Rating: 
Summary: Teach yourself visualbasic 6 in 21 days
Review: A price is to high for used book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but a bit flawed.
Review: First of all, let me say I'm a fairly average VB programmer, probably a bit more advanced than this book is intended for, but I'm not that great a programmer, period. In fact, that's why I use visual basic. I started off with C (in fact, I own 2 of Mr. Walnum's books on game programming in C), but I wasn't very good at C, and even worse at C++.Anyway, after my first glance through this book, I said to myself, "Wow, I just wasted $an amount.". (Actually, my first thought was I'd seen this before, in fact, a lot is identical to one of Mr. Walnum's game programming in C book from about 6-7 years ago). But upon closer inspectation, that's not really fair. After reading the book, it is a pretty decent book. It is aimed the beginner, which is probably a good thing, since there very few game programming in VB books, and this is the only one for VB6.0, and the only one still in print. The games start out very simple and gradually get more complex, but even so, you're not dealing with very complex games. For instance, 1/3 of the book is dedicated to building the game "Moonlord", which rather than being a 'Space Adventure game' (as the book describes it), is basically a 'Star Trek' clone, which was one of the earliest computer games ever. It was the first computer game I ever played, back on my TRS-80 (with tape drive) in the late 70s. It also later appeared on the Atari 2600 video game console as 'Stellar Track'. On the one hand, the book is aimed at beginners, so I can see keeping the games pretty simple. But that's just a bit too simple, I think. I mean, on Day 8 (of the 21 days), you're writing a blackjack games. Blackjack! Probably the 2nd simplest card game (the 1st being high card wins). Besides being a bit too simple in places, the book is a bit flawed. First of all, the author used graphics (and programs converted from C++) from a far older book of his, which featured 16 color graphics (Not 16 bit, 16 colors total.) Because of this, a lot of the games you make look dated and sort of faded (Crystals, DragonLord, and the card games use graphics from the older book). But the rest just seem to use graphics inspired by it - not very colorful and very drab. This also is why the games seem very simple - those 3 were originally dos games, and some of the difficult bits in writing them were parts that windows does automatically (like the mouse, or a pop-up window, for instance). Converted to Windows, the games are far simpler. Secondly, the author seems to have started out with the premise that Visual Basic cannot do graphics very well. In fact, early on in the book the author writes "If you want to write the next Quake or Might & Magic, forget Visual Basic.". While I would agree about Quake, the first 6 Might and Magic games are definitely possible with Visual Basic. In fact, until Might and Magic 6 (not the 6th game in the series, that was Swords of Xeen)the games all had a pseudo 3D view created by using sprites. Which is not only possible in VB, but is pretty easy in VB (easy because I managed to do it on my own). Yes, it's slower than C, but computers are very fast these days. While the cd-rom states that the minimum requirement for this book is a 486 PC, you can literally buy a better PC than that for the price of this book. (I bought a 450 megahertz computer for an amount 18 months ago, and a Pentium 166 about a year ago for an amount with a monitor). And Visual Basic 6.0 seems to be a lot faster than previous versions of VB, and it compiles to a true exe, not just pseudo-code (like it used to). So, you can have a decent amount of sprites and animation in VB games, but the author doesn't think so, and doesn't even try to tell you how to write a game with more than 1 or 2 things moving around, or any sort of moving background or real animation. All you get is very very basic information on sprites and almost no animation at all. It's not that difficult, either, so it shouldn't be out of scope for a beginners book. Still, ultimately though, the book does live up to it's premise. It will teach you how to write games in Visual Basic in 21 Days. Just very simple games. And it does a very good job of explaining how the programs work, rather than just listing the source and letting the reader figure it out (which the older book, Black Art of VB Game Programming did), and the games are relatively entertaining, if simplistic.
Rating:
Summary: Great for someone who has no VB game programming experience
Review: I found this book would have helped me a few years ago. But I still found I learned alot from it. It covers the basics of graphics and moves on into the API but keeps everything game oriented, not like most VB gaming books of the past.Also covering sprites and sound very well I found quite a few tricks I could not find on the VB gaming resources through the net. Building games like Arcanoid and a Simple RPG was fun but with only 24 Pages (in an appendix) on 3d game Programming using directX was a Little less than I would Have expected for a game programming book in this day and age. Over all I recommend this book for anyone with an intrest in game programming who can stumble there way through VB.
