 |
 |
.NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 (VB .NET Edition)
by Alexandre Santos Lobao, Ellen Hatton
List Price: $49.99
Our Price: $34.99
ISBN: 1590590511
Publisher: APress (08 April, 2003)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 142,088
Average Customer Rating: 2.17 out of 5
|
Buy now directly from Amazon.com
|
|
 | |  |
|
| | Customers Reviews: | | |
| |
Rating: 1 out of 5
This book fails to teach VB or Game Programming!
I had been waiting for this book to come out for months. After multiple delays, it finally arrived. And, I am very disappointed. Clearly a lot has been removed from the book since its initial concept.The "Game Programming" aspect of the book is just one Chapter. There are references to a mysterious Chapter 6 throughout the book, but Chapter 6 does not exist. My guess is that it was removed before publication. This book is not even good if you are new to programming. There are several places that assume you have an understanding of C/C++. Novice programmers will be quite frustrated by this. I originally bought this book as a gift for my young nephew who has not programmed in any language, hoping it was going to teach VB in the context of game programs. Unfortunately it fails to cover VB from a novice perspective, and there is only one chapter on games. Hardly worth putting Game Programming in the title. My recommendation is to find another book. Unfortunately this one does not live up to its promises.
Rating: 1 out of 5
The farther I read, the more disappointed I became
I can forgive the horrible editing, I suppose: sadly, I've gotten used to it, as it seems endemic to the computer book industry (and there are no errata on the publisher's web site). I could forgive the horrible misunderstanding of inheritance concepts in object-oriented programming (a sprite derives from a game field???). Mostly I could forgive these because the authors have a nice, clear style, and seem to understand fundamental game development principles that I am still learning, like collision detection. But when I was able to greatly enhance the performance of the example in chapter 3 because I already understood culling even though the authors don't, I became annoyed. And I just gave up when the example from chapter 4 ran at an unplayable speed: I just couldn't navigate the river in this game, the performance was so bad, and that was without moving enemies or the ability to shoot. Additionally, this example crashed both computers I tried it on twice. I won't even try to resell this as a used book: I'd be doing the buyer a disservice.
Rating: 2 out of 5
All over the place - Follows No logical pattern - A Mess
All I can say is that I picked this book up hoping it could guide me through some simple game programming. I ended up more confused by How to use the book than I ever would by the code. As someone who likes to step through working samples, it seems virtually impossible to do so using this book. I have had it for over a month and am still trying to decipher the first chapter!Here's an idea of what I am talking about. You begin by programming a tetris clone. You start by coding the little objects (puzzle pieces) that will fall from the top, you get to a certain point and the author says to run the program to look at the object - only one problem - there is no "playing field" for the object to be displayed! You have to flip ahead several pages to find out how to program the playing field. The playing field probably should have come well BEFORE you'd ever program the object that is going to be placed onto it. At the very least it should come before you are asked to run the program. Once you find the playing field code in the book, there is a missing reference to another class that hasn't even been written yet, so your search begins again. etc, etc. I have so many examples of this type of frustration. Just when you finish your "code hunt" for a missing function, there is another one that rears it's ugly head. I am giving it 2 stars because they explain some gaming concepts I wasn't familiar with like Collision detection and Proximity Algorithms. But other than that it has been a headache.
| | |
 | |  |
|
|
| Please note: |
Checkout and payment processing is done safely and securely through Amazon.com. |
| Prices (as shown) are subject to change without notice and cannot be guaranteed. |
|
| |
View My Shopping Cart
Email this page to a friend
Correction/Comment/Suggestion Regarding This Page?