Rating: 
Summary: Simply A Must Have!
Review: This book is a "Must Have" for anyone interested in programming games in EVC. You will learn the basics of ppc game design and programming while building a complete game library. The author teaches C++ as apllied to games, so that you can dig right in and get your hands dirty. And he even makes it fun! Mr. Harbour insists on keeping your code "clean" and "professional"; and he shows you how, with step by step examples that will send you well on your way to producing pocket pc's next big blockbuster hit! This book is a delite for beginners and experts alike. It will teach the beginner all you need to know to produce games in evc using the game api. It will teach the seasoned programmer how to apply thier C++ knowledge to programming in Windows CE 3.0. The accompanying disc is filled with demo games and programs like Paint Shop Pro and Pocket C. It also contains the source code for the games and game libraries you'll learn in the book. If you want to program games in Embedded Visual C++ using the Game API, buy this book. You'll be glad you did. Randy A. Brown
brown family software
Rating: 
Summary: All you need to get started
Review: This book is a great resource. The library, which the author develops and improves throughout the book, enables you to write your own 2D games for the PocketPC with ease. If you have some programming background in C++ you will have no problems to follow. The money spent on this book is an investment that pays off. You will have lots of fun and can make some money too, if you want to. Windows CE is a powerful operating system that becomes more and more important, especially in the game sector and Microsoft provides a professional IDE for free (get this, Palm developers!).
The content could have been presented on half the number of pages and the book is not perfect, but hey: it's a bargain none the less and it comes at the right time!
Rating:
Summary: A great book about C++ Pocket PC Game Programming
Review: This is an easy read and it contains valuable game programming source code. This book makes getting into C++ game programming on the Pocket PC much easier than you would have imagined. The emBedded C++ version 3.0 is a little dated but the same code easily transfers to the new emBedded C++ Version 4!
Rating: 
Summary: Nice for topic coverage but not great for details
Review: While the book covers a lot of topics, which is nice, this is not a great introduction for embedded CE development. The coverage of debugging is limited. The author relies a lot of using the CE emulator. That is okay, but I wish there was more information on debugging code running on the device. That is fairly easy to do with Windows CE. However, I have run into a few issues that I haven't gotten around yet, in this area this book is of limited use. I get the impression that the author hasn't done that much embedded development, otherwise, more of these issues would have been addressed. Yet to be fair, that isn't the main thrust of this book. The game library put together is very simple and I don't trust the code very much. For example there are several pages devoted to showing how to use bit shifting to avoid integer multiplication! I don't know about all the RISC processors used in Pocket PC's, but at least the ARM process used in IPAQ Pocket PC has built-in multiply for integers. Anyway, this type of coding is very problematic. First it usually runs slower than what a good code generator produces and secondly it fixes hard values into your code that means you have to often adjust the code before you can use it on a new device in the future. Anyway that kind of code tends to limit my trust the rest of the library. (FYI, that type of coding was popular in the 70's and early 80's.) He talks a lot about how Win CE is like DOS was in the 80's and the code show it. However, the book is a good overview and simple introduction into Pocket PC programming with a wide range of topic coverage. Just don't expect to be able to make a great deal of use of the source code provided.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice for topic coverage but not great for details
Review: While the book covers a lot of topics, which is nice, this is not a great introduction for embedded CE development. The coverage of debugging is limited. The author relies a lot of using the CE emulator. That is okay, but I wish there was more information on debugging code running on the device. That is fairly easy to do with Windows CE. However, I have run into a few issues that I haven't gotten around yet, in this area this book is of limited use. I get the impression that the author hasn't done that much embedded development, otherwise, more of these issues would have been addressed. Yet to be fair, that isn't the main thrust of this book. The game library put together is very simple and I don't trust the code very much. For example there are several pages devoted to showing how to use bit shifting to avoid integer multiplication! I don't know about all the RISC processors used in Pocket PC's, but at least the ARM process used in IPAQ Pocket PC has built-in multiply for integers. Anyway, this type of coding is very problematic. First it usually runs slower than what a good code generator produces and secondly it fixes hard values into your code that means you have to often adjust the code before you can use it on a new device in the future. Anyway that kind of code tends to limit my trust the rest of the library. (FYI, that type of coding was popular in the 70's and early 80's.) He talks a lot about how Win CE is like DOS was in the 80's and the code show it. However, the book is a good overview and simple introduction into Pocket PC programming with a wide range of topic coverage. Just don't expect to be able to make a great deal of use of the source code provided.
Rating:
Summary: For CE and more
Review: While this book is aimed mainly at the game developer for the Windows CE system I think you will find that it has many topics which will aid greatly the creation of any type of software application you wish to write. While the topics are game oriented there is a wealth of information here on using the tools that are available for the handheld device market. From the lowly and buggy NSBasic to the much more robust C and VB systems available from Microsoft to the very efficient PocketC application development system. If you are going to write to the CE platform you will need this.
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