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Data Structures for Game Programmers (Premier Press Game Development) with CD-ROM 1st Edition

by Ron Penton (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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"Data Structures for Game Programmers" replaces endless pages of boring text with exciting gaming technology and eye-catching graphics. The complex subject of data structures is made easy to understand and fun to learn. Start with an explanation of how the most popular data structures and algorithms work. Then you're on your way as you create your own! From simple arrays and bit vectors to intense binary tree graphs and hash tables, this book covers it all. It even tackles the algorithms used for sorting, searching, compression, and recursion. Plus, you will actually see each concept put into practice through interactive graphical demonstrations included on the CD!
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  1. ISBN-10
    1931841942
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1931841948
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
  5. Publication date
    November 25, 2002
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.25 x 2 x 8.75 inches
  8. Print length
    976 pages
  9. See all details
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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
18 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars This book is great.
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
I had a copy of this book round about 2004 & lost it. I got this copy to refresh my memory, and it's just as great as I remember. The only drawback is that the code that came on the CD seems to be lost to time - I couldn't find it anywhere on the internetz and without it, the example programs aren't super functional. But, still great reference material.
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Robert Beveridge
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book like a cookie dough sundae.
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2005
Ron Penton, Data Structures for Game Programmers (Premier, 2003)

I don't normally get all googly-moogly over programming books. In fact, I just took a quick look back at my reading log since 1999, and a select few have gotten four stars, but nothing above that. But I picked up Penton's nine-hundred-page tome on Thursday and I finished it on Sunday. Nine hundred pages in four days. I've only been keeping track of page counts over the past year, but the books I've read that have come closest, page-wise, have been Robin Hobb's lovely novels, three of which I read earlier this year hovered around eight hundred pages. I read the shortest of them in eight days. And I love Robin Hobb.

Data Structures for Game Programmers is a wonderful book in no small part because Ron Penton was still an undergrad while writing it. Which is, of course, also the book's main problem, because someone like me who last saw ivy-covered halls well over a decade ago is likely to be sick with envy that some little greenhorn has already found his way into the world of professional computer-book publishing (and by "professional" here I don't mean "published by recognizable press," I mean "the kid's already published three books in three years, and they're ALL monstrous tomes, when does he have time to program?"). But let's face it, you expect something different when you read a book by a young writer, be it the hot new novelist or the new kid on the programming block. And Penton delivers it; Data Structures for Game Programmers is, if you're a programmer, the most readable computer book you've ever come across. Penton seems to have a healthy disrespect for textbooks, which he alludes to a few times in the course of the book, and it shows in his writing; he wants to write something that will teach you more than a textbook by being more accessible. And in this goal, he succeeds. Brilliantly. I learned more about C templates from reading this book than I have in any other three books devoted to nothing but templates, and here they're just referred to a few times in passing. How is this possible? Because Penton explains things in language far easier to understand than that of most programming books; simply put, he hasn't yet been so overwhelmed by jargon that he can't see when he's written something the layperson might not be able to understand, which is a common ailment among programming authors.

Also, there's been some minor grumbling from some critics about the book's insistence on reinventing the wheel. Of course it does. That's how you learn to program-- you bang away at it, doing something that's already been done, until you figure out why it's done that way. There may be five or six people on the planet who can read it in a textbook and immediately figure out why it's the case (and, one assumes, they are the same people as those critics), but the rest of us are much happier seeing it this way.

If any computer book publishers happen to be reading this, you, especially, should be reading Data Structures for Game Programmers. See what it's like. Try to get the rest of your authors to emulate it. You'll have much happier customers that way.

