Customer Reviews

Programming Linux Games

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The computer game market is dominated by dedicated game console platforms, like Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's XBox. But the steady rise of linux on fast, cheap hardware and the parallel rise of an open source community leads one to wonder if there are alternatives.

Which leads to this book. It has some of the ambience of the flashback to the 70s or 80s, when programmers in their spare time might gin up a cool game, which would then spread like a virus when word got out. Of course, you can use the book's advice to design a proprietary game. Nobody says you need give it away.

The book's code examples are in C. Not Java, please note. While Java is good for some applications, typically in gaming, performance is always an issue, as measured by latency, for example. The book also does not mention C++. Pity. C++ compilers nowadays are usually as efficient as C compilers. Plus, if you want to code a game of any complexity (over 100 000 lines, say), then C scales badly, unless you use really strict design and coding standards.

Overall, though, the book is well done. Very easy reading if you're experienced. Very little knowledge of graphics is required. The book is more about the back end design. Graphics is pushed out to OpenGL and similar packages.

I've been waiting for a book like this for a long time. I can't say that I'm into Linux games per say, but I am definitely into cross platform ones and SDL(Simple Direct Media Layer)which is covered in the book is the ticket to getting there. My only previous gripe with SDL was the documentation or lack thereof, which while the documentation is getting better this book does an excellent job of covering SDL from the ground up. If you want to write cross platform games then this book is for you!

If you're new to game programming then get this book too!!! Even if you plan to start out making games on Windows, I suggest reading this book along with Lamothe's as it will help you understand game programming basics without the complexity of Windows' code. The author takes you all the way from initializing the display to a complete game by the end of the book, and even though the game was meant to be for Linux it will compile without too many modifications. Although the game in this book may be rather simple one in today's standards, it does cover all the bases including networking and game scripting, the latter of which I found very helpful. ...

First and foremost: make sure this is what you are looking for,
even the best book will disappoint someone who is looking for something else!

If, like myself, you have some knowledge in computer science without being an expert and particularly have no expertise in Game Developping nor in MultiMedia and are yet curious about the topics then definetly go for it.

This book unveils pretty much all aspects game programming: graphics, audio, computer "AI", network gaming, etc.
Unveils, not exhausts: be warned. But this is just great when all you are after is understanding what is this about and decide eventually to dig deeper.

And everything is done with examples building up until you have developped with the author "your" first game : Penguin Warrior!

What would be great is to have a sequel with more advanced topics (3D, Scheme scripting, etc.): be many to buy it and maybe we will someday see it!

There aren't enough books written about game programming for Linux. Although this book is dated (A lot of API evolution can occur in 4 years), it is probably the best introduction I have seen so far. The book walks you through the creation of a simple, but full-featured game using mostly cross-platform APIs. It is elegantly written and easy to understand. Because of how much the libraries have changed, you will not be able to use all of the code directly, but it should not be difficult to look up the new function calls in the respective libraries' online documentations. It would be great if someone could write an update of the book. This book is not a one-stop place for all you need to know, but it is a good place to start and get you thinking. After reading the book, you should know what to look for to learn more.

I have some programming experience from the C++ classes I took in college but I am not a pro and I still consider myself a beginner. I'm not really very interested in game programming per se, but after I finished my classes, I was eager to do some "real" programming and game programming is the most challenging kind.

Beware, the Editorial Review says this book is the "Complete guide to developing Linux games" - that is totally misleading. It is nothing more than a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty introduction with almost no math or 3D graphics information. This book is basically a simple, easy to learn tutorial that walks you through several example programs in order to teach you how to use some of the API's available under linux.

The things I really liked:

- The author discusses several important API's. He gives descriptions, pros/cons, and shows you how to use the API's in his tutorials.
- He tells you what you DON'T need to know. If he doesn't like an API he comes straight out and says it's waste of time to learn it. SVGAlib is an example of one he says not to bother with.
- There's a quick description of the following major API's: SVGALib, GGI, SDL (the whole book is about SDL), ClanLib, OpenGL, Plib, Glide, Xlib, GTK+, TK, Fltk, Qt, OSS, ALSA, ESD, OpenAL, Tcl, Guile and MzScheme, Python and Perl, BSD Sockets, Open Play, IPX and SPX, libpng and libjpeg, libaudiofile and linsndfile, Ogg Vorbis, SMPEG, zlib.

The things I didn't like:

- The programs are in C instead of C++. Nobody programs major games in C anymore, give me a break. Minus one whole star right there, sheesh.
- The book will probably be outdated quicker than most computer books because it talks about so many different API's.
- There's very little room to grow because the bibliography is pretty wimpy. If you're a newbie who's serious about game programming, you'll need MANY other books that are lot more heavy-duty than this one.

If you already know the basics of C or C++ and you're interested in programming linux games but you're not sure where to start, you will probably be happy with this book. Just be aware that you won't learn very much and you will outgrow it quickly. I'm 21 years old and I have some experience with advanced math (up to differential equations), and I was just a little bored with it. If you DON'T have much math experience then this book will get you off to a good start.

