Customer Reviews

Game Scripting Mastery (Premier Press Game Development)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I own most of the books in the Permier Press Game Development Series and I have read through most of them, but what I really appreciated about this book was the authors focus on the subject. As much as I enjoy brushing up on windows programming and re-learning a little bit of C/C++, the author wasted no time and got right to the focus of the book; game scripting.

This is good will be a good start that give a beginner in the area of building VM, Assembler and Compiler and how things fit together . I would not suggest anyone to stop in this books as it is still rather incomplete .

The major flaws in this book is that the compiler, Assembler and VM examples included in this book all have serious bug which would confuse alot of newbies .

For example The assembler would not complain if it cannot find a variable and just skip the variable and would not push it to the stack. However, it still generates a pop instruction for the variable causing corruption in the stack.

The next serious bug would be in the VM's relative Index access code. It corrupts the stack if you have arrays in your code .

I would really appreciate if the author would have tested the code more thoroughly before releasing it in the book especially when the book is taegeted for newbies.

i had this book on preorder and it came the other day. all i can say is wow! so far. it is a big book (1200 pages!) which does mean it is a little overboard in some parts but thats ok beacuse it just means u will learn it better. the paper is thinner tho so its not like the book weighs 9000 pounds or something! this book covers EVERYTHING just look thru the table of contents and see all of the topics. here is what u will learn:

- how to make your own language and compiler!
- how to make a virtual machine
- how to put your virtual machine in a game to run it with scripts

plus theres more im pretty far into it now and have been learning a lot so i definately suggest u buy one if u think you need scripting. not everyone needs to script there games, but if u do its worth the buy.

This book was a nice read, following a coherent structure and didatic approach to present game scripting. The author does not only cover current scripting languages but also demonstrates the implementation of an actual virtual machine, so the reader can decide what is best for him while testing all approaches. The first part gives the insight needed for game scripting, why we need it, how it can be done in simple ways and why we need more advanced approaches. Next he discusses current languages, such as Lua (my favourite in this book), and their advantages and drawbacks. Finally the book starts detailing the implementation of an actual virtual machine, which is a very good compiler theory practice. In this sense, these chapters will make much more sense if you are is shape with Aho's Red Dragon book or Tremblay's green book. The book has its shortcomings as well, but overall it's a very well written text with good information on how to actually use scripting on games.

I must say I'm not very programming-savvy, but I'm only through the first 1/3 of the book and am very impressed-- the scripting content is so thorough and packed... the author really knows this stuff! There's so much ground covered here I think this is the ultimate game scripting bible and a must have, esp for the beginner. Excellent job!

I like this book a lot because it presents how to create a scripting language in a useful way. If you want to learn how to create your own scripting language, this books is very good, because it explain with good detail the basics, then you continue with a clear example how to build one, in a step by step way. I highly recommend this book to people that want to create scripting for video games, but also for people that wants to learn how to create a computer language and want to be guided on the process.

My copy just arrived the other day, and holy crap! After the obligitory introduction
it goes on to explain the various types of scripting systems including Command Based Scripting and
high level languages. It even explains how to implement your own language, compiler, and virtual machine! You even get to
learn how to script with Lua, Python and Tcl! And the best part: How to integrate all of that into a complete game.
Although most of the book is quite accessible for beginners, towards the end it gets a bit too advanced... even still, it's a good learning tool.

I have been wanting to write a scripting engine for my game for a long time now, but could never find good info on how it is done. Now, I have this book and it explains it so clearly! Granted, the book is a little huge (well, very huge!), but it is worth it. I hate books that are too small to talk about anything, but this book packs in a lot of information. Good and funny writing style, and very helpful. my only complaint is that it's a little long in some parts, but i'll take too long over too short any day! definately a good one.

I received my purchase in almost perfect condition. The CD that came with the book had a scratch on it that ALMOST made it unusable, but I managed to get everything I needed off of it (Direct X was the only thing that wouldn't install properly, which you can get elsewhere, so I got lucky. It could have been worse, though...)

The title of this book may be game scripting, but if you are expecting code on how to code AI for monster sprites that interface with a 2D game engine, well you will be surprised that this book teaches you how to build a complete scripting language compiler from the ground up, including the virtual machine it runs on. This is the only book that targets beginning programmers on this subject on the market. This book is missing out on a lot of potential sales by being misnamed. All the other reviewers who crit this book for lacking compiler theory can go jump in a lake, there are plenty of other books on this subject that will barrage you with all the matematical theory behind the actaul coding.