Customer Reviews

C# Game Programming: For Serious Game Creation

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

 

 

I'm just getting back into computer programming, a hobby I enjoyed in high school (7+ years ago). For months I struggled with trying to "break the ice" to get back into programming because so much had changed over that time and it was somewhat overwhelming. I decided to give this book a go since it was new and used C# and OpenGL, both of which I was interested in learning.

In starting this book, I was familiar with general programming concepts but had zero experience with C# or OpenGL (or any other graphics API). This book takes you through creation of a fairly robust game engine, class-by-class, with excellent exercises, explanations, and implementation examples along the way. The pacing was excellent, the concepts well explained, and the included CD was a great reference for checking my code for errors.

In less than a month I feel like I've broken the ice completely- I have a healthy base knowledge of good gaming concepts, a decent understanding of OpenGL, and a very easy-to-use collection of classes for game creation. Even better, after working through the book twice (maybe 30 or 40 hours of reading and coding) I have a thorough enough understanding to modify, expand, and utilize the engine for projects beyond the ones presented in the book...and that's the real goal.

One of the coolest things about this book is how it teaches various game-specific concepts that I've always wanted to learn about. Things such as coding efficient game loops, rendering, the graphics pipeline, and handling game states are presented in a simple and elegant way, with examples of good vs. bad practices and glimpses into how such things are handled on a professional level. It was very refreshing to get some insight into how games are made "for real" and feel like I'm on a track to take my hobby to the next level. I will be spending my summer using the knowledge I learned from this book as a springboard to learn 3D graphics and game programming and to have fun making my own games. I'd have rated it 6 stars if I could :)

This book does a good job at taking you through step by step the process of creating a game, without having any game programming experience, by far the best book I have found for 2010 visual studio. 5/5

I love programming C# and I love playing games - this book helps bring these two passions together in a simple clear way. I found the book easy to follow and gave me a great grounding in how modern computer games, it takes you through making a simple game on your own so at the end I was totally prepared to start my own projects! Definitely recommend!

If you are looking for OpenGL programming advices, this book may be your target. The only thing that I didn't like in this book is that it starts in chapter 5..! the previous chapters (from 1 to 4) are C# language basics that not needed because every programmer who reads about OpenGL is an advanced (or at least intermediate) programmer.
It'll be much better if the author gets directly to the book subject and spends the rest of chapter on extra practices.

I have a few dozen books on programming, but until this book, I couldn't find anything that did such a great job at laying out the basics of game programming. I'm completely new to openGL and so far, this book does an amazing job at getting the basics down. Please make more books like this. A follow up to this book would be amazing (go deeper into design and build a few small sample games from different genre's perhaps).

This is a really good book. It explains some of the newer additions to the C# language before taking you through the development of a game engine. A side scrolling game is written to show how to use the game engine and then suggestions for writing you own games is given. I have an older computer and the game engine is fast enough to enjoy the games I write, even on this old, slow computer of mine.

I bought this book so that I could learn C# and how to program games in it. I've had a decent grip on C++ for a few years now, but I tend to be able to read only from printed books, so I haven't found the time to learn the other APIs/SDKs (OpenGL, SDL, etc.) which are needed to make games. I wanted a book to learn a language that could be ported easily to a wide variety of platforms, and that included all the info I needed to get input, handle graphics, etc., so I figured this book would be it, since it was not only about C# but also OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL, and other APIs. Unfortunately, this book doesn't even attempt to teach C#, and instead assumes the reader already has an extensive knowledge of it. The book does teach you about elements of game programming in C#, such as game loops and timers, but if you're not already familiar with C#, the code will be of little value to you as you'll be completely lost as to its workings. The book doesn't explain the fundamentals of C#, such as public/private classes, encapsulation, or even the basic syntax of the language. Oddly enough, the book does explain how to set up the Visual Studio IDE, which I would think an experienced C# coder would already know.

The reader could learn from some of the graphics sections, which do a good job of explaining the universal concepts of vectors, sprites, quads, and vertices, as well as some basic OpenGL, but as this book is intended to explain the whole of basic game programming, it is not worth the price of this book to only learn one part of it.

If you already have a good understanding of C#, this book will probably suit your needs and get you started in game programming. However, if you're not a C# programmer, this book will be pretty much useless to you, even if you know another language like C++.

this book did not work for me,but i am new at programming, the code samples i tried did not work in visual studio pro