Customer Reviews

Beginning C++ Through Game Programming, Second Edition

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been programming in perl for years, but I was ready to move on to bigger and better things. Wanting to learn C++, I was in search of a 'good' programming book, whether it go to an intermediate level or just the basic fundamentals, that a person looking into learning C++ would want. What more could stick out than a programming book that not only teaches you the C++ language, but the basic tenants of game programming? Here's the 'deal'. As a person with a lot of prior programming experience, I can say this book is huge when it comes to teaching you the basic fundamentals, and I mean for you to take the word basic to its very most possible meaning. This book is a bit more on the 'technical' side, and should probably be for a person who is fairly new to programming, can't stand scanning through long code excerpts, or wants to connect the dots; if they had thrown themselves into the realm of programming in the past without taking the time to acquaint themselves with the foundations.

The first eight chapters are almost beautiful. I really enjoyed going through those simple things that you haven't seen since your first introductory programming class in college. When you get to chapters nine and ten, the book gets a little rough. It does a good job of explaining the topics of chapter nine, like dynamic memory allocation, memory leaks, etc, but it's not as thorough, so I could see that a 'true' beginner could possibly get lost. The chapter 'does' explain everything, but you have to be more careful and pay much closer attention to the words you're reading or you might be left asking 'why' in the heck some things are the way they are.

One thing this book lacks is a good, solid introduction to the C++ language. It could get a bit more into the technical details of really learning the fundamentals to ensuring a 'nice' C++ programming environment other than tossing you at Dev-C++. In the past, I used the Eclipse IDE a lot with Java. I tried to use that for this book, at first, but found it rather difficult to set up, so I gave up and used the default IDE the book recommends; Dev-C++. I had code completion turned on, and I can say the code completion is rather sad in comparison with Eclipse. There are definitely some 'fine' details this IDE could work out to become just a bit more user friendly.

The book doesn't give you a good conclusion. I enjoy a technical book that points the reader to more resources or a 'direction' to go in. This book drops off a cliff at chapter ten and leaves you wondering where to go next? It'd be nice to get some perspective, honest perspective, and be 'informed' of a good book to pick up afterwards. I'm sure leaving the conclusion out of the book was the intent of the author and publisher, but it's always a nice thing to have.

I do recommend this book to a beginner as well as anyone that might have unfairly been thrown into a 'lower' level, low and high in C++'s regard, language like Java or C++ and wants to smooth out the wrinkles they might have with some of the basic fundamentals; myself included in some instances. If you wanted, you could probably run front to back in a day or two, but you won't learn anything that way, especially since the book slowly increases the learning curve as the chapters go on; very slowly. Nonetheless, I recommend you type out the examples by hand, instead of downloading them from disc, and try some of the exercises if time can't afford you to do all of them. If you do that, you'll surely be 'ahead' of those who might have breezed on through when it comes to the sponge factor. Spending extra time on chapters nine and ten would also do you a lot of good(!). Oh, yeah, and the book does a good job of bringing you into the wonderful realm of Object Oriented programming (OOP), but you might have to go 'research' some things like operator overloading, which will probably leave you a little dazed. Underline and italicize that last statement. For a person with a lot of perl experience, this book actually made me appreciate perl so much more, and increase my desire to really pick up a lot more C++ as well.

I have read C++ for dummies and this book was actually easier to read than that. Not only was the language that much clearer but it covered nearly every aspect of C++ console programming. But therein lies the one flaw. It is called C++ Through Game Programming, but the closest you can get to a game right from this book is a text-based adventure. It may seem a little misleading, but nowhere on or in the book does it mention visual/graphical work or tutorials. Great book for the basics though!

I bought this book 3 1/2 weeks ago and just finished going through all of the material in it. As a newcomer to C++ with only a light background in BASIC, I picked up on what the author was trying to convey almost instantly. This is my second C++ book, and I can say that unlike my other book, the material contained within isn't dry and keeps you interested. While many of the examples don't actually have you program anything that is close to a game, they use terminology familiar to gamers that helps you put 2 and 2 together and imagine what other creative uses you could use the code provided for.

A word of warning however, if you read it too quickly, you may find yourself lost. Some chapters go from unbelievably easy to fairly difficult very quickly, and make some of the concepts difficult to understand if you don't grasp it the first time since the material just builds upon itself. One notorious problem in the book is Chapter 9's Exercise 1. There are many people on several different programming forums asking for help with this particular problem since the solution isn't obvious and may leave one feeling as though they're stuck in a trial and error type situation. This could be easily remedied in a classroom type setting where the professor can give feedback, but for self-study, this pitfall may cost you many hours. It is for those reasons alone that this book receives 4 stars.