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Summary: Great book for understanding VB game programming basics
Review: I have been using VB for about 1.5 years. So far I've made some basic programs just to learn how things are done. I've also done some instrumentation control at my job with VB. I bought this book to get the basic understanding of how VB can be used to make games. I fully understood before buying it that VB was not a die hard 3D game developing language. I feel that what I've learned so far in this book will help me better understand game programming with VB.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I was hoping for...
Review: I have been waiting for this book to be released for some time because, as the authors mentions, there aren't many books available that deal with the subject of Game Programming with Visual Basic. I was very disappointed with this book, and it didn't take long for me to reach this conclusion. The book doesn't cover DirectX at all, except for a few pages in "Appendix D" titled "Getting Started with DirectX." The author should have gotten started with DirectX on page 1, not page 615. The lessons and examples in this book are not too useful, due to the fact that no one is going to write a serious game nowadays without using DirectX. DirectX 8 just came out, and it is the second version with dedicated VB support. This book doesn't really cover anything that wasn't covered in "Black Art of VB Game Programming" or "Programming Games for Beginners," both published in 1995. Most of the examples could probably be compiled with Visual Basic 3.0. I would recommend skipping this book if you have any Visual Basic experience. It might serve as a good VB intro if you have never used it before, but you might be better off going with another Sams title, "Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days" which is a quality book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for Learning Game Programming
Review: I have read a few of books in regards to game programming, but none of them have even come close in terms of learning to do it. With the exception of this book, all of the other books I have read are in C/C++ (which I do know, by the way). However, the concepts presented in the other books are hard to comprehend, and even the most insignificant of things to do (such as turn 1 pixel 1 degree and change it's color) were all very complex mathematical structures. This book is different. Although I would recommend that you are somewhat familiar with VB before reading, this book will teach you the fundamentals of programming a decent game. I consider myself to be an above average vb programmer, and this book only helped me to be better. It has no coverage of DirectX, so if that is what you are looking for then this book is not for you. Otherwise, if you are interested in learning how to create decent games, and show those C/C++/OpenGL programmers out there that us VB programmers are smarter than what they think we are, then get this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Buy If You Want To Make Solitaire
Review: I hoped that this book would have tips on creating mainstream type games in Visual Basic. Instead, this is a whole book dedicated to programming card games. It's nice to know how to program your own solitaire, but the authors almost totally disregarded the fact that DirectX 7 and 8 are both fully supported in Visual Basic. Of course, there is a very short appendix for DirectX, but even that can't satify the desires of VB game programmers who want to make games like Metroid, or Quake. There are many books that deal with C++ game programming in DirectX, but there are NO Visual Basic books that deal with it. So people who want to learn how to create games in DirectX will be wasting their money on this. If you want to learn how to program games in Visual Basic in DirectX, use Internet tutorials, as that's all there still is.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book For beginners
Review: I learned VB 6 in the classroom so I had a basic knowledge of vb. I learned a lot about game programming from this book. I even learned a lot about VB. I like the way he explains the code. Also the exercises help reinforce what he covered in each chapter.If you are a person that learns by doing I recommend this book. He only spends a little time on DirectX. The introduction to AI was not very good. The flaws in the code were ok because I knew enough about vb and debugging to fix them.
Rating:
Summary: Is He Serious?
Review: I waited months for this book to come out..what a disappointment ;( Who in their right mind is going to use picture boxes and such for a decent game these days??? What's with Microsoft *FINALLY* allowing us to use a *native* multimedia api(DX), but neglect to tell us (VB programmers), or give us any *real* information??? Suppose i don't *Want* to just spin a triangle? Suppose i want to pick the ... out of it, while updating the textures on it using RM instead of IM? Just because RM isn't updated anymore, doesn't mean we don't need to know how to use it..ESPECIALLY since there's almost NO definitive documentation on any of it!! Why give DX to us, and then not help us use it? This book was a complete waste of my time. It only rehashes old ideas using outdated techniques. If you've never written (anything) then this might be for you..*HOWEVER* if you're looking for something that will actually HELP make a game using the LATEST techniques and technologies then i'm afraid we're either supposed to wait until someone actually writes us a *Serious* book, *OR* drop vb all-together, and go to c++ or use OpenGL.. Why do people automatically assume that if you're an experienced programmer that you suddenly don't need examples or reference once in a while?? What about a book like: DirectX for Professional Dummies? - you get the point...
Rating:
Summary: Not what I was looking for
Review: I was really looking for a book that teaches how to use DirectX with Visual Basic. The material in the book were all of things that I already knew how to do. This book may be okay for someone just learning to write games. But, it's definitly not for experienced programmers.
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