Game Programming Tricks of the Trade (Premier Press Game Development) [Paperback]

Lorenzo Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Series: Premier Press Game Development | Publication Date: September 9, 2002

"Game Programming Tricks of the Trade" is a compilation of techniques from today's leading game programmers. Beginners will get started with invaluable tips, while intermediate game programmers can use these tricks to take their skills to the next level. There are even articles for advanced programmers who are looking for new and amazing effects to incorporate in their games. This book covers many exciting topics including Artificial Intelligence and multiplayer game programming. Plus, the tricks taught are a combination of OpenGL and DirectX to provide something for everyone!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lorenzo Phillips started a game programming company, RenWare, LLC, a partner of Xtreme Game, LLC while continuing to play an active role in the game development community. RenWare was the vehicle that provided Phillips with an opportunity to join the Xtreme Games team and become involved in game development and publishing. This newfound position allowed him to meet and work with some of the best in the industry and with a wide variety of game publishing organizations.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1048 pages
• Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade; 1 edition (September 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931841691
• ISBN-13: 978-1931841696
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,099,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I agree and disagree, October 18, 2002

By 

alisa (Cali) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Game Programming Tricks of the Trade (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

While the book may not be all that useful to an experienced programmer, one must keep in mind that there are more hobbyist programmers than seasoned veterans. And while these tricks may not be anything new to seasoned game developers, it is important to also note that there are more beginner programmers than experienced ones and let's be honest, experienced programmers are not taking the time to write much material (if any at all) that is useful to a beginner. Finally, I found the comment interesting regarding the good reviews being written by people with a vested interest. While this could be true, the same could be stated that the bad reviews are written by people with vested interest in a competing book. Hhhmmmm...

Anyway, I think the statement is true that the book is aimed at the hobbyist/beginner as most books are anyway. Even though some of the material can be found on the Net, I think it is great that the authors of that free material are now receiving some compensation!!! And at least the authors were honest and tell us it is available in older form for free.

I like the book and have ran it passed 11 of my friends/co-workers and we all agree that it is a book full of the right amount of detail to get anyone going.

I must admit that I thought the text-based chapter was outdated myself, but then it was brought to my attention that it was a good idea because not all hobbyist and would-be game programmers can grasp the concepts of graphics (i.e. DX 3D). We have to keep in mind that there are would-be game developers in junior high or even younger. This book made sure that no matter your skill level that you can write a fully functional game and there are numerous locations online where text-based games are still played.

Basically, I would recommend this book to any aspiring game developer as it is filled with a nice variety of techniques that can be used in conjunction with other book on specific topics.

And remember that just as easy as good comments can be written by someone with a vested interest, the bad reviews can be written by someone with a vested interest in a competing book.

But I must say that I will be glad when there is a book that deals directly with advanced topics from start to finish :)

alisa

21 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Amateur, Hobbyist, and Internet Material, October 10, 2002

By 

Kent Anderson (Cypress, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Game Programming Tricks of the Trade (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

I wanted to like this book, but the truth is, more than 500 pages are useless for real game development.

A more accurate title for this book might be:
"Hobbyist Tricks of the Trade for Amateur Games"

For example:

pp 681-909 (229 pages) "Trick 20: Game Programming Assembly Style"
These 200+ pages are a case study of "SPACE-TRIS", a Tetris clone written *entirely* in Win32 assembly. It is now the year 2002 and no one is programming an entire game in Win32 assembly. That makes over 1/5 of this book useless, not to mention filled with pages and pages of printed assembly code. The first paragraph of the chapter even admits that the whole thing is an updated version of a series of articles that were posted on the INTERNET FOR FREE....

pp 329-452 (124 pages) "Trick 12: Simple Game Scripting"
This could have been an incredible chapter. Certainly enough pages were dedicated to it, but it turns out that the scripting language created is "based loosely on Intel's 80x86 assembly language" (that's a direct quote). The point of a scripting language is to create a higher level language - not a lower level language. This chapter walks you step-by-step though a completely irrelevant and useless example language. Thanks for nothing.

