Customer Reviews

Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I just want to warn the reader before buying this book. Certainly the author knows how to code games, but this book did not worked for ME for the following reasons:

*) You will need to be in front of a computer and have the samples downloaded if you want to learn something. I read 200 pages from this book while traveling by plane and since most of the code is not printed, and the author relies on the reader to try things on the computer, I did not learned much. If you are like me and love to read books in the beach, on the bed, or waiting on the dentist, you will not learn much.
*) Some of the games were written with the beta version and then ported, and some with the release version, but none with the refresh version. So the information may be already outdated. For example, the author states that XNA does not support fonts, and that was true, but no anymore.
*) The book can not be used as a reference book, it was written to be read from the beginning to the end.
*) The games presented on the book relies on helper classes written by the author, so sometimes you feel more like learning how to use this helper classes and less like learning XNA.

I feel bad writing this because the author has contributed so much for the XNA community, he deserves better, but this book is just not for everyone. If you feel like sitting in front of the computer and analyze code to learn by yourself, I suggest trying the samples from the XNA site first.

I am Direct X / C++ programmer and been working with DirectX ever since DirectX 8, now I have tons of books about advanced topics in Direct X. However, When I got this book , I realized that the code for this book was very messy. Xna is not as complicated as Direct X neither you have to write as many lines of code. In fact, many things are already taken care for you.However, This book made XNA look a lot more difficult than my other Advanced Direct X , C++ books. Here is why :

1) The Author uses so many messy lines of code just to render/show something in the screen with just a simple shader. The same thing can be done in XNA with just a few lines of code.

2)We , most of the readers, want to learn how to use the XNA API and made that transition from Direct X to XNA not looking necesarely for a beginners book. XNA is simple.Thru most of the book This Author wants the reader to learn about messy Helper Classes that he Made.
What works for him , does not mean it works for everyone. Not to mention that his code is not even optimized.If his messy extra code is not even optimized then why make XNA more complicated it than a C++ Direct X shaders book.Some people don't have the time to go thru his own custom code (Not xna,Shaders) that he wrote for his personal use. Readers want to
use XNA to lear or write their own clases.

3)) The code from the Book is from a Beta version of XNA, this book came on April and XNA was released on December. All he had to do is spend just one more week to update his code so that it would compile with the Final version of XNA and the reader would get accurate code from the book or wait a little longer to release his book. Even with the latest source code from the Book's website, some of the code does not even compile.Why? not because of XNA , but because of his messy code. In forums the Author himself says that he does not know what is going on simply because he has not gotten a copy of his own book yet. The book has been out for a month and he does not even know what his readers are being exposed to. Not to mention that besides the fact that this book does not give accurate code which won;t compile in the final version of XNA, some readers mention that the book has several grammar errors.

There are more Advanced 3D math,Graphics,Direct X, shaders books out there and none of them would give you as much pain as this book.Not because XNA or C# is hard, is SIMPLE! compared to others. It's his own custom made code he wrote that is just a mess and is Unnecessary, unless you want to make your life more complicated. Advanced books introduce the subject, explain it focus on their topic (API) and have accurate code that runs. Is just too bad, the Author of this book has Programming experience, but not the potential to explain and help the reader digest the info about his unesesary extra code that takes a big portion of his book. Since code can be downloaded and does not need to write more pages on his book, all he had to do is make 2 versions of this chapter demos. One with his messy code and another just using XNA. All he had to do in the chapters was: Please view the two versions of this demo. It only takes a sentence to write it on the book and have the code to be downlodable thru the Books Website.

Note: Even Microsoft, removed some of his Unit test,messy code when they tried to use his code.Funny thing is that the Author of this book was not very happy about that he mentions that on his website.

Being a C# developer for a few years now, I find many online tutorials much easier to follow than this book. I'd say about 95% of the programming books out there usually go with the show a chunk of code, and then go on to explain what it's doing and why it does what it does. This method works and is reflected by the fact, most programming books have done, and continue to do it this way.

This book just tells you one thing and then it's source code is completely different, for example in Chapter 2, it states to "Load some content in the 'Initialize' method" so you type some code in there and then later when you compile and things don't work, you go back and try to figure out why and when you look at the downloaded source code, all of the code you typed in the Initialize method lives somewhere completely different, along with dozens if not hundreds of lines of code not even mentioned in the book?? It becomes so frustrating trying to follow along the book, and then ignoring all of it and just reverse engineering the download coded - it really begs, why use the book at all? Just download the code and walk through it line by line and figure it out.

Flipping through the book looked so promising, I liked the projects in each of the chapters feeding off of each other, but honestly, I have a dozen web sites of online tutorials that I feel will teach me better than the book does.

I think I'm more confused about the audience for this book more than anything else - if you are advanced enough to figure out everything on your own, then you don't need this book and reviewing the code would be MORE than enough (plus you wouldn't need all of basic unit testing for every single task), but if you aren't advanced, the book is too difficult to follow and isn't worth your time...

If you're writing a programming book, before you publish it, you should have someone sit down and key in all your examples to make sure that (a) they actually work, and (b) it's possible for another person to follow your train of thought.

Mr. Nitschke doesn't appear to have done this. Chapter 1 goes by reasonably well, but suddenly in Chapter 2, instead of learning XNA, we're learning about agile development and unit tests. Those things are great, sure, but if I want to learn them, I'll buy a book on them. It's absurd to bog the reader down with them right at the beginning.

