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Title: Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX w/CD by Jim Adams ISBN: 1-931841-09-8 Publisher: Premier Press Pub. Date: 02 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $59.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.56 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good Book, not for beginners
Comment: This book is very helpful, but this book is not intended for the absolute beginner. You should know at least the basics of either C or C++. Other than that, it does a fairly good job of laying down what you need to know, and how to go about doing it.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not for advanced programmers!
Comment: I rate this book with 3 stars even though my own personal opinion of it is somewhat lower. As has been pointed out in previous reviews the books does cover a lot of ground and leaves you with a complete mini-game. That's why the book might be good for newbie programmers who are looking for an example of how to write a rpg. And that's what earns the book 3 stars in my review.
I just want to stress something that the other reviewers haven't mentioned - this book is *not* for experienced programmers who are working seriously on their own rpg already! It cannot be used as a reference on how to implement those things you haven't done yet because the book tries to cover so much that it only presents very specific solutions for all the topics. There is only *one* type of combat covered for example, and that's a FF7 style turn-based combat. If you're planning for something else this book will be useless for you on this subject. And the same can be said about all the other topics: item management, engine design, level management, automapping, AI etc. Each topic is quickly breezed over and then a specific solution is presented. Take it or leave it. In my case I didn't take any of them...
So in summary: Might be interesting for newbie rpg programmers who wants a guide through an example rpg. But any experienced programmer should leave this book alone!
Rating: 4
Summary: Good, I think
Comment: Okay, about a year ago I read through the whole book, but didn't spend anytime coding. I thought to myself wow this is an excellent book it teaches you DirectX and how to make rpgs.
Now forward to about 2 months ago, I started to actually code up some of this stuff. I began coding some DirectX graphics. Wow, this was a very painful experience. The first thing I noticed was that the book's code was slightly different from the source code on the cd. The problem I found with this is that the author tells you in the book to use this code, but when you check the actual source code it's different. However, I'm not blaming the author here since he tells you in the book that it is a whirlwind tour of directx. So if you plan on picking this book up to learn directx, expect a lot of pain. You will have to spend lots of time going through the directx documentation learning about materials and other graphics concepts. The book simply doesn't do a good enough job on it. This book also tries to teach you how to use meshes and how to animate them in about 20 pages. Let me tell you, you will not learn how to animate meshes in 20 pages. The author tells you that you should look in his source code that he's commented very well. I did and I'll tell you what I found. I found that all the code he wrote to wrap up the directx api was equal to the amount of code he wrote to make the meshes work. To make the meshes work is about 3000+ lines of code. Plowing through this is ridiculous (now there's a book about meshes he's written). I think the original intent of the author was to have you use his code and for you not to program your own, but my objection to this is that you have to understand the theory behind it before you can even use the code. I know that I didn't know enough theory from his book to make meshes work. I'm sorry this is a giant rant, but this is the lessons I want to pass this on to you:
-Have the hardcore nature to read through lots and lots of code.
-Learn DirectX before you use this book since it is the foundation for this book.
-Know data structures such as linked lists since the author uses them frequently.
-Know Object Oriented Programming since all he uses is classes.
-Have a lot of time since this book will take years to master.
-Have lot of money since you will have to buy other books to supplement this.
Something I feel that is really misleading about this book is the user level beginner/intermediate. This is not a beginner book! As a computer science major soon to be a senior in college I still can't get through this book since I don't know enough, and I'm an A-B student.
Well, one of these days hopefully in about a year or so I will finally get to the actual rpg programming aspect of this book.
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Title: Multiplayer Game Programming w/CD by Todd Barron, Andre Lamothe ISBN: 0761532986 Publisher: Premier Press Pub. Date: 14 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $59.99 |
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Title: Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus (2nd Edition) by Andre LaMothe ISBN: 0672323699 Publisher: SAMS Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $59.99 |
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Title: Special Effects Game Programming with DirectX w/CD by Mason McCuskey, Andre LaMothe ISBN: 1931841063 Publisher: Premier Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $59.99 |
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Title: Game Coding Complete by Mike McShaffry ISBN: 1932111751 Publisher: Paraglyph Publishing Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games by Neal Hallford, Jana Hallford ISBN: 0761532994 Publisher: Premier Press Pub. Date: 07 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
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