If you want to be a professional game programmer you'll need to learn 3D graphics, advanced math, physics, cryptography, networking, AI and an endless list of other topics. The point is, you'll need more books, lot's of them. The first book you need to buy after this one is Game Programming Gems. I'm not joking, you NEED that book if you want an idea of what you're getting yourself into. Being a game programmer is one of the most extremely challenging jobs in the world, and you should know that from the very beginning.

I had high expectations from this book, coming as it was from a
company specialized in porting the most complex games to Linux.
Unfortunately it seems that the fall of Loki has brought down this book with it. As other readers have said it is a good SDL
primer (covering just the basics). Other APIS are mentioned but just ina cursory view. There is a whole chapter dedicated to the code of a sound player software whoch is really out of place here.. it looks more like the author stuffed it in since he for some reason had developed it and he thought it was marginally relevant.. A good point is the book is about a working 2D game, Penguin Warrion ( a spaceship against spaceship typical game ) but the game development is not properly explained.. it loks like the book is an appendix to the game and not the contrary... in short to really learn something you must go and scan the code on your own...
With a little bit more affort and time to give the book more depth and solidity it could have been a great beginner's text..too bad!

I've worked as a Java developer for the past few years on what we'll say is a less than exciting product, and so I put this book on the ol' Christmas wish list to jump into my unexplored interest in both GNU/Linux and game programming. Having not looked at C++ since getting out of college *ahem* several years ago and being accustomed to strictly OO language lke Java, reading through the functional C examples can be a bit painful at times. I would have preferred to have seen an OOP C++ approach, but in the author's defense, that is mentioned as a "nice-to-have-done" item when he reviews the content of the book in retrospect.

I'm really only half-way through the book, but wanted type up a quick review of it so far, because now that I've hit the audio section, it has become obvious that the content is getting a little long in the tooth. The examples in said audio chapter (chapter 5, I think) will not compile as-is on current distributions (I'm on Ubuntu 11.04) without some non-trivial porting. I found an old newsgroup thread on this topic from 2004, but sadly the kind poster's link to his self-hosted corrected source was dead. After looking at the changelog for libsndfile I was able to attribute the problem to some changes to the library made back in 2001! I finally corrected that issue to find that OSS is all but obsolete these days and ALSA the predominant standard, although the book more or less paints ALSA as a bleeding edge library.

EDIT: The updates to the source code are indeed on the publisher's website. I overlooked them.

These issues aside, the book does a good job of touching on some basics of using common GNU tools like GCC and GDB, which is good exposure for the GNU development noob like myself. Chapter 4 is a good chapter that goes at a good pace exposing you to SDL with examples, but it sort of suddenly goes from "here's how to draw surfaces" to "here's a running game loop" when parallaxing graphics are shown, with explanation of the parallax scheme, but not the game loop in the example. Then it jumps into an entire lengthy chapter on audio. I'm certain structuring the game loop will be explored in more detail later, but it was just a little weird.

In short, if you're familiar with Linux and have some experience in C and don't mind having to do a little work with the examples, this is a great book. However, the fact that Loki Software is now defunct likely leading to the fact that the downloadable examples are out of date (2001 if the date in the tarball's file name is accurate) warrants a 2 star deduction for me. I still don't regret getting the book and look forward to completing it.

Quick note for curious OS X users: I was able to get all of the SDL video examples to compile and run using MacPorts to install the necessary libraries and making very minor tweaks to the source (adding argc, arv arguments to main as they should be and either removing "SDL/" from the path in the various example file's includes or placing an SDL symlink to ./ in the system's opt/local/include dir). I'm not sure why the port of sdl-config seems to report the -I cflags argument the same as it does in GNU/Linux despite the difference in the include path structure in the two. Once I got to the audio section, though, I went ahead and fired up Ubuntu. The audio system in OS X is quite different from what I understand, and the ALSA support port I looked at is very early in development.

If you would like to write games for Linux, but have no idea where to start, this is the book for you. This book is not going to teach you everything you need to know to work at Loki, but it will help you understand what the possibilities are.

This is a good book and well worth the read.

This book is an execellent introduction to Linux game programming. This book decribes everything you need to know to make a high quality 2D game in Linux with easy to understand tutorials. You should be warned that the book does not discuss 3D game programming and you might say that is its only weakness. However, even if you are interested in 3D game programming the material in this book will help to provide a firm foundation in sound, event handling, networking, game scripting, and other things that are important in game programming whether 2D or 3D.

This book doesn't go very deep into game nor linux system programming. it's SDL primer and some mix of other libraries. It is good for you as a introduction to linux multimedia. SDL today is little bit different. Fe: there's nothing about SDL_Net. SDL is multiplatform and the author could pay more attention on this, it's shame.