The Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) is the industry standard for high-performance 3D graphics and is widely used to create leading-edge software. OpenGL Game Development shows the beginning computer programmer how to harness the power of OpenGL to create a fully functional map editor and game engine. The book explores the basics of OpenGL and Windows programming, while focusing on the ultimate goal of developing a 3D first-person shooter.
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About the Author
Chris Seddon is a graduate of the computer studies department of Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technologies and has more than eight years of programming experience. He owns and operates an independent game company called Vicious Software, where he is the lead designer and programmer of computer games and software. This is his first book with Wordware Publishing.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Among the worst in the genre,
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This review is from: OpenGL Game Development (Wordware Applications Library) (Paperback)
I came to this book not as an amateur, but as an intermediate game and OpenGL programmer. I think this gives me a perspective that some newcomers might not have.
This book is mediocre at best. It is filled with shallow explanations, and the development methodology espoused by the book is actually harmful. Specifically, Seddon takes the archaic approach of manually coding Win32 controls in his map editor (the construction of which comprises about 75% of the book), a practice that was outdated several years before the publication date. One startling example of a bad explanation I can recall coming across was that of rotation matrices. Seddon claims that matrices are used to rotate axes, when the reality is that matrices are used to rotate points ABOUT axes. This misconception of the mathematics, along with the lack of elucidating figures (not just here, but throughout) illustrates a deep lack on the author's part of knowledge of the fundamentals, or at least the ability to convey these fundamentals. As a replacement to this book, I heartily recommend OpenGL Game Programming by Astle and Hawkins, or anything by Andre Lamothe if you'd rather get your start with DirectX. I gave this book more than one star because it does a fair job of explaining very basic Win32 programming, and because I was able to obtain it very cheaply.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Windows based,
By Tim Elder (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: OpenGL Game Development (Wordware Applications Library) (Paperback)
This book is pretty good as a starter for anyone wanting to get into 3D game development. It not only covers OpenGL, but OpenAL and Multiplayer issues as well (not in the same depth of course).
My only complaint is that while it promotes OpenGL as the choice for multi-platform graphics, all the code examples and information on OpenGL are Windows specific, to the point of using the opengl32.lib and glu32.lib libraries in all the code. Still, the book is well worth the price, just don't expect to make Doom 4 after reading it!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very misleading book!!!,
This review is from: OpenGL Game Development (Wordware Applications Library) (Paperback)
Although I've yet to finish this book I can say it does not deliver. The book gives the goal of making a high quality first person shooter but lands way under the bar. As I read through the model editor chapters, I'm thinking wow this is gonna be great, but in one chapter it all falls to pieces.
It amazes me how cheap it works and how much renown he put towards the editor. So I decided to look forward and surprise it was pretty much the meat of it. Cheap inacurately placed walls represent lines,and unrotatable squares work as floors and ceilings. The level editor is worth nothing. On the plus side, I did think how I could actually make a application, but his methods were just awful. After that awful display I go to the end of the book to find a monsterous FPS game. Words can not describe how outdated it looked. It's a little better than wolfenstein and alot worse than the first quake. It just turned me off it completely. I can't say that there was no valuable information in the following chapters but I just saw that it wasn't worth finishing. It loads ASE models instead of MD2 so no animations unless you're some sort of genius that knows things like that already in which you probably wouldn't use ASE in the first place. I got some ideas from this book but not much I didn't already know and I don't know that much. I used to think Beginning OpenGL game programming was a bad book because I thought it didn't give me what I really wanted to know, but books like this really make you appreciate books such a that and with a little internet research I think I'll do just fine. I got nothing more from this book than a tutorial on the microsoft visual c++ resource editor but I guess it could help later on. In all, this book is nothing what it's claimed to be.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In Chapter 1, we will learn about event-driven programming and how it differs from conventional programming, the basic structure of a Windows program, how to add buttons and menus, how to add functionality to buttons, what resources are and how to use them, and finally, how to use common controls in dialog boxes. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
default button height, respawn time, cur obj, cur obi, rgb variable, max inclusions, idx variable, respawn wait, texture filename, game socket, max entities, memset function, tex layer, three edit controls, model view matrix, xyz array, max triangles, obj variable, main source file, select rgb, temp array, cur light, fog mode, long obj, button width Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Creating the Game Engine, Create Window, Global Instance, Create Floor, Create Ceiling, Cannot Register Class, Insert Sound, Place Start, Adding Game-Related Functionality, Creating the Low-Level Map Code, Get Fragged, Insert Vertex, Release Error, Creating Map Objects, Creating the Mop Editor, Basic Game Setup, Keyword Index, Popup Menu Items, Defining the Map Format New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In Chapter 1, we will learn about event-driven programming and how it differs from conventional programming, the basic structure of a Windows program, how to add buttons and menus, how to add functionality to buttons, what resources are and how to use them, and finally, how to use common controls in dialog boxes. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
default button height, respawn time, cur obj, cur obi, rgb variable, max inclusions, idx variable, respawn wait, texture filename, game socket, max entities, memset function, tex layer, three edit controls, model view matrix, xyz array, max triangles, obj variable, main source file, select rgb, temp array, cur light, fog mode, long obj, button width Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Creating the Game Engine, Create Window, Global Instance, Create Floor, Create Ceiling, Cannot Register Class, Insert Sound, Place Start, Adding Game-Related Functionality, Creating the Low-Level Map Code, Get Fragged, Insert Vertex, Release Error, Creating Map Objects, Creating the Mop Editor, Basic Game Setup, Keyword Index, Popup Menu Items, Defining the Map Format New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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