Customer Reviews

Focus On 2D in Direct3D (Premier Press Game Development)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At first glance this book doesn't look like much. It's fairly small compared to the typical game-programming tome (even with its medium-sized print), and not much less expensive. If you went strictly by the number of words per dollar, you might overlook it.

If you're planning to write a 2D game with the DirectGraphics API, however, this book is exactly what you need. There may not be a lot of words, but they're the right ones.

The first 40% of the book explains how to do everything you could do with 2D interfaces, and a little more. Copying rectangles, copying non-rectangular images, and page-flipping are explained. Added to the mix are rotation and scaling effects that were generally not possible (or at least not fast) with DirectDraw.

The next 40% gets into 3D engine details, explaining just enough to let you take advantage of Z-buffering, anti-aliasing, and lighting effects without needing you to be the Wizard of Polygons. The math review is brief and to the point.

The last 20% is something of a waste. A long chapter is spent learning how to parse a ".x" file that contains a 3D model, something that is largely uninteresting for people whose focus is on 2D (and unnecessary for everyone else). Another covers particle systems, which is interesting but completely out of place in this book. One might suspect the author was padding it out a bit. A section on text rasterization with Direct3D might have been more appropriate.

Overall I got exactly what I was hoping for. The author describes the different approaches clearly, points out areas where you can get into trouble, and for the most part stays focused on the subject at hand. The result is a book that will get you up and running with 2D under Direct3D in a few hours.

This book has these features:
1. Just DX8 Code and Theory. Nothing on setting up Windows and the GDI or the history of Windows. The lower price tag is due to this.

2. Codes that actually compile and run. This is "pretty rare" considering that other DX8 books (as of July 2002) have half baked code that does not even compile.

3. Focus is on techniques and not on making a monster library. Unlike most books, there is no monster central library where each project needs to include. Each example in the book has its own source code and does one or two things only, making the relevant code stand out.

Conclusion:
If you are an experienced programmer with DX7, this book is definately a buy. But, if you are a new programmer, stay away from this book. This book purposely leaves out any support for inexperienced programmers.

For those that have his previous(?) book, "Isometric Game Programming With Directx 7.0", this book is basically part 2 of that book.

This book is a must-have for all budding game developers who want to make the move from DirectDraw to Direct3D. The material in this book is presented in a simple, straight-forward "no extra fluff" manner. You will be building simple 2D engines using Direct3D in no time. And it will give you a solid basis for expanding your knowledge of Direct3D as you move to building 3D engines, later on.

I especially think the book does well (for its cost) by not having a lot of useless Win32 / Generic C++ content overhead. Yes, you are expected to know a bit of this coming in, but if you don't know the basics already, you should be starting with another book.

"Focus on 2D..." also serves as an excellent reference to be able to fall back on when looking up specific information. You definitely do not need to read it front-to-back; each chapter stands on its own and covers the fundamentals needed, regardless of whether you need information on particle systems, alpha blending, textures, or other Direct3D systems.

I highly recommend added this book to your collection!

First off, I was disappointed when I got this book. It appeared to be another "basics of Direct3D" book... I thought. It actually sat in my truck for about 2 weeks before I read it. I was not interested in another how to create a Direct3D object, blah blah, but then, bored one night, I started reading.

This book added alot beyond a SDK-two-sentence explanation of Direct3D objects and made me realize how much I DIDN'T know about Direct3D. The author DID cover the basics in this book (no Win32 mind you), but what happened was, the "why" and more "what" were revealed to me in this text.
The "why this enumeration is this value" and the "reason for performing this class call", etc. Alot of the details that were overlooked before in other books (I've read many) were explained well in this book, giving me the additional information I needed to push completely past a "beginner" status.

All the examples I ran compiled, and all the examples were related well with the text in the book. This book is not a monster either. It's about 258 pages and smaller in size. The author does not try to teach you the WIN32 API, so that takes a big chunk out making this a quick read.

