Customer Reviews

Pocket PC Game Programming: Using the Windows CE Game API

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Excellent tutorial for becoming familiar with programming for the Pocket PC platform, but also for novices to windows programming in general. Harbour starts at the ground up, explaining the differences between the two in an easier to understand writing style. I have tried for years to grasp c++ programming after working with BASIC and countless other languages but for some reason could not. After working through the book, not only did I have a working, infinitely expandable 2D game engine for programming for PPC, but I had finally gained a much better understanding of the language.

If you know how to program and want to try out the Pocket PC then this is a great book to own. It gives you some background, spends just a little time on the "structure of a Windows app", then gets into doing cool things on the PocketPC. The chapters on getting images to the screen faster using the Game Api (DirectX precursor) were great. I've always wanted to do Sockets/Networking programming and this book is where I learned. Btw, I'm not a game programmer!

Only downside is the cd which contains a number of errors in the example code. Since the code is also in the book, its not that big of a deal (just a little shoddy). The cd also comes packed with a ton of games.

If you wanted to write a game for a PocketPC device this would absolutly be your book. However, I've been writing utility applications I find myself using this book over other references. This is the best lightweight WinCE/PocketPC progamming book out there- games or not. Harbour covers topics in a very easy-to-understand way- from graphics and sound to networking. No matter what the issue I usually go to this book first, then then web, then one of the other WinCE books I own if need be. If you're new to WinCE (esp. coming from a non Win32 background) this book is exceptionally great.

This book is a great resource. The library, which the author develops and improves throughout the book, enables you to write your own 2D games for the PocketPC with ease. If you have some programming background in C++ you will have no problems to follow. The money spent on this book is an investment that pays off. You will have lots of fun and can make some money too, if you want to. Windows CE is a powerful operating system that becomes more and more important, especially in the game sector and Microsoft provides a professional IDE for free (get this, Palm developers!).
The content could have been presented on half the number of pages and the book is not perfect, but hey: it's a bargain none the less and it comes at the right time!

So many game programming books today come with absolutely not a single sample game for the reader to play with. The whole point of reading a game book is to learn how to write games, right? Well how is one supposed to learn to write a complete game from scratch if the book doesn't include even a single game?

That is why I loved this book! It includes a ton of sample programs, and I think five or six complete games--that's right, complete games! Even check out that last game in the book, Pocket Air Hockey, which is multiplayer! Amazing! I can't believe that. This book had enough material to make it a good book, maybe with some coverage of more types of games, but instead the author took it to a whole new level and did what most game programming books don't even attempt--creating a complete multiplayer networked game. The game even includes a mini chat screen where two players can send messages back and forth before playing.

As far as I'm concerned, this book is the complete package for writing games for Pocket PCs. So many books cover a subset of game programming, one specific thing here or there, but this book covers everything about Pocket PCs you will need for the next couple years. The only thing I would add--and I'm not complaining--but it would be cool to have covered a Game API bitmap drawing function. Hopefully a GAPI blitter will be available on the author's web site soon.

Anyways, this book is the only book you need to write PPc games, period. Oh and be sure to join the YahooGroups's list which has a lot of cool programmers who will help you out.

This is an easy read and it contains valuable game programming source code. This book makes getting into C++ game programming on the Pocket PC much easier than you would have imagined. The emBedded C++ version 3.0 is a little dated but the same code easily transfers to the new emBedded C++ Version 4!

This book is a "Must Have" for anyone interested in programming games in EVC. You will learn the basics of ppc game design and programming while building a complete game library. The author teaches C++ as apllied to games, so that you can dig right in and get your hands dirty. And he even makes it fun! Mr. Harbour insists on keeping your code "clean" and "professional"; and he shows you how, with step by step examples that will send you well on your way to producing pocket pc's next big blockbuster hit! This book is a delite for beginners and experts alike. It will teach the beginner all you need to know to produce games in evc using the game api. It will teach the seasoned programmer how to apply thier C++ knowledge to programming in Windows CE 3.0. The accompanying disc is filled with demo games and programs like Paint Shop Pro and Pocket C. It also contains the source code for the games and game libraries you'll learn in the book. If you want to program games in Embedded Visual C++ using the Game API, buy this book. You'll be glad you did.

Randy A. Brown
brown family software

While the book covers a lot of topics, which is nice, this is not a great introduction for embedded CE development. The coverage of debugging is limited. The author relies a lot of using the CE emulator. That is okay, but I wish there was more information on debugging code running on the device. That is fairly easy to do with Windows CE. However, I have run into a few issues that I haven't gotten around yet, in this area this book is of limited use. I get the impression that the author hasn't done that much embedded development, otherwise, more of these issues would have been addressed. Yet to be fair, that isn't the main thrust of this book.

The game library put together is very simple and I don't trust the code very much. For example there are several pages devoted to showing how to use bit shifting to avoid integer multiplication! I don't know about all the RISC processors used in Pocket PC's, but at least the ARM process used in IPAQ Pocket PC has built-in multiply for integers. Anyway, this type of coding is very problematic. First it usually runs slower than what a good code generator produces and secondly it fixes hard values into your code that means you have to often adjust the code before you can use it on a new device in the future. Anyway that kind of code tends to limit my trust the rest of the library. (FYI, that type of coding was popular in the 70's and early 80's.) He talks a lot about how Win CE is like DOS was in the 80's and the code show it.

However, the book is a good overview and simple introduction into Pocket PC programming with a wide range of topic coverage. Just don't expect to be able to make a great deal of use of the source code provided.

While the book covers a lot of topics, which is nice, this is not a great introduction for embedded CE development. The coverage of debugging is limited. The author relies a lot of using the CE emulator. That is okay, but I wish there was more information on debugging code running on the device. That is fairly easy to do with Windows CE. However, I have run into a few issues that I haven't gotten around yet, in this area this book is of limited use. I get the impression that the author hasn't done that much embedded development, otherwise, more of these issues would have been addressed. Yet to be fair, that isn't the main thrust of this book.

The game library put together is very simple and I don't trust the code very much. For example there are several pages devoted to showing how to use bit shifting to avoid integer multiplication! I don't know about all the RISC processors used in Pocket PC's, but at least the ARM process used in IPAQ Pocket PC has built-in multiply for integers. Anyway, this type of coding is very problematic. First it usually runs slower than what a good code generator produces and secondly it fixes hard values into your code that means you have to often adjust the code before you can use it on a new device in the future. Anyway that kind of code tends to limit my trust the rest of the library. (FYI, that type of coding was popular in the 70's and early 80's.) He talks a lot about how Win CE is like DOS was in the 80's and the code show it.

However, the book is a good overview and simple introduction into Pocket PC programming with a wide range of topic coverage. Just don't expect to be able to make a great deal of use of the source code provided.

This book is a great start for the beginners of Pocket PC programming or Windows CE platform. You only need to be familiar with C programming language to take benefit of this book. By the end of this book you will have developed the tools and source code needed to write multiplayer games that can be played wirelessly on the Internet. The book has numerous sample games that illustrate handling of Windows messages, the game loop, events, timing, loading bitmaps, drawing animated sprites, detecting user input, playing sound effects, and communication through an infrared port or socket. The book has great "Further Reading" and "Index" sections.