Customer Reviews

Beginning Direct3D Game Programming w/CD (Prima Tech's Game Development)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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...

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.

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!

After purchasing this book I was left rather disappointed. Being an experienced developer I was looking for a book with useful examples to help overcome the game programming entry barrier.

This book is nothing more than a simple Driect3D reference book with somewhat unconnected examples. The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming is a *MUCH* better book (read: 5 stars).

A further thing to note is that after reviewing the chapter on Quake 3 models (md3) I embarked on a small project to render/animate these models. Unfortunately the book didn't cover the material in depth enough to do this (and was in fact incorrect with respect to the md3 format). I sent an email to Wolfgang asking for assistance. It's now been over 2 months and I haven't heard a word.

I will not be buying any of this authors books in the future.

Aaron Thomas.

I can't belive it. I've finally found a *good* book on Direct3D. I've read almost all of the other D3D books out there and 90% of them have...well...sucked. This one is a very nice exception to that rule. It discusses Direct3D. Not 150 pages on how to set up your window, how all of the math works, etc. It assumes you know most of that and dives right into the meat of Direct3D and how to make it do what you want it to do. I highly recommend this book if you already know the basics of 3D programming, understand the math of transformations, understand how Windows programming works, and you just want to apply all this to D3D. Good stuff...

This book has been enjoyable, but it was obviously published in a hurry--the author and editor should be ashamed. It reads like a rough draft--there are mistakes _everywhere_. Mistakes in the formulas, inconsistencies in the interfaces, and other glaring errors. Often times I was left re-reading a sentence multiple times, trying to discover the author's meaning.

What's even more frustrating is that the author seems to skim over some subjects that require more explanation (the section about quaternions, for example). I was also left wishing that there was more sample code included with the book.

The saddest part of all of this, is that even given the books glaring mistakes, it is still one of the best books out there on the subject. However, I can still not justify the money spent on this book. I think the free information on the web (the directx documentation, msdn, and the tutorials all over the web) is probably a better bet.

As here it is not shown, here it is:

Contents

Introduction

Part I: DirectX Graphics: Don't Hurt Me Chapter 1: History of Direct3D/DirectX Graphics

Chapter 2: Overview of DirectX Graphics/HAL/COM Direct3D HAL Pluggable Software Devices Reference Rasterizer Controlling Devices COM

Chapter 3: C/C++ and COM Programming Rules for Direct3D Code Style Debugging DirectX Return Codes

Chapter 4: Geometry/Shading/Texture Mapping Basics Orientation Faces Normals Normals and Gouraud Shading Texture-Mapping Basics

Chapter 5: The Basics The DirectX Graphics Common Architecture Basic Example

OneTimeSceneInit() InitDeviceObjects() RestoreDeviceObjects() FrameMove() Render() InvalidateDeviceObjects() DeleteDeviceObjects() FinalCleanup() Basic2 Example

InitDeviceObjects() RestoreDeviceObjects() Render() InvalidateDeviceObjects() DeleteDeviceObjects() FinalCleanup() Basic3 Example

RestoreDeviceObjects() Render() InvalidateDeviceObjects()

Chapter 6: First Steps to Animation The Third Dimension Transformation Pipeline Transformation Math Matrices

The World Matrix The View Matrix

Camera Rotation about a Camera Axis Camera Rotation with Quaternions The Projection Matrix Lighting

Material Lighting Models Vertex Color (Optional) Depth Buffering Down to the Code

OneTimeSceneInit() InitDeviceObjects() RestoreDeviceObjects() FrameMove() Render() InvalidateDeviceObjects() DeleteDeviceObjects()

FinalCleanup() Next Steps to Animation

RestoreDeviceObjects() FrameMove() More Enhancements Quiz Additional Resources

Part II: Knee-Deep in DirectX Graphics Programming Chapter 7: Texture Mapping Fundamentals Texture Coordinates Texture-Addressing Modes

Wrap Texture-Addressing Mode Mirror Texture-Addressing Mode Clamp Texture-Addressing Mode Border Color Texture-Addressing Mode MirrorOnce Texture-Addressing Mode Texture Wrapping Texture Filtering and Texture Anti-Aliasing

Mipmaps Nearest-Point Sampling Linear Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filtering Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing Alpha Blending

Chapter 8: Using Multiple Textures Color Operations

Dark Mapping Animating the Dark Blending a Texture with Material Diffuse Color Dark Map Blended with Material Diffuse Color Glow Mapping Detail Mapping Alpha Operations

Modulate Alpha Environment Mapping

Spherical Environment Mapping Cubic Environment Mapping

RestoreDeviceObjects() RenderSceneIntoCube() RenderScene() ConfirmDevice() Bump Mapping

ApplyEnvironmentMap() InitBumpMap() Render()

ConfirmDevice() Dot Product Texture Blending

InitDeviceObjects() Render() Multitexturing Support Texture Management Quiz Additional Resources

Anisotropy Detail Mapping Cubic Environment Mapping Stencil Buffers Bump Mapping Dot Product Texture Blending

Part III: Hard-Core Direct X Graphics Programming Chapter 9: Working with Files

Building Worlds with X Files

3-D File Formats X File Format Header Mesh MeshMaterialList Normals Textures Transformation Matrices Animation Using X Files The Example

InitDeviceObjects() RestoreDeviceObjects() and InvalidateDeviceObjects() Render() Extending X Files Additional Resources

