Customer Reviews

Game Programming Tricks of the Trade (Premier Press Game Development)

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

 

 

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I must admit that I thought the text-based chapter was outdated myself, but then it was brought to my attention that it was a good idea because not all hobbyist and would-be game programmers can grasp the concepts of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

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.

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!

I've been doing game dev for a number of years now, and it's like a breath of fresh air to come upon a book like this. Clearly written, well organized, and a breeze to read through! My thanks goes out to each and every one of the authors who contributed to this invaluable tome. I'd give this thing six stars if I could. You will not regret buying this book!!!

I recently purchased this book and I must say I am quite perplexed at the stellar reviews. I did think the book had portions that were well written and flowed nicely, but with a few exceptions, most of the information it contained was not at all useful to a professional developer like myself.

Sure, a lot of pages are devoted to a topic, but the pages are either rambling and garbled, overly simplistic or contain completely outdated material that in no way resembles what is currently being used in commercial development studios. I am almost wondering it the overly gushing reviews are rigged by someone with a vested interest in the book. Notice the repeated use of the asterisks, double dashes and slamming of other books. I hope this is not the case. Perhaps there truly are people out there programming another revamp of tetris or a text based adventure game that need something like this book, but no one at my company.

I honestly don't think the book contained many "tricks" and would not purchase it again.

I give it 3 stars because I am just an amateur beginner and any book with information like this book really appeals.
On the other hand, I would like to congratulate those for exposing the negative aspects of the book. I hope the publishers take heed to whats been said and raise the standards higher for subsequent books. However, that does not mean that the price should be raised significantly. I certainly don't think this book is worth 69 bucks after all thats been said(maybe only half the price). I do not care if I am just an amateur, I would prefer value for money.

I thought the book was helpful for beginners. I mean lets face it, you can't turn someone who doesn't know anything about programming games into an expert. Beginners have to start small and with the basics, and I think this book is the first step towards that goal (developing games in the industry).

This simply has to be *the* best game programming book I've read to date. It's packed full of *useful* information, and will most likely keep me busy for awhile :) I'd recommend this to anyone seeking real knowledge about real programming problems and their solutions. Even if you already know most of the techniques discussed, this is a great book to have close by as a refference guide. Personally, it has become invaluable.

This book was pretty good. Basically I'd like to echo the other favorable reveiws for this title. A lot of good info for those learning game development.

Also, something another reviewer commented on. Another reviewer stated that 99% of games for the PC do not use OpenGL on the PC. This could not be more wrong. Just about every game released for the PC gives you an option to view the game using Direct3D or OpenGL. Every major, and most minor, games programmed out there are programmed in both OpenGL and Direct3D. So anything learned about OpenGL is definately relevant.

I have this book and I've found it a useful addition to my game dev shelf. However, I couldn't help noticing the problems some of the other reviewers had with the book. Now, I'm sure these other reviewers are of a high level intelligence, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they simply arrived at some misunderstandings due to a hasty evaluation of the book. For example, one reviewer expressed great distress at the inclusion of the "Introduction to dev studio" and "C++ primer" chapters. Actually, these sections of the book are not part of the main content; rather, they are included as appendices. As mentioned earlier, I'm sure the reviewer was in this case making a simple mistake, as he seems to be extremely knowledgeable about the game development process and the industry at large. He makes various complaints about unnecessary portions of the book (i.e. ASCII table) being included to bloat up the page count. Since I am sure this reviewer is of a high level of intelligence, I'm going to accredit this claim to a brief lapse in cognitive function, possibly one due to epileptic seizure. Similar complaints are made in regard to the inclusion of entire-page chapter headers, and the like. These, also, are probably related to epileptic seizures on the part of the reviewer, since I am sure he is of a high level of intelligence. While some of the complaints made by the reviewer on the uselessness of certain chapters are, in some remote way, slightly valid, his negative perception of the book as a whole is, in my ever humble opinion, hugely flawed.