Over all, this book is a good buy for the beginning programmer aiming to make it in the gaming industry and is leaps and bounds better than many other books on the subject. I would highly recommend this book to any one looking to learn C++ for the first time.

I have been very pleasantly surprised by the effect this book has had on my son. He is very interested in programming, and has already worked himself through half of the book. This is not normal behavior for my son, who doesn't like to read that much. The reason it is such a successful book is that it is PRACTICAL. At the end of every chapter, there is a game to build which uses the concepts that were just taught. This allows my son to really feel as if he is getting somewhere and not just reading about the topic. Great Book!

This was a great choice for me to purchase this book and I have to thank all the positive reviews on Amazon for it. Some people were apparently confused by the title on the first edition and so it was altered on the second. This book is for people who want to learn C++ as opposed to people wanting to learn game programming. This is the perfect choice for absolute beginners. The author explains things really well and assumes you know very little about programming. His writing style is concise yet light and quite methodical, starting off with basic programming structures and building his way up to classes. This book alone will not teach you everything you need to know but it surely was an excellent introduction for me into the world of C++ and the fact it used game creation as a vehicle, this made it even more interesting for me.

This book is well written and has easy instructions to guide you through each piece of code.
All the code examples actually worked wich is better then some of the other books out there, As a person in his 40's and never done well at school at all and having a transport background with no programming knowledge at all I found this author to be easy to understand and his instructions were very good with a little humor thrown in just to make you feel it wasnt a chor to learn C++
This is the very basics of C++ it starts at the very beginning so if you are like me with no previous experiance in programming at all then this is a great start


I had a little trouble with the system, Im using win 7 64 bit but after a little research on the net I found the solution

All in All this book and the people who put this together should be congratulated

A+++++++ from me

This book does a fairly decent job of introducing new programmers to various C++ topics such as data types, flow control, functions and object-oriented development. It was pretty easy to absorb (with the obligatory struggle on pointers, of course), and I feel it gave me a pretty good start to learning more about C++.

On the other hand there were a few places in the book where the flow seemed to be just right, when all of a sudden a concept would be introduced that kind of seemed out of place or plugged in after the book was finished, as it was not nearly as well presented or explained as the reader had grown accustomed to seeing in the rest of the book. It would usually be only a brief departure, but each time it left me scratching my head and flipping back through several previous pages, wondering what I had missed. One example is the discussion regarding memory usage and the heap. I saw the disclaimer (paraphrasing) "This example is shown as an abstract diagram, because we are talking about an object, rather than a string literal." Used several times throughout that chapter, without ever being provided any explanation on why that point is even significant.

While the example code was straightforward enough and did serve to demonstrate the author's points, it often lacked enough context to provide a thorough understanding of the topic. For example, seeing the way pointers and references behave differently is good information, but no clue is given as to why or how you would determine which you need in a given situation.

All in all I found the book useful, but I'm certain there are better options out there.

Great book it is written simplistically but not too simplistically he writes like he would teach it in a class and unlike some reviewers it was not written for computer illiterate just a person with no programming experience, for the people who are looking to get this book IT DOES NOT USE GRAPHICS there is no animation because with out something to supplement C ++ it has no graphics function it need direct x or something along those lines i personally recommend this book to anyone looking to learn c ++ but if you want to go more in depth and make a graphical game then get a follow up ook that will build on this one.

I've been teaching myself C++ programming for the last six months, working exercises from books like "C++ Without Fear"; "Practical C++ Programming" & "Teach Yourself C++". Dawson's book actually help to clarify loops, functions & arrays a bit more clearly than the above mentioned books. Don't misunderstand, those books are excellent resources as well. Dawson's writing style is appealing & easy on the eyes. He doesn't get the reader bogged down with superfulous jargon speak that only an experienced developer would understand. He guides the beginner step by step using chapter exercises, each building upon the previous. Question 3, at the end of Chapter one -- Write a program that gets three game scores from the user and displays the average -- is a simple program that can be completed by the beginner easily enough based on the chapter information. This book is must have for a beginning programmer wanting to learn how to create games for his/herself.

A friend bought me a copy of this book through amazon.
Both of us (my friend and I) started to learn C++ together through the internet before having this book.

The book is amazingly good, very good structure for teaching the programming language, C++.
Everything is done in a very interactive way, giving you concepts on how game developers do it, how stuff run in more advanced program.
And what use every function has.

While it doesn't go into deep details of every possible library and function in C++, it teaches you enough to get on your own and go from there.

After finishing this book, it was very easy to go on and move to DirectX, Allegro and SDL libraries.

Very recommanded!