Customer Reviews

Game Programming Gems (Game Programming Gems (W/CD))

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is hands-down the best book yet published on game programming. I have yet to find any other book that begins to approach the excellence of Game Programming Gems in terms of the breadth and depth of the subjects covered.

GPG will serve as an excellent introduction to a broad variety of game programming techniques for those new to the industry, and an invaluable desk reference and for more experienced game developers. As a 7-year industry veteran, I can't count the number of times the techniques in this book would have proven useful in the past.

Of particular interest are Steve Rabin's excellent chapters on the A* algorithm, the cornerstone of (most) pathfinding in computer games. These chapters go far beyond the explanation of the algorithm itself and serve up a host of rare and valuable insights for getting the most out of your pathfinding in an actual game environment.

I have no doubt that this book will have a significant impact on the state of the art in the game development community, and one can only hope that this book is only a hint of what's to come.

This book is a must-have for all who are serious about game programming. The book is a collection of some choice articles concerning game programming. One warning, however, is that these articles were written by professionals to (for the most part) professionals. If you are just starting out in the game programming field, be warned that the purpose of this text is not to teach you how to program games, but rather techniques for producing effects, good AI, etc. A better book for the beginner would be Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe.

Wow...this book covers so many areas. In AI alone, it covers A*, an FSM machine class, Game Trees, 3D movement and pathfinding, flocking, fuzzy logic, and a neural-net primer. It contains other great algorithms on real-time shadows, real-time terrain generation, interactive simulation of water surfaces, wavelets, and many other topics. Definitely a good book to own if interested in game programming or 3D graphics in general.

What a book! Whether you are just getting around to game programming, thinking about it, or already doing it, this is one book that needs to be on your library shelf. This is a one of it's kind book that deals with some of the most frustrating topics their can be in game programming.

Simulating water and liquids, AI techniques, messages, lens flares, lighting and texturing, body motion equations and randoms and more are talked about in this book, and the best thing is that it is explained and exampled within a few pages (most of the time).

This is like taking most of the articles out their on the net and sticking them inside of a book and selling it, except that everything is explained better, and nicer, for beginners to advanced programmers. If you even THINK about game programming, you'll want to pick this book up! Can't wait for Game Programming Gems II !

Game Programming Gems aims to follow in the footsteps of the excellent Graphics Gems series, except with articles that apply specifically to game programming rather than focusing solely on graphics.

There are some excellent articles in here, but unfortunately many are just very basic introductory material to their respective subjects. They do not have the depth and certainly are not sufficiently groundbreaking to be called 'gems', especially in comparison to the gems presented in Graphics Gems. Many are pretty obvious and can be readily found with even a minimal amount of internet research.

That said, the book is still a worthwhile purchase because of convenience; it gathers all of the information on a subject in one place. Still, I'd like to see more real groundbreaking articles, and fewer overviews of technology. Hopefully Gems II (which should be released soon) will remedy this situation.

This book is a collection of articles with game programming as the common theme. It does not cover game design so don't get disappointed about this. The articles cover many of the subjects concerned in game programming and are divided into the following categories: General Programming, math, AI, Geometry and Pixel Effects.

Some articles are introductory articles in their field and some are true gems that actually give information that cannot be found anywhere else. The introductory articles are good for those who don't know a field and allows an easy way to learn about it - one that gave me real new insight is Pete Isensee's introductory article about metaprogramming. Of course, if you already are an expert in the discussed field then the article will not bring anything new.

The articles are of highly varying quality. Some are excellently written and some not worth the paper they are written on - but all in all this book is a must-have for any game programmer.

The articles are also targeted and different reader groups. Some are pretty and easy to understand while others require advanced college math and physics to follow. To beauty of this is that beginners can grow with the book and understand more and more of it as they learn more - while getting an idea of what the field of game programming has to offer.

This book cannot be recommended as a book for beginning programmers or people new to game programming. They should read other books first. However, for the serious game programmer it can be highly recommended.

If the book only contained its good articles I would have given it 5 stars, but as it stands now it can only get 4.

Jacob Marner, M.Sc.
Console Programmer, R&D
Deadline Games

Ive been programming with OpenGl for quite some time, entirely self-tought, and I have got to say, this book easily beats the rest into the ground. Although heavily geared toward advanced programmers, it is an invaluable resource to those who want to learn how to do convincing effects and programming strategies. Another word of warning is that the Mathematics chapter requires, for the most part, a good mathematical background, but it is explained clearly. Some truely mind-blowing techniques are discussed and explained in this book, such as underwater caustics and glass simulation, as well as a few things that made me slap my head to my forehead and say, "Duh! Why didn't I think of that!", like the chapter on ground plane shadows. An incredibly good book on the subject, but definately _not_ for beginners. I highhly recomend it.

I swear, this series is like programming crack. Succinct, no extra "learning how to program" garbage, no extra commentary. Code. That works. Well. Quickly.

The whole book is a great resource, my fav chapter being the ones on fuzzy logic and AI. Should you ever need to learn about fuzzy logic, or just need a refresher course, the article by mccuskey is a great place to turn. The examples are clear and the explanations are clear and witty. Who knew such a subject could be made fun to learn?

Well, the fact that the Contents alone are 13 1/2 pages long should give you a good hint that this book covers a LOT of stuff! Although it doesn't go into great depth in some places, it does tell you what you need to know to get what it does cover done, and has plenty of code, along with descriptions of what the code does, mathematical formula's, illustrations where necessary, etc.. One thing that should be noted about this book on Amazon, is that the "table of contents" link on the left is pretty inaccurate, the book covers a lot more than what's listed there.

Overall, I have to say that this book will save me a lot of time and headaches, and I recommend it to anyone who is also in the industry, or who wants to be. It's not that the stuff the book covers can't be found elsewhere, or on the web, but it's all in the one place, so it saves time. You should also remember that this is only the first book in what will be a series, just like the Graphics Gems series, so there's more to come, and I plan on buying them all if they're anything like this one.