pp 169-216 (48 pages) "Trick 7: In the Midst of 3-D, There's Still Text"
You won't believe it, but this is a chapter on making a Text Adventure Game (like Zork), but with zero graphics. While this is interesting, it is strictly in the realm of amateur/hobbyist stuff. Your job interview at a real game company will go great when you mention that you wrote your very own text adventure - just a month ago. They'll try not to laugh.

pp 253-277 (25 pages) "Trick 9: 2-D Sprites"
This would have been a great introduction to sprites 15 years ago. However, more than 99% of the games on the PC, PS2, XBOX, and GameCube don't use sprites. In fact, 99% of the games on dead systems like PSX, N64, and Dreamcast don't use sprites either. This material is extremely outdated.

pp 279-306 (28 pages) "Trick 10: Moving Beyond OpenGL 1.1 for Windows"
More than 99% of game development is not being done in OpenGL on the PC. DirectX is the only practical choice for PC games at this point. That makes this chapter irrelevant.

pp 913-932 (20 pages) "Introduction to Dev Studio"
If you need this info, this book isn't your biggest problem. This is also a reprint from the book "Special Effects Game Programming with DirectX 8.0".

pp 933-984 (52 pages) "C/C++ Primer and STL"
If you don't know this, you shouldn't be buying this book. Buy a real book on C++. Even though 50 pages are wasted on this, the writer admits, "It's not really even going to scratch the surface." Then why is it in this book???

pp 141-167 (27 pages) "Trick 6: Tips from the Outdoorsman's Journal"
This is a chapter focused around heightfield rendering. This was state-of-the-art technology when the game Magic Carpet came out 8 years ago in 1994. Now you can find this kind of code for free all over amateur game development web sites. Again, very dated material.

pp 567-590 (24 pages) "Trick 16: Introduction to Fuzzy Logic"
This is an updated version of Andre LaMothe's Game Programming Gems paper. This is the only AI chapter in the entire book - and it has no source code demo. For being the only AI topic covered, it seems pretty useless when coupled with the other chapters. It's as if it was included just because it was handy from a previous book. Do you think?

pp 991-996 (6 pages) "ASCII Table"
This section is dedicated to printing the ASCII character set!! This is blatant fluff to get the page count up.

pp 985-986 (2 pages) "C++ Keywords"
Yes, this is a list of all C++ keywords. And it takes up 2 pages. Tricky.

The editors of this book were obviously trying their best to fill as many pages as possible to fool you into thinking you were getting a lot for your money. But the truth is, the book is mostly just bulk... blank pages, chapter titles that take up a full page, useless tables and lists, and, insanely, pages and pages and pages of assembly code.

Recap of the facts:
200+ pages are available on the Internet for free.
500+ pages are not applicable to real game development....

Why is this book full of amateur/useless game programming tricks? The answer is because 1/3 of the writers have never programmed games for a living and another 1/3 work at little unknown companies (bios are in the book). To give an example, one of the writers works at a company that makes software for the blind while another is a HIGH SCHOOL student. A great deal of these people are unaware of what is important for real game development. If they knew, they wouldn't have written most of these chapters.

Here is a quote from the back of the book: "Game Programming Tricks of the Trade is a compilation of techniques from today's leading game programmers." The irony is rather sad.

Bottom Line:
This book is not written by today's leading game programmers. This book is overflowing with amateur material found on Internet hobbyist websites. Whatever you decide, do not buy this book without examining it in person.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a compilation book with complete chapters, September 26, 2002

By 

"sfwebwraith" (Danville, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Game Programming Tricks of the Trade (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

I own every single graphics gems and game programming gems books, but 90% of the articles in the books are like 1-3 pages; how can anyone learn anything in 1-3 pages? Sure there are some long articles in the books, but they are hard to follow -- Game programing tricks has really long and complete articles and they actually do something. I was really interested in quadtrees, but everyone always talks about them, but no one every does them. I read tricks and now I finally know how it works -- also I am planning on putting the scripting chapter to good use. My advice is this, if you want a whirlwind tour of graphics and game programming then check out the gems series, but if you really want to learn something and put it to use and see ACTUAL WORKING CODE then get this book. I hope they make more!