Customer Reviews

High Performance Windows Graphics Programming: Your High-End Guide for Creating Fast, High-Impact Graphics with Microsoft's DirectDraw API

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

 

 

When I got this book, I was a total newcomer to Windows programming and the entire set of DirectX APIs, including DirectDraw, of which this book claims to focus on. My first problem was the code presented relies on MFC. While MFC does make for simpler code, you need to know some basic MFC to understand the code. While the author claimed that MFC was 'beyond the scope of the book', it would have only taken 10 pages or less to explain all the MFC needed to understand the code. This is very frustrating given the fact the book contains 3 fairly useless chapters - a chapter on video playback, one on collision detection and a 'bonus' chapter from his other book on Direct3D. It would have been better to see chapters on basic MFC, Visual C++ compiler (which he uses), and perhaps one on DirectSound. Overall, the book was very helpful to get me started with DirectDraw and DirectInput. However, if you intend to really use this stuff you're going to need more references such as "Inside DirectX", which fills in many of the gaps found in this book. Oh and by the way, the code leaves a lot to be desired.

I got this book having no directdraw programing experience, a strong C++ background, and limited Win32/MFC programing experience. The first chapter gives a great crashcourse on Direct Draw, and the remaining chapters do a good job at explaining difficult concepts. Though I don't know if I would recommend this book to a beginer, a quick learner can pick up alot from the book.

This book simply rules. Not only does the writer explain the ins and outs of the DirectDraw API *very* well, the author also discusses some common problems (and their solutions) that many programmers may face in a game or multimedia application. I never saw these problems discussed in any other book. For example Stan discusses how to eliminate the flicker of the mouse pointer as you draw it on a pageflipped surface, how to mix Windows MCI and DirectX and more. Usefull stuff indeed.

The book might not be too swell for beginners though. Stan assumes some basic knowledge about Windows and DirectX, meaning he doesn't explain how to set up DirectX, how to create a message loop, how to set up a window, and so forth. This is ofcourse good, because the book is not polluted with stuff that's already described in so many other books. But it means, as a programming newbie, you need at least another book to get the basic understandings. A good beginners book is Games programming for Dummies from LaMothe.

Authors who are interested in advanced graphics programming should get the Graphics Programming Black Book from Abrash. It's not specifically about Windows, but it contains some valuable resources nevertheless.

I tried the executables and Bumper, BMP View, SuperSwitch and I think other examples do not work. I tried opening the workspaces in the source folder and compiling them gives you errors. It would be really hard to copy all the examples from the book and compile it then that will take a long time since the whole thing is not all put in the end of the chapter and there are many functions. He also fails to explain the implementation of the Wizard he has on his cd and that would be important since it's not like you would want to copy the stuff from the cd onto other computers. Also the SDK isn't even included in it. The book is written quite well except I don't see a point in making the first chapter a crash course in DirectDraw if that's what the whole book is about. The examples are well described and few errors exist and a few jokes are put in to lighten the mood. I would give the actual book 4 stars, but since the CD is COMPLETELY WORTHLESS, this is a book WITHOUT A CD. Books without CDs aren't too good because examples that are already assembled are easier to experiment with, and the examples in the book will take a while to copy. So if the CD had another use besides maybe playing frisbee with it with your dog(if you had one), then the book would be a good one. Too bad...