Normally, I try to give a balanced review about a book, the good AND the bad. No book is perfect, so I will say this book is NOT for advanced programmers unless you need a good reference, but for a beginner to intermediate programmer, this is a good nugget of knowledge. Very useful beyond 2D. He does exclude alot of D3DX making you write your versions of their functions which helps in the understanding, but makes it hard sometimes in finding the equivalent D3DX functions since I choose to use them. But in searching for D3DX functions in combination with reading this book, I've noticed that I understand alot of the parameters better when using the D3DX functions! Not bad..

Great book for the beginner to intermediate programmer, and a great reference for anyone after that.

Unlike many of the other books in the Premier Press Game Development Series, this book is a short 270 or so pages. That said, it's information dense and INCREMENTAL. It's also apparent how the book can prepare someone to make the transition from 2D to 3D quickly.

Some of the topics the author covers in this book that I found particularly useful:

- Alpha blending for 2D effects
- Z buffering (this topic is covered extensively elsewhere, admittedly; but this author has explained Z-buffering in the most lucid manner I have seen to date)
- Lighting for 2D
- Simple vertex shading for 2D
- Particle systems for 2D (very useful)

The later chapters, in particular, were extremely useful. All the code WORKS. This book was written while DirectX 8.0 was the latest and greatest, so there may be some issues with DirectX 9 and higher, but of course that's to be expected.

All in all, This book has been one of the best investments I've ever made in my game development education. Furthermore, it has been a constant companion and reference during my own commercial game development.

I programmed games for a few years using DirectX 7's directdraw capabilities. I decided to move on to 3D programming so I purchased a few books on 3D. After spending hours reading these books and learning the concepts of 3D I found that the source code crashed! I spent weeks trying to figure out what the authors did wrong.
I finally bought 2D in Direct3D, a very wise decision. Within the first week I was drawing primitives, using vertex and index buffers, using a z-buffer, alphablending, and loading xfiles! The book is very clear about all definitions and explains every concept in plain english. The book is exactly what it is promised to be. How to do 2D graphics in Direct3D. Therefore, this book will not teach you very much 3D math or show you how to make a 3d engine. But it shows you how to CORRECTLY set everthing up. No more dreaming of making quake while failing to draw a triangle! With this book by your side you can enter the realm of 3D game programming.

this book will not teach you a lot. it will, however, point you into a direction where you should venture into if you want to learn directX 2D or 3D. the matrix lessons are a bit too complicated with the way the author explained it, considering that matrix arithmetic is not too difficult. there are a few pages containg cryptic matrix multiplication examples which could have been explained in a few sentences like in lamothe's tricks of the trade book( lamothe explains math better ). but i give it 3 stars for a decent read. it is a good addition to a game programmers collection

I was a DirectDraw programmer, but always wanted to move to 3D. I tried reading online tutorials and some books about 3D programming, but still couldn't understand _why_ I need to do so many steps just to see a triangle spinning on the screen. The articles I read didn't explain much about it. I gave up and went back to DirectDraw until this book caught up my attention.

The price is considerably cheap compared the other "game programming" books, but the book contains more than that. It explains why you pass a value to a function, what does that value mean, what does it do, what are the alternatives?

This book is very useful for those who just started learning Direct3D programming. During the course of making my game, I have to admit that I open this book more than any other books I have.

Finally a book has been written that contains source code that compiles! I messed with Direct3D for a few months and couldn't figure it out using a few different Direct3D books. Once I purchased 2D in Direct3D I was drawing triangles in 3D space within a day! Lighting, Alpha Blending, Z-Buffering, Rotations, it all in there. It cuts out all the windows [stuff] and gets right to the point. It's a beautiful reference book for intermediate game programmers.

I wouldn't recommend this book to a beginner that wants to start making games because it does not tell you how to put all the code together to make a game.

It's a really handy book to have around. Its like an SDK that makes sense.

I bought this book thought that maybe I could write a simple 2D game using it. But the book has NOTHING to do with 2D in Direct3D (Except he teaches you do create a Ortho view). This book is just a introduction to Direct3D, nothing more!

In the end he says that he didn't write a game because he just teaches you the tools to create one yourself. He didn't give me any tools! I just think he is lazy.

I have never writed a review, but in this case I thought that I just had to. This book stinks! Go read the SDK docs instead.