Customer Reviews

XNA 2.0 Game Programming Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is my first review in almost 10 years of using Amazon. Never have I felt this compelled to share how great a product is. Riemer is, very simply, that rare author who not only fundamentally knows his subject, but understands how to communicate it in ways that make the learning process both intuitive and nearly effortless.

I've been reading software books since I was a kid, and I can say with confidence that most of them fall short in the effective communication department. Sure, there are stacks of books out there packed with useful information, but all the knowledge in the world is useless if you can't understand it. Riemer not only gets the knowledge right, he helps you rightly get at the knowledge. (And this is doubly astounding when you consider that English isn't even the author's first language!)

If you're new to XNA, Managed DirectX, or HLSL shader programming, this book will get you up and running fast. If, like me, you've already had some experience, the tips you'll pick up in this book are a great investment in your programming future. At Amazon's price, this book is a steal.

On a side note, I first came across Riemer's work through his website. (Google for it.) His XNA and DirectX tutorials were the first that actually made sense to me, and I highly recommend them as supplemental material to this book.

This was the first book on XNA that I bought because I was looking for a book on XNA that wasn't also a tutorial on C#. It definitely assumes you already have some prior C# and XNA programming experience. The recipe analogy is a good one, because the author assumes you know your way around the kitchen, so to speak. This is a two edged sword, because if you're looking for a book to teach you the "right way" to develop in XNA, keep looking because this is only an idea book on how to solve specific problems or goals when creating games in XNA.

The advantages of this book is that you can get what you want out of it. It's laid out such that similar ideas are grouped together, but you can skip around and learn about just the topics that are important to you. There are some really cool ideas in here and it can save you a lot of time to look here first before trying to reinvent the wheel on some key concepts.

The disadvantages of this book is that there is a lot of hand waving and its really short of fleshed out examples in terms of code. The disjointed nature means you can't use previous chapters to build an overall project, it assumes you already have some kind of structure in place and there's no coaching on how to connect the pieces.

One important aspect of this book is that it's primarily geared towards 3D programming, shaders, and lighting. While graphics are arguably the most important topic of game programming, if you're not writing a 3D game, this book won't be of much use to you. There are really only 3 chapters that deal with topics outside of 3D programming. On the other hand, if this is what you want, you will find a treasure trove of tricks and tips for getting some cool stuff out of XNA. I would argue that this book would be better off being renamed as "XNA 3D programming recipes", and leave out the chapters on networking and sound.

I wasn't convinced by the "recipe-based" approach before I ordered this book, but I enjoyed the author's online tutorials so thought I would give it a shot. I ended up buying and reading what is, pure and simple the best XNA book currently on the market.

Each "recipe" is direct and to the point with a minimum of fuss. Some are straightforward and can be skimmed over quickly, while others investigate the deepest corners of XNA and shine a light upon them. I've been writing games professionally for six years and there were recipes in this book that made me stop and say, "wow".

I'm not convinced it would be a great purchase for beginners - the direct and succinct writing style may not provide enough detail for those who aren't used to creating basic games already. However, there are a plethora of other XNA books targeted at beginners - this one says, "so you know a little bit about XNA? Now let me show you the good stuff."

If I had to pick up on anything, it would be that the book could have done with more diagrams. Sometimes the only way to actually see the results of a recipe, instead of just understanding it conceptually, is to copy out (or download) the example code. This is a minor quibble, because the explanations are clear and to the point, and more diagrams might have meant fewer recipes, which would have been a far bigger price to pay.

I have three books on XNA and Ive stopped reading the other two because this book is by faaaar the best! I am an XNA Creators Club premier member and Im creating a game single handedly for Xbox Live Arcade Community and I would never be able to do this without the help Ive received from this book. Ive used or will use his recipes for collision testing, menus, camera, and one from almost every chapter. XNA is difficult and reading his book has allowed me to break through and think in XNA. The recipes are concise and authoratative. I bet he worked hand in hand with Microsoft because his recipes are close to some of the downloadable samples on the XNA Creator Club site but a lot better because of his concise explanations. You would never know if English is his first language or not from reading this great book. If you are creating a game you need a lot of books so I would recommend you get this book and maybe a starter XNA book with an example of a full game delopment (which the Recipes book does not have) but definitely get this book!

I have followed Riemer's site pretty much as soon as he started publishing articles on XNA and loved all his on line tutorials as they gave a good base for those of us starting out and also enough for us to be getting on with once we got past those first early stages.

I am pleased to say that the book is no different in this achievement, each Recipe has enough detail and information for you to pickup the techniques.

I am also astounded as to how much is in here, from the basic data storage in XNA, on to cameras, game components, dealing with models and then onto the usage of vertices's, HLSL, the list goes on!

Great site, great book.

In general I like the Apress Recipes books but this one was pretty weak. It contained no info about 2D games which is far more likely where non-professional Game Programmers would be starting and went into lengthy discussions explaining 3D position and camera orientation which is what I'd expect in a non-Recipes book. Disappointing.

I'd never written a review in Amazon. But I cannot do that for this book! It's simply AWESOME! It almost answers every piece of my question mark in mind after going over several XNA fundamental books. In a nutshell, The book is perfect for those who already has some basic knowlodge of XNA.

In this moment this is the best book in XNA. Thank you Mr. Riemer for your webside and this book.

This is a great reference for anyone learning game programming with XNA. I find the problem-solution approach to be very efficient, and the "recipes" outlined in the book are straightforward and mostly to-the-point. Few chapters refer to other parts of the book, and none of the code really depends on utility classes written by the author. That's a problem in many other XNA books. This one gives you the algorithm and the most basic code. It's up to you to tailor it with your own shortcuts and classes.

This book is basically a series of tutorials (or "recipes"). The tutorials range from the very simple task of displaying an image on the screen to more complicated tasks such as terrain generation with HLSL.

The tutorials are organised well, with a contents section that allows you to quickly scan through and look up the feature you wish to implement in your code. Each tutorial has in depth code in the book itself as well as downloadable code from the author's web page.

This book makes a fantastic complement to the XNA documentation. Things that are explained abstractly or are hidden within the XNA documentation are explained in greater practical detail in this book; you'll save a lot of time and hassle. Highly recommended.