Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days/Book and Cd-Rom (Sams Teach Yourself)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Reading the reviews, they look mixed. The book is outdated by most standards, but gives the foundations for game design. Don't expect the book to teach you C, C++, assembly, or how to work your compiler, that's not what the book is about. But, don't expect a good book on C to tell you how to do anything more than text input and output. That is where this book comes in, it takes the basics of C, and gives the knowledge needed to move to graphical game programming. The author is very enjoyable to read, and if you find the tone too playful, maybe you shouldn't be wanting to develop games anyway. Anyway, as far as the criticisms of the book being outdated, how would one expect to be able to develop a professional level game if one can't first make a space invaders type game in a most basic video mode. If one wants 3-D games, I have 3 books just on OpenGL alone, and they don't teach any game programming concepts. But, I've had this book for years, and am here mostly looking for newer game programming books by this author. Also, I was kind of curious about seeing the results of the contest mentioned in the book. Final point, this book with a book on C programming is a great intro to game programming, but I would look to newer titles by this author first. Either way, there is still a great deal you can learn from this book. No matter what book you get, though, know the language you are using, know your compiler, and don't expect EVERYTHING from one book!

I bought this book a while ago, but I still find it to be a very good book. Because this book covers a lof of gameprogramming topics such as: gfx, sound, ai, input, and even more. And there are also some advance topics such as multitasking, making your own ISR's, and that's very good to know. This book is great :)

I would also like to recommend: "Black Art of 3D gameprogramming", and "Tricks of the gameprogramming gurus"

I enjoyed LaMothe's earlier "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus," so I thought this might be a simpler book on the subject, since Gurus was a very comprehensive, complicated book on many different aspects of game programming. I was right at one point: this book is simpler, much simpler...too much. The source code was not very useful, because Borland ruled the compiler market at the time, and that's the compiler that I used. LaMothe's code was all Microsoft, but I suppose that was a lack on my own part.

This book was the precursor to LaMothe's popular "Black Art 3D" book, because the code presented was almost the same! It became clear to me what was going on later when I discovered that Macmillan acquired both SAMS and Waite Group Press, the publishers of both LaMothe titles! So what we have here is an enhanced reproduction of the same basic material by LaMothe, presumably by a different publisher, when all along these books were being published by parent company Macmillan. However, the books do stand well on their own. It is simply funny that the source code was so similar. It's pretty clear that LaMothe was a money-making author, and Macmillan wanted to maximize the profit off of LaMothe. In retrospect, I would have simply bought "Black Art 3D" and not bothered with LaMothe's two earlier titles.

This is basically a very good book. Ignore the people who say the code doesn't work, it's not 32-bit, etc. They need to realize this is about games programming and the book is a little old. You need a DOS C compile (Visual C++ 1.52 works great), not Windows!!! As far as setting all the modes, etc, the author notes that to do complete justice to all aspects of game programming he would need to write a book such as 'Advanced Game Programming in 210 days'. Don't think one Programming book will ever give you everything. If you think that, you are sadly mistaking, but this book gives a good, solid foundation of basics of DOS games programming, out of which I made a semi-decent DOS Space Invaders game with keyboard and Joystick control of my own. If a Space Invaders game isn't enough for you, you will have to do more research of your own, and probably buy more books.

I was very pleased with this book. I also own his Tricks book, but I liked this one better. He shows you how to use double buffering, rectangles, all forms of input, sound, scrolling, multiple pages, sprites, clipping, how to write text adventures, and much, much more. I've owned other game writing books and this is the only one worth my time. I am NOT a fan of the "21 days books" mostly because you are not going to master anything in 21 days, but this book is very much different. He uses C code which is good for those of us who don't use C++. The only downside is he wrote it for Microsoft C++, and I hate Microsoft, but if you know the differences (mostly just some slight function name changes), you can make it work. His examples are clear, the source code is on the CD, and he gives plenty of comments and details. I've only read through part of his book and I love it. I don't regret the price at all. I was quite happy that Andre' also replied to my email. I've written to other authors and none of them bother with replying back to me, so the fact he actually would reply to me shows an author who values the feelings of his readers. The only thing you will need to understand this book is a foundation for C, but there are plenty of beginning C books out there. Otherwise, if you need a "from the ground up" book with plenty of examples on how to write virtually any video game, this is a great book. The biggest drawback is that it is for 2-D games, but he has two other books out for 3-D games. I am very happy with this book

I bought this book in 1997, and read through it, even though I didn't have a working C compiler at the time. Even so, I read through it, and started to see what this book tried to teach. I didn't know a single function in C. About 2 years later, I got a compiler, and also know more about my computer in general. This book not only teaches you a lot about game programming, but also memory allocation, and it serves as a good intro to assembly language. If you are new in the game programming area, then this is a very good beginning book.

Read it. It's worth it.

i have had this book for a while and finally found a compiler that would compile all the sample code on the cd without errors.I found the compiler for $40.00 it's visual c++1.52 and came with another book i bought called "visual c++ now" by microsoft press.Just select ms-dos exectuable in project type and add the c code and lamothe's graphics library and your good to go. You'll get a lot more out of the book if you compile the programs in the book yourself and make modifications to the code etc. and this book covers a lot of the basics he leaves out of his newer windows game programming book.

A very well written, excellent examples. This book covers from 256 VGA programming, to polygon engines, interrupts, multitasking, sound, AI and much more! Be warned though, this book requires knowlege of C. If you wish to learn C I recommend "Teach yourself C in 21 days" As well as "Teach yourself advanced C in 21 days". If you read only the first book, then you wont know basics of interrupts and have a chance of understanding them les as they are explained by Andre. The CD-ROM contains many DOS shareware games including doom etc.. The downside however is that there is no compiler included and the source code is hard to compile with any other compilers than the old Microsoft Turbo C++. Another issue is that it is getting pretty old now with it's DOS 256 color 320x200 VGA programming.. However, if you are a beginner it is for you, because it covers a lot of material to get you started programming beyound dos console mode.

I emailed someone--didn't receive the CD with it like I'm supposed to. Who can help out with that. I purchased it for a gift so I haven't really done much with it.

This is the book that inspired me to be a game programmer years back. I love this book. Its for dos, however dos is still fun. :)

It may not have much use today, its still fun to read, because people who know dos programming, rox0r those who don't :P