Rating: 
Summary: Great book, despite some of these reviews!
Review: It amazes me that people post reviews stating, "Don't buy this book," or "3 stars (but should be less in my opinion)," among many others, because the book doesn't have the quote un-quote "advanced" information they were looking for. According to one reviewer this "advanced" information he was looking for was "a non-Final Fantasy type combat system." This book TEACHES you the IDEAS behind how game programming works, with an emphasis and examples on ROLE PLAYING GAMES. What's the most popular type of role playing game? Final Fantasy type. If you are an "advanced" game programmer and this book didn't help you, then you should be able to use your own knowledge and program your OWN combat system. It seems like you were looking for a book that offered the solution (combat system) that you wanted to cut and paste into your "advanced and superior code." For those that want a book to help their imagination grow and problem solving nodes start firing away after seeing some real-life examples, this book is for you. If you want to buy a book that contains code you are just going to cut and paste into your own source, then you're right, this book is not "advanced" enough.
Rating:
Summary: Fan-freakin-tastic book! Great price to knowledge ratio!
Review: It might be early to write my review. I am only 250 pages into the book (1/4). I already feel I have gotten my money's worth, so now is as good of time as any to comment.If your trying to choose either an opengl or directx book, I strongly suggest that you buy this book and learn directx. I have been using opengl for a short while, mainly because it seemed easyer to use (even though I would have rather learned directx). That's not the case with this book. The author explains the material in a way that makes directx easyer to understand. Even some opengl issues that were unclear to me have been cleared up with this book. Overall, the author does an incredible job of explaining the material. I am 250 pages through the book and understand every bit of code. I don't think I've ever been happier with a programming book. I can't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, good buy for intelligent game programmers.
Review: OK, first off, I have not been fond of Lamothe, or the PrimaTech series in the past. Everyone knows by now that you can get most of the information in the older ones straight out of the DX docs. I almost totally built my first 3d engine in this way, straight from reading through the DX docs and looking at the samples. Now, that is where I find this book shines. I had a few things that I needed some extra help on that are not well documented elsewhere, and I found it here. Advanced topics such as collision detection, skinned meshes, and more are all here. I will admit, I will probably never read the entire book. It covers the standard n00b stuff that no one wants anymore. What it DOES provide is a valuable reference book and samples to look at when I run into a problem. It covers pretty much all aspects of game programming, and they can be applied easily towards other types of games. (I am actually using certain things from it for my FPS). So here's the lowdown: Great book, some useless stuff, but there actually is USEFUL stuff. I'd buy it if I were you. Advanced topics are there, and the author does a good job with them. The other books you should look into are Multiplayer Game Programming (by Todd Barron), which is not bad, but could be more advanced, and I hear Isometric Game Programming (by Ernest Pazera) is good, and what I have seen seems good. All I can say is, of all of the game programming books i've seen, this one is #1! All of the samples are excellent, and work. The final game, The Tower, is impressive for a game created for a book, although i'm sure expert programmers could improve it quite a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, I think
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good, I think
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Finally a good one from Prima
Review: Prima Press has the merit of being the first company to heavily invest only in publications of game-programming books.. I find that game-programming is one of the most fascinating and well, fun
area of programming and CS in general.. so any effort in this direction is welcome to me.. but I have seen too many titles from this publisher who were too superficial to do any good, or just plain rubbish. This title stands out for the professionality and competence of the author and for the level of detail and completeness of presentation. If you are a programmer with decent C/C++ skills, a curiosity about how games like Diablo work, and a LOT of patience and enthusiasm for game programming by all means get this book. It won't enable you to write the next episode of Diablo or Dungeon Siege but still if you work your way through it studying carefully the text and especially the code presented, in the end you will know enough to create a small
2D/3D adventure game on the diablo style. Beware this book is thick and dense, and will take time to absorb but you cannot help it if you want to learn something interesting and enjoyable about game programming.
The second edition is coming out, probably updated to the latest
release of DirectX, so watch out for it!
Rating:
Summary: Best I've read so far
Review: The book delivers as promised. By the end of the book, you have a full working RPG mini-game that should help any developer get past the beginning stages. This book doesn't do everything for you. It puts you on the map. If a reader takes the time to understand the given code and READ the book, there will be gains to be had. The author does go into some basic ideas at the front of the book, but I don't feel the technical material covered is enough to completely educate a pure novice and is too simple for an intermediate programmer. Although ineffective, I don't subtract from my review ratings for additional information. I felt the author's technique was pretty well thought in this regard however. Someone reading the book finds the foothold where they first understand everything easily. This allows the author and reader to find the common stride needed for the reader to move forward. There is some issues with the book code that had to be solved, but the author has a website with all the changes. The big problem is more Microsoft's fault rather than the author's. The book was released with DirectX 8.0 and the MS team decided to change a few things with DirectX 8.1. Not to worry, the author has updated his entire book code with an easily downloadable patch. In Summary,
Best book I've read so far. From Graphics, Sound, Networking, Input and much more, this monster of a book will make you a better game programmer if the time is spent with it. (Beginner to Intermediate C++ knowledge required. A small trip through the DirectX SDK tutorials a plus.)
Rating: 
Summary: Buyer Beware
Review: This book is alright, i bought this book some time ago, but one thing is this. ITS NOT FOR NOOB. you need to know a good amount of C or C++. if not then this is not for you. now that i go back to it, its not so bad BUT!!! code is sloppy and not really that great, i suggest buying something else if you are a noob.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This book is excellent to start learning graphics and directx and a nice transition into creating your own game. Very nice intro to C++. I am looking forward to the new book by Jim Adams.
Rating:
Summary: The best out there so far.
Review: This book is simply amazing considering what its competition is. Get this: all of the source code COMPILES, every single example! The first 4 or 5 chapters are a waste. They cover things like "how to write stories" and basic C++ concepts. These subjects should be in their own book, plus it would take 150+ pages off the size of this monster. The marketing hype on this book holds true, you can make a full "game" with this one! You still need to put the effort into turning it into a real one, but it's a very good start. I give it 4 stars because the author's programs all run in a window instead of full-screen. The book should also be around 200 pages shorter.
| 
