Customer Reviews

Build Your Own PC Game in Seven Easy Steps: Using Visual Basic

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

 

 

I bought this book hoping to find some information on how to build a game engine that would allow me to move sprites on a tile based backround, which is done by a function called BitBlt, although this book did have some info on Bitblt it was not alot, and most of the book only showed you how to write text based games with minor graphics. If you want to program games dont use Visual Basic, use a better laungage like VC++, and surely dont use this book! Try to find a copy of the Black Art of VB Game Programming, I did buy that book and with it I could make some ok games with VB, But DONT USE THIS BOOK

I picked up this book thinking I'd be able to make the simplist of games. I was wrong. This book dumps alot of code at you in big klumps and mainly teaches stuff how to organize the game, instead of game-specific stuff. The BitBlt and MCI stuff is nice, but most of it can be found on the web.

This book is definitely not for people who want to build a real game--it would take more than seven steps, and they wouldn't be easy. If you want to make some crappy text game then go right ahead and get the book. The stuff here won't pass for anything except freeware. Luckily, that's noted at the beginning of the book, but once you buy it, it's too late.

The game developed in these seven steps really s****. The graphics were created using Paintbrush. There's no sound. No animation.

"Build Your Own PC GAme in Seven Easy Steps Using Visual BASIC" is an impressive title and worthy of many a purchase. Though it requires use of the as-of-present somewhat dated VB3 or VB4, it nonetheless provides a helpful perspective on game development in Visual BASIC. If one owns a copy of VB, it is undoubtedly a enjoyable title and even if one doesn't carry a strong interest in game programming it provides for a refreshing event. Though it lacks in some areas, such as consistent mispelling\errors, and can produce some overly-simplistic samples, it nonetheless is a good sprint that will allow one to develop quality text-based programs, graphic arcade style fighteres, or graphic RPG style adventures. Highly recommended!

If you can see the cover of the book at the top of this page, It includes a picture of a 3-Dimentional castle. Immediately, you'd think you can jump into the fine arts of "NEXT GEN" gaming. Not so. With this book, you will jump into the fine arts of "TEXT ADVENTUREs", which is mostly the main topic of this book. Although Text Adventures have their element of fun, these days you'd probably want graphics, right? Oh, sure this book gives some info on graphics, you can find the same info on the web. I'd recommend this book for people who are familiar with VB, and want to "Get Started" with game programming. Otherwise, keep looking.

I thought the book was quite a good start on VB games programming. It does suffer from some flaws and there are too many mistakes to make it a professional book, but VB isn't exactly cutting edge stuff. The art is poor, however, and I would rather not have included it. But the code is good, and the chapter on animation is as good as anyone could make it. There's bound, however, to be a better book, but it's a decent start.

I'm part way thru the book, and so far its good for beginners. Even tho it is dated (1996), most of the concepts are valid. As a programming teacher, one thing does irritate me: the persistent misuse of the word "programming" when the author means coding. Programming is creating the logic, coding is translating that logic into code. Many students come into class able to code, but almost none come in able to program -- that is, create the logic. They think sitting down and making spaghetti code is programming. The author, as many authors and teachers do, promotes this confusion with his misuse of terms. This lapse makes it so much harder for novices to learn to program. But I was glad to see him emphasize "plan", even with the terms confused. Otherwise, good book for basic game concepts.

I was fairly new to Visual Basic when I ordered this book. It is a good book for beginners. Unfortunately the book was written when VB3 was in its heyday. To cut to the chase, the programs won't compile on VB5.

I purchased this book a couple of years ago.

I found it really helpful as an introduction to using multimedia content to create games in Visual Basic.

The code was helpful as a template, not only using the example games, but by using my own multimedia files, to plug into the code examples I was able to produce some fairly nice looking (and sounding) games.

The step to the windows API was easy.