Customer Reviews

Pangea Software's Ultimate Game Programming Guide for Mac OS X

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

 

 

Let me start by saying that this book is a must-have for the library of any Mac programmer interested in doing games or 3d Graphic programming. The source code included on the accompanying CD is, by itself, worth the price of the book.

You should be aware of what this book isn't, however. It isn't a complete, how-to-create 3D games book. It won't tell you about AI, or teach you OpenGL. By itself, it doesn't contain everything you need to learn to program games on the Mac. Combine it with a good book on OpenGL and perhaps one on game design in general, however, and you'll be well armed to become a game programmer.

Although not written for that purpose, it'd also be a great resource for anyone considering porting a Windows or Linux OpenGL game to the Mac.

I bought this and several other (much larger) books in order to create a Mac-based psycho-stimulus program for fMRI research. As it turns out, I haven't needed the other books for much. The author has done a fantastic job selecting relevant material and presenting it in a clear and concise manner. There is virtually no wasted space - everything I've read has been easy to follow and enlightening. Amazingly, this 281 page book has answered almost every question I've had on Mac quasi-real-time programming. For those few questions the book did not answer directly, it at least put me on the right path to track down the answer. The book also does a great job presenting the major alternatives (e.g. Sound Manager vs. OpenAL, GetKeys() vs. Carbon events vs. HID Manager) so that the reader is at least aware of what's out there, and can quickly gain some idea of the limitations of each approach. I highly recommend this book as a starting point for anyone developing Mac OS X game programs, or any other high-performance interactive software on OS X. The only (somewhat minor) flaw I can point out is the occasional use of undeclared variables in the sample code. However, it's easy enough to determine the type of each variable by viewing the docs on a function that takes it as an argument, so this has been only a minor inconvenience.

I was nervous about buying this book, because the Mac has changed a bit since it was released. But, I've just started reading it, and I'm definately not disappointed that I bought it.

There are a number of things covered in this book that you can't easily find elsewhere. For example, I'm fond of stereoscopic 3-D (which has become better enabled on the newer Mac hardware). This is one of the few books to cover stereoscopic 3-D programming on the Mac.

I was also interested in it's chapter introducing techniques for copy protecting your software.

And, of course, there's the CD with some of the sample code (though, I haven't tried that, yet).

I'm happy with it, and found it to be worth the money I spent.

You can download the whole book, including sample code from the CD. Go to pangeasoft's website, and look at the bottom of the page under FREE STUFF. I just found it myself, so I can't attest to the quality of the materials. The Xcode samples were created in 2004, so some of them probably will not build right without some modification.

I'm an experienced developer but complete newbie Mac programmer. This book covers the basics really well; most questions I had on how to do things on the Mac are covered in the book, and stuff that wasn't covered in enough detail gave me enough info so I could find it elsewhere.

I agonized over giving this book 4 stars or 3. There are some opinions on how to develop software that are at best questionable (for instance, that polling input devices is OK because your game is supposed to run at 30fps; the Mac is a preemptive multitasking OS; one can't guarantee any frame rate) but I decided that it was helpful enough that I'd ignore the opinions I disagreed with as there's some chance I'm not perfect either. ;-)

I was quite excited to receive this book since I have been trying to find the best way to break into Macintosh graphics programming, including game programming. From what I have read so far (the first 58 pages), it is well written and a very useful resource. However, my copy is missing pages 59 to 90! The book is fully bound, and shows no damage, so this occurred during the printing and binding of the book.

This book deserves 5 stars, but with missing pages it obviously rates far lower than that, unfairly for the author unfortunately. Clearly I'll be returning it, and will look to another source where I can examine the book personally before purchase. This is the first time I've ever had this happen, and do not regret buying it online. However, sometimes things go wrong...

Edit: As my comment indicates, the book was replaced by the author. He was very considerate and sent the replacement promptly (much more promptly than my update of this review!) I have now revised this review, upping the rating to 5 stars.