Customer Reviews

C++ Games Programming

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

 

 

I wouldn't be that hard on it. But a better choice woul be Andre LaMothe's, Games Programming for Dummies. This is out dated and uses costly libraries

This is simply not a programming book. It contains some pretty pictures, some clear writing, and a lot of code. The only problem is that none of these are aimed to help someone learn to program games in C++. Instead this book teaches you to use Theatrix, a library Stevens and (primarily, I believe) Trujillo have devised which gives you the ability to program "killer DOS games" (it only compiles under Borland C++ 4.5 so, if you don't have it, this book is even more useless). Additionally, the nature of this book should be to teach. As is seen with many programming books (especially DirectX and other Windows books) the author thinks programmers simply want a quick and easy way to get these features into their programs. The majority of intelligent programmers want to understand what's going into their programs. This is a different discussion, however. To summarize, do not buy this book.

In my previous review of this book some how I made the mistake of giving it a 5-star rating when I meant to give it 1 star (I would have gone lower than 1 if they would let us). I'm just submitting this review to lower the average rating of the book so that nobody looks at it and thinks that this book might actually be good.

I found this book not conclusive enough for a first time programmer to build his first game. I expect a game programming book to talk alot about collision detection and setting up a game. This book did not have the resouces or content for a new game programmer to get a game up and running. It would be an ok book for a first time reader to get introduced to some of the elements of game programming but did not cover enough of the core elements such as collision detection. The book was easy to read (ledgeable)but was not extensive enough to build your first game (nor does it provide the resources).

I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Gerber's synopsis of this book as a "360 page commercial for 'Theatrix'". This book teaches nothing of the fundamentals of programming games. Instead they simply tell you to use their pre-written Theatrix libraries. It's like having a butler chew your food for you "Here you are sir...now you only need but to swallow it." I want to learn how to program games, not to pay 40 bucks to have someone do it for me. Don't get this book, chew your own food.

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