is one of the most worthless titles ever to be released by a publishing company! Prima Tech editors should have seen it coming and scrapped this book before it ever hit the shelves. The book "Multiplayer Game Prgramming" by Todd Barren, a book designed to help you understand how to make multiplayer capable games, does a better job explaining DirectXGraphics (Direct3D8) than this trashy book does... This is a terrible waist of time. This book was reviewed by Game Developer Magazine, and explains a ton of mistakes, and complete inaccuracies...like:

This book neglects to cover the most "revolutionary" features introduced in the DirectX8 SDK, vertex shaders and pixel shaders, but covers something as advaced as anisotropic reflection. So the shaders weren't left out because they were too complicated, who knows why they were left out!

This book is littered with grammatical, technical, and formatting errors. Example: The exponants are left out of almost every equation in the book. Page 475 has 42 missing exponants.
The reviewer also noted that the description of 3d rotation is just plain WRONG!
Also this book contains an introduction to C++, not like many 3D programmers are going to need that.
The entire physics chapter is only 8 pages long, and the first 2 of those 8 focuse only on 3D math.

The reviewer was obveously very unhappy with what he found in the book, just as I was. He gave it 1 out of 5 stars. Oh and by the way, the reviewer was Mark Deloura, a programmer who has worked with OpenGL and it's predecessors for more than 10 years now, and very well known / respected.

Heed mine and Mark Deloura's warning, don't buy this book!