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Classic book recommended for Dos programming

Tea

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 5 de noviembre de 2023

If you are doing Freedos game dev or want to make your own Doom clone this is the one to get.

A una persona le resultó útil

A Nutshell Description of Game Programming

Orange Peel

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 28 de marzo de 1998

This book covers the general topics game programmers need to know to write games. It is a beginners book but I still find myself re-reading this book through development to pick up tricks I may have missed. Well worth the money. If you are an accomplished game programmer, this book is probably below you. Overall I really loved the book.

William McColl

Four Stars

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 7 de abril de 2015

great book

A una persona le resultó útil

It's a good introduction.

Chris Bianchi

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 29 de agosto de 2001

Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus is a good introduction to creating 2D games for the PC. The techniques used describe the standard DOS libraries for the C programming language. The demonstrations are very thorough, and the descriptions are well written and easy to understand. New concepts, such as fast-drawn pixels, lines, sprite animation, and sound, are learned with ease. This book isn't a walk in the park for the novice, however. Although the descriptions are thorough, the authors expect the reader to have some understanding of 'C' and general programming concepts. The chapter on artificial intelligence contains more theory than demonstration. For someone designing a standard, DOS 2D game engine, I would recommend another Andre LaMothe book--Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days. If you're more interested in what the concepts mean and how to perform tasks, this book is great. Where "Teach Yourself..." is more of an instruction manual, this book is more of an encyclopedia.

A una persona le resultó útil

Where once I was blind, now I can see!

Chris Miller

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 9 de mayo de 2000

After reading this book cover to cover, I felt confident that I could both grasp and program the essentials of what went into a game from the DOS-era. Though familar with C, it took two months to read the volumous book, but it really is a delight to read. The code is commented superbly (after a while, you almost don't even have to read the code to understand it) and I would recommend running the conveniently provided demo *.exe files for each example to get a better idea of how it works after reading each one.
The first few chapters on I/O and 2D and the later chapters on AI and interrupt handling provide more than enough to begin programming your own games using C in DOS (DJGPP compiler is great for this - the web of course provides the rest).
The chapters on 3d ray-castering, etc, provide a good understanding for how Wolf-3D might have worked, but falls slightly short of Doom. This is not such a bad thing if you are new (as I was) to games programming. Less forgiving though, was the disappointment to find that after reading the whole book, the final chapter does not deliver on coding a 3D game with monsters, etc. I can understand that after the effort of all the previous chapters with their carefully-coded examples, the author may have been keen to finish the book, but it was like a finishing a game without a "Hey you just won now watch this ultra-cool sequence" ending.
That aside though, this is an exceptional book for beginners to game programming. After reading it, you will be able to look at any game and start to see the cogs ticking behind the scenes. If nothing else, it will give you an appreciation of the programming effort put into games. For those seeking instant gratification with Windows/directX games, this book can be skipped. But for those with an interest in learning games programming, I couldn't think of a better place to start.

A 10 personas les resultó útil

Great 2D, not-so-great 3D

Blessed

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 8 de junio de 1998

This book is a great introduction to 2D programming and the basics of the video card (but only in mode 13h, 320X200). It covered numerous 2D topics such as scaling, rotating, translating, scrolling techniques, etc. But, I thought this book would go further into 3D game programming since that is more present in current games. He talkes about 3D programming in the 6th chapter and then never gets back to it. I didn't learn how to make a ray casting engine from this single chapter. It showed some mathematical functions explained some theorys, showed me the source code for a real, functioning ray caster and then got right back into 2D special effects! I didn't learn any 3D game programming techniques from this book and it left me searching for another book that focuses on 3D.
If you are a beginner and know nothing about 2D or 3D graphics, buy this book. But, if you know all you want to know about 2D graphics, go looking for another book that explains 3D graphics in depth like one of the OpenGL or Direct3D books.

A 3 personas les resultó útil

An excellent book but out of date.

Graham Stanton

Calificado en Estados Unidos el 25 de agosto de 1998

Andre LaMothe does an excellent job at making complex concepts easy. In just first third of the book, he has taken the reader from a basic C programmer to someone skilled enough to make their own VGA DOS game. But that's the main problem with this book; if you had it in 1990, you could have become King of the game-programming world, but in 1998 you can't use many of the skills to do much more than write a fun game to impress your friends. Most professional games are now written for Windows 95, and absolutely none of them use a Wolfenstein-style ray-casting engine like the one to which half the book is dedicated. If you just want to have fun and make a computer game, it's perfect, but if you want to make money or further your career, you should find a more up-to-date Direct X book.

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Opiniones más destacadas de otros países

Sam Christian

Bargain. Unfortunately the included CD-ROM was missing

Calificado en Alemania el 11 de octubre de 2021

Bargain. Unfortunately the included CD-ROM was missing

J

Not a great experience

Calificado en Canadá el 30 de abril de 2020

Came very late. Is in quite rough condition. Missing CD

Jaroslav Holub

Five Stars

Calificado en el Reino Unido el 3 de marzo de 2017

excelent book about graphics in dos era