Chapter 10: Quake Model Files Files of the Trade Animation.cfg The skin File Textures and the Shader File Custom Sounds The .md3 Format

Md3.h Md3.cpp

CreateModel()

CreateTextures() CreateVB() Render() DeleteTextures() DeleteVB() DeleteModel() Md3view.cpp

OneTimeSceneInit() InitDeviceObjects() Render() DeleteDeviceObjects() FinalCleanup() MsgProc() Additional Resources

Chapter 11: Game Physics (written by Amir Geva) 3-D Math Newton's Laws Calculating the Frame Time Air Resistance Static Friction Kinetic Friction

Chapter 12: Collision Detection (written by Amir Geva) The Most Basic Optimization Bounding Volumes 2-D Collision Detection

Brute Force Bit Arrays Sprite Bounds Group Processing

Axis Sort Grid Static Objects Automatic Transparent Static Marking 3-D Collision Detection

Dealing with this Complex Problem

Portals Calculating Distance of Cylinder from Wall BSP (binary space partitioning) Sliding Off Walls 3-D Mesh Collision Detection

Bounding Volumes

Convexity of Models Convex Models Intersection Concave Models Intersection Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes Tree How to Divide the Box Oriented Box Intersections Triangle Intersection Using ColDet with DirectX 8.0

Collision Reaction 3-D Object Group Processing Quiz Additional Resources

Part IV: Appendixes Appendix A: Windows Game Programming Foundation How to Look through a Window How Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 Interacts with Your Game The Components of a Window A Window Skeleton

Step 1: Define a Window Class

Windows Data Types Step 2: Register the Window Class Step 3: Creating a Window of that Class Step 4: Display the Window Step 5: Create the Message Loop The Window Procedure A Window Skeleton Optimized for Games Windows Resources Additional Resources

Appendix B: C++ Primer What's Object-Oriented Programming?

Abstraction Classes Encapsulation Declaring a Class Constructor Destructor

This Pointer Class Hierarchies and Inheritance

Inheriting Code Inheriting an Interface Virtual Functions Polymorphism Inline Functions C++ Enhancements to C

Default Function Arguments Placement of Variable Declarations Const Variable Enumeration Function Overloading and Operator Overloading Function Overloading Operator Overloading Additional Resources

Appendix C: The Common Files Framework Create()

Step 1: Create the Direct3D Object with Direct3Dcreate8() Step 2: Search for the Proper Device Driver with the Help of BuildDeviceList()

Step 1 in BuildDeviceList() Step 2 in BuildDeviceList() Step 3: Create a Window with CreateWindow() Step 4: Initialize the Geometry Data of your Game with OneTimeScene Init() Step 5: Initialize the 3-D Environment with Initialize3DEnvironment()

Step 1 in Initialize3DEnvironment() Step 2 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): CreateDevice() Step 3 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): SetWindowPos() Step 4 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): GetDeviceCaps() Step 5 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): GetDesc() Step 6 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): D3DUtil_SetDeviceCursor() Step 7 in Initialize3DEnvironment(): Initialize the Application's Device Objects Step 8 in Initialize3DEnvironment() Step 6: Starting the Timer with DXUtil_Timer() Run()

Step 1 in Render3DEnvironment(): TestCooperativeLevel() and Resize3DEnvironment() Step 2 in Render3DEnvironment(): FrameMove() Step 3 in Render3DEnvironment(): Render() Step 4 in Render3DEnvironment(): Fill the Frame Count String Step 5 in Render3DEnvironment(): Present() MsgProc()

Appendix D: Mathematics Primer Points in 3-D Vectors

Bound Vector Free Vector

Vector Addition: U + V

Vector Subtraction: U - V

Vector Multiplication Scalar Product Dot Product Cross Product Unit Vector Matrices

Multiplication of a Matrix with a Vector Matrix Addition and Subtraction Matrix Multiplication Translation Matrix Scaling Matrix Rotation Matrices

Rotation about the y-axis Rotation about the x-axis Rotation about the z-axis

Appendix E: Game Programming Resources General DirectX Graphics FAQ

About time someone wrote a book to cover the brand and spanking new DirectX 8 Graphics.

DirectX 8 herald a new era of the API. It was a complete re-write. DirectDraw and Direct3D were combined into a easier and more powerful API called DirectX Graphics. This release also means that you'll be able to take your programming beyond the PC, to the Dreamcast and the X Box.

I previously bought a book called "Introduction to Computer Game Programming with DirectX 8.0" by Ian Parberry. Unfortunately even though the material in the book was very good it didn't delve into the new DirectX API whatsoever, and in fact was just a cutdown version of the authors previous work "Learn Computer Game Programming with DirectX 7.0". So if you want a good beginners book look that one up, but if you want to keep up with the latest enhancements in the gaming world check this one out.

Bad english is not an excuse for this [book]. The author presents some code and just begins explaining it from one line to the next, never concerned with trying to give his reader an overview of the founding concepts of 3D.

This book is poorly presented, difficult to read, and makes an already difficult topic impossible to understand with senseless explanations, without ever going into the deeper concepts.

After reading the first 5 chapters - twice, I still don't know how to initialize direct x graphics. This little tidbit of information seems to have been skipped completely.

Other than that, the rest of the book is filled with fairly useful information.

Don't buy this book if you are completely new to Direct 3D as it will leave you with a big throbbing headache and a hole in your wallet.