That would be tolerable, though, if at least the code worked. But in chapter 2 you're entering code that looks like this...

spriteBatch.Draw(backgroundTexture, new Rectangle(0, 0, width, height), Color.LightGray);

...except that width and height haven't yet been defined anywhere yet, so the code won't build. Failing to notice this, the author jumps ahead to a static class full of Rectangle objects, and then begins his obsession with unit testing.

Now the sample code Mr. Nitschke provides *does* build, and I had to download it anyway to get the textures. But the way I (and surely many others) learn programming is by *doing*. You can't *do* with this book, because the code, if input in book order, doesn't build.

I'm disappointed. I bought this (despite bad experiences in the past with Wrox books) because it looked more detailed than the other books on the shelf. All that detail doesn't really matter if the code doesn't work so I can't run the examples after typing them in myself.

I should add that even if you're going to use the online code, you may wish to download it and look through it first before you decide to buy the book, because you may go cross-eyed trying to read it. Here's one sample (the dots are for indentation):


#region Start game
/// <summary>
/// Start game
/// </summary>
public static void StartGame()
{
....using (PongGame game = new PongGame())
....{
........game.Run();
....} // using (game)
} // StartGame()
#endregion


All of the author's code is like this: (a) full of useless #region sections; (b) full of much useless XML "documentation" that just repeats the method names; (c) repeats the method name (or if block condition, or whatever) after every end brace. Compare with what the code would look like stripped of that garbage (again, dots added for indentation):


public static void StartGame()
{
....using (PongGame game = new PongGame())
....{
........game.Run();
....}
}


So even if you're OK with having to use finished code instead of being able to type it in, you'll have to decide whether it's worth having to look through code that's as bloated and hideous as this.

I've only made it up through ch 2 and have decided that I will probably have to come back to this book after I get some more game programming experience. The introduction says that the reader should have knowledge of C# but experience with C++ or Java will suffice. I have "2nd semester" level experience in all of these languages and still have difficulty following the author. In the small bit that I read there were a number of times where the author does things like tells the reader to enter certain pieces of code but doesn't mention where to insert them nor is it obvious based soley on the context of the discussion. I also became frustrated when he said to drag some particular texture files into the IDE but didn't mention where they originate from. The book contains no CD and as it turns out he does in fact mention somewhere in the first chapter that all the files mentioned in the book are located on the publishers website. Still, it would have been nice if that point had been reiterated. Also, as this is a book targeted at professionals and not beginners don't expect many explanations about how some lines of code work. This is probably a good book if you're a game programmer with a couple of years experience and looking to add XNA to your repertoire. If you want to learn the basic nuts and bolts of game programming you may want to look elsewhere first. I'd recommend the book "Game Programming for Teens." Don't let the title mislead you, I'm 32 and learned lots! It doesn't go beyond 2D but it's very straight forward.

More often than not you are learning to use the author's helper classes instead of the API. And after each concept, he spends a few grueling pages drawing out a unit test for it. I bought the book to learn the API and found everything but.

Don't buy this book if you're trying to learn the API because you won't find it. However, I like to think he'll change his approach in the 2nd edition to be released in March.

I agree with all the other dissatisfied buyers of this book. I have had this book 1 day and will either pray I can resell it or just plan give it away. I am on chapter 2 and can't even get it the Pong game going because more than 50% of the code needs to be downloaded. The writing style is all about the authors practices in game development and not the XNA technology. He does not teach you the XNA Development platform but rather how to right unit test and about 25% game development. I agree he is probably and outstanding game programmer and should stick to that. Very, Very bad buy and I have read alot of programming books in my day and have to say this is the Number 1 worse. Pllleeeaaase I beg that you save your money and buy a different book and don't set yourself back $40.

The author has talent, there is no doubt. However, I believe he thought he was writing a book on unit testing. Sure, unit testing is important ... but use those precious pages to explain code. Code is valuable ... but code is free and unfortunately, the book doesn't do much to explain the code. Reason for 2 stars instead of 1 is that the examples are polished. Plus getting a glimpse of what he was thinking with the XNA Racer starter kit was good.

I only made to about Chapter 8 on this book, I got sidetracked and needed more specific info.

At first I wasn't a fan of the test driven development style used in the book, but as I read through I realized it was just Ben's style of implementing everything as a delegate that I didn't really care for. I think his approach is a nice mix of "build a game from a book" and Frank Luna's approach of "single concept" examples, although I think the "single concept" approach is still more clear.

My biggest complaint is that there is almost no attention paid to collision detection. This is a complaint I have with almost all 3D game development books. Authors seem to want to gloss over it, most likely, because they don't really understand it. There are other full texts out there showing you how to do collision, but it would be nice for once for someone to write a book on game development and include some decent source and maybe a chapter or two towards the subject.

I've spent a couple hours with this book and I'm already decided to return it. I am just a step above "beginnger" when it comes to coding and I realize just enough that this book is completely outdated. The published date says Feb 26, 2008 which is exactly two months ago, however, version 2.0 of the Game Studio Express is fully out in the public and there are TONS of differences between it and what is presented in this book; so much so that it is actually confusing me to read this book INSTEAD of learning something.

Furthermore, a big reason I purchased this book was to read more about the Dungeon Quest game mentioned in the book. The author makes it sounds like this will be a fairly fleshed out example game by the time the book is released. However, what I find online is merely the example that was created in his 4 day GDC stent and nothing more. To make things worse, I cannot get it to compile in v2.0 of Game Studio Express.

Sorry.