Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD (The Premier Press Game Development Series) [Paperback]

Jim Adams (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Premier Press Game Development Series | Publication Date: January 2, 2002

How many times have you spent countless hours completely absorbed in conquering the latest role-playing game? Want to experience the thrill of creating your own captivating role-playing game? This book is your guide to doing just that. Covering everything that you need to create a role-playing game--working with graphics and combat engines, handling players, and making your game multiplayer-capable--this book provides a detailed look at the essential components of role-playing games. It begins with helpful information on story line development and design issues specific to role-playing games and then progresses to programming basics and RPG-specific gaming code. Finally, wrap up your project with valuable tips for promoting, marketing, and publishing your game.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim Adams has been programming since age nine. For the past 22 years, he has worked various jobs in the business and entertainment industry. He stays active in the game programming community by writing technical articles and moderating a message forum on www.gamedev.net. He has contributed to several books on game development and maintains a core library of DirectX functions to assist in game development. Jim is the author of the book "Programming Role Playing Game with DirectX" (Premier Press, 1931841098) and "Advanced Animation with DirectX" (Premier Press, 1592000371).

Product Details

• Paperback: 974 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (January 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931841098
• ISBN-13: 978-1931841092
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #28 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > DirectX

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for all game programmers., March 25, 2002

By 

Mark A. Drake - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD (The Premier Press Game Development Series) (Paperback)

This is a great book for anybody thinking about programming RPGs... And even if your not going to I would at least try to take a peak at the book and think about buying it.

First off the book assumes that the reader has a through knowledge of C programming and that you have some experience with coding. And has, like the rest of the series, quite a few pages devoted to C++... (The best thing with this book is you actually make a rpg game following the book and it's practices!)

The first part of the book covers what is role-playing, desiging role-playing games and some basic story-telling. The Jim covers basic programming with C++ as well as some engine architecture that is different from most other books - ex. Tricks from the Windows Game Programming Gurus. It introduces concepts like state managers, process managers and data packages - some great stuff for programming big games. The third part covers basic DirectGraphics concepts ("a whirlwind tour", according to the author). The code does the job really well and the concepts are well-explained.

After that the book covers information about DirectInput and DirectSound, the chapter on DirectInput includes information on programming joysticks, and other information in the book includes: wrappers for Direct3D, DirectSound and DirectInput, and followed by that, octrees and quadtrees, 2d tile engines, mixed 2d/3d engine, collison detection and so on.

The only problem I see is some of the real super newbies will see the book go at a fast rate... It has great explainations but he does move fast. And the author likes to leave out the obvious - so you have to pay attention in the beggining or you'll be turning pages back into the book to see whats up.

Basicaly, pick up this book if you are starting DirectX, pick up the book if you plan on crreating RPG games. The book is great, you'll have a working RPG game after going through the book, you will learn alot about DirectX and storytelling at that! 5 Stars.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book, December 22, 2002

By 

[e-mail] (Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD (The Premier Press Game Development Series) (Paperback)

I don't have many books about programming, but this one is awesome. You've got whirlwind tour to all aspect of directx before learning about rpgs. This book is a good one to start learning directx. Buy it!

Here is the TOC:
Chapter 1 - A World of Role-Playing
Chapter 2 - Exploring RPG Design Elements
Chapter 3 - Story-Writing Essentials
Chapter 4 - Starting with C++
Chapter 5 - Programming with Windows and Application Basics
Chapter 6 - Drawing with DirectX Graphics
Chapter 7 - Interacting with DirectInput
Chapter 8 - Playing Sound with DirectX Audio
Chapter 9 - Networking with DirectPlay
Chapter 10 - Creating the Game Core
Chapter 11 - Using 2-D Graphics
Chapter 12 - Creating 3-D Graphics Engines
Chapter 13 - Mixing 2-D and 3-D Graphics Engines
Chapter 14 - Implementing Scripts
Chapter 15 - Defining and Using Objects
Chapter 16 - Controlling Players and Characters
Chapter 17 - Working with Maps and Levels
Chapter 18 - Creating Combat Sequences

Chapter 19 - Getting Online with Multiplayer Gaming
Chapter 20 - Putting Together a Full Game
Chapter 21 - Marketing and Publishing your Game

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I've found on this topic by far, July 28, 2004

By 

John - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD (The Premier Press Game Development Series) (Paperback)

I had a specific objective in mind when I bought this book. I'm in the process of writing a hobby level multi-user RPG for me and maybe up to a hundred or so other players (not many hundreds or thousands). I have a solid background in C++, less so in DirectX.

I've bought many books on game programing to help me with this process and to my surprise I've found this one simply amazing while most of the others I've found to be little more than expensive doorstops. :)

Like all the books of this nature, I read it in very much a "pick and choose" manner, focussing on chapters I liked and extracted code from the CD for places where it helped me. I found the material covered and, more importantly, the code representation of that material to be extremely helpful in my coding process.

I believe the tips and code the book provides (which all compile and provide very reasonable and practical applications for the ideas demonstrated) saved me (literally) hundreds of hours of research (not to mention trial and error) finding methods that work and work well and covered all of the core componenets I would want in a role-playing game. It covered multi-player over the internet, 2d and 3d rendering in directX, how to construct combat, spells, chat, and inventory systems and a variety of other items.

Naturally, I had to do a lot of customization to make the game do what I wanted it to do and I had to merge several of the ideas discussed into my own framework (for example the multi player network section is covered more or less stand alone where clearly other parts of the book need to be integrated with it to form a real game), but the result is I have a basic game up and running in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, which no other book has ever really brought me.