This is one of the handful of books I've read since getting a library card again (a total, in fact, of four since 2003) that, after returning it to the library, went back on my Amazon wish list, because I want a copy for myself.
11 people found this helpful
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Anon
4.0 out of 5 stars It's a good intro to data structures
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2016
Verified Purchase
It's a good intro to data structures, but doesn't go as deep into each type as I would have preferred.
2 people found this helpful
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Gregory Baird
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2003
Let me be frank; I HATE DATA STRUCTURES. They are BORING. I'm a sophomore in a Computer Science program, and I've just finished taking a data structures course, and I barely passed it. All college Data Structure books are written for people who like to read extremely boring mathematical proofs, and I can't read that stuff. So, a friend of mine told me to get this book, so I got it on sale, and boy, I am glad.
I've bought Prima/Premier books before, and they are usually good, but also disappointing because the first 40% of the book is always an introduction on things like "a complete tutorial on direct3d" or something. Well this book is different: it gets RIGHT TO THE POINT, IMMEDIATELY. The first two chapters are ALL of the intro material (algorithm analysis and templates), then Chapter 3 jumps right into the data structures!
Okay, so arrays may seem to be a bit simplistic, so I skipped that chapter at first. The later chapters in the book are more interesting, but then I noticed in a later chapter, a reference to a complex issue in the array chapter (processor caching). So I went back and and re-read that chapter, and WHOA! He literally shows you EVERYTHING there is to know about arrays, even complex stuff like caching that a normal data structures book would never even touch!
This book is amazing; and covers TONS of topics. There's no TOC listed at this site yet, so here's a list of what it's got: Arrays, 2D Arrays, 3D Arrays, Bitvectors, Linked Lists, Hash Tables, Stacks, Queues, Recursion, Trees, Binary Trees, Heaps, Minimax trees, Graphs, AI Machines, Data Sorts, Compression Algorithms, Pathfinding (BEST CHAPTER!), and he even goes over the creation of a simple 2D game and complete map editor for it.
Every chapter is packed full of diagrams and figures, notes, and demo's. For every major concept, there is a "Graphical Demonstration" on the CD, that shows you how it works! And, for every chapter, there's also one or more "Game Demonstration"s. These show you how to integrate the data structurs into a game! The CD is so awesome that it could practically sell on its own!
The bottom line is: this book takes the boring and difficult subject of data structures, and turns them into something anyone can understand, in a fun and exciting way. 5 stars!
25 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Albert
5.0 out of 5 stars More than just one book
Reviewed in Spain on August 26, 2014
Verified Purchase
The author did a great work. There are a lot of programming books that explain many things but this book has the additional value of showing everything in game demonstrations that perfectly works.
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SoulFireMage
5.0 out of 5 stars they do a fantastic job of explaining stuff a programmer should know in ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2014
Verified Purchase
I don't program in c++ yet I bought this after reading a few chapters of an electronic version: they do a fantastic job of explaining stuff a programmer should know in the first years of coding. The highlight for me is the distinction I now have between generics and templates, whereas I'd no idea of the latter before at all.

if your doing computer science and need some straight up solid fundamentals with practicality, this book will do it. If you've an ambition to use c++ in general for game coding or other work requiring more than stitching together very high level libraries then you want this.

The level is aimed at turning a relative novice into a solid intermediate coder, in terms of understanding and application. The concepts travel well, allowing for language and compiler differences.

More importantly, it's NOT a boring book, hence why a non c coder is likely to enjoy referring to it to gain conceptual understanding with a practical bent. Nice job.
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Richard A
5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and multi-platform
Reviewed in Germany on February 20, 2003
Verified Purchase
This book is very broad ranging and of excellent quality. The potentially dry and tedious world of data structures is given new life by always relating it back to game development.
The examples use SDL for the graphical representations and has multi-platform libraries on the CD. This means that non-windows developers can also benefit fully from the examples and the code without extensive editing (and you don't lose the first 1/4 of the book to windows specific tutorials on Direct X etc).
Kudos to the author for making the choice to use SDL. Read the terms of the LGPL license on SDL people, and remember, have fun - this book will certainly give you a great start in the extremely important field of data structures and algorithms.
Highly recommended.
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