Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book.
Review: The book is awesome. Some beginner stuff in. It covers threads, directmusic and fuzzylogic. I found this book worth. Buy now!
Rating: 
Summary: A good book, but not all that was promised.
Review: Andre Lamothe is one of the best game programming writers in terms of explaining complex matters clearly. So, this book looked like the Holy Grail of modern game programming. Well, not quite...1) Until you get into the text itself, you don't find out that this is only volume one of a two-volume set. It is not mentioned anywhere on the book's cover, nor in any of the promotional material. If you're most interested in the 3D part (and who wouldn't be, since non-3D games are a dying breed, and good books on Direct3D Immediate Mode are practically nonexistent?), you'll have to wait until Lamothe finishes volume two. Since THIS volume shipped quite late, God only knows when you'll see THAT one. (There are some tutorials on 3D on the CD-ROM, but they're not written by Lamothe, which means that they don't have his trademark knack for explaining difficult concepts.) 2) Volume 1 is actually an extended re-write of his earlier "Windows Game Programming for Dummies." If you've read that book, you'll find that the vast majority of the topics (and the order they are presented in, such as: first general Windows programming, then GDI, then a game console framework, then COM, and finally DirectX itself) and even the "engine" source code comes directly from the "...Dummies" volume. Granted, "Tricks..." does go into a lot more detail and covers some newer features of DirectX (force-feedback, DirectMusic) that the earlier book didn't touch. Also, if you have any professional aspirations, it's a lot less embarrassing to say you picked up a technique from a book titled "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" instead of "Windows Game Programming for Dummies!" However, those who bought the latter volume should be aware that they're going to see a LOT of material, verbatim, for the second time. 3) Finally, there are a number of typos in the text and bugs in the sample source code. As an example of the former, look at the rotation matrix at the bottom of page 455. Owing to a bad choice of font, it has two elements missing! In terms of code bugs, look at Demo7_13 or Demo7_14. In Scan_Image_Bitmap(), the dest_ptr is being incremented by ddsd.dwWidth, when it should be by ddsd.lPitch. The fact that Lamothe has cautioned the user against making this VERY SAME MISTAKE earlier in the book adds insult to injury. (This is not unusual, by the way. I've read several of Lamothe's books, and have always found bugs in the sample source, which can be especially maddening for the student who may only know that something isn't working right, but might have no clue on how to even begin to fix it. Worse, these bugs should have been immediately apparent when the program was run, which leads me to suspect that Lamothe considers himself such a "guru" that he writes his code blind and doesn't always bother testing it before sending it out to the publisher.) So, there you have it. Despite its faults, this book is one of the most comprehensive texts on the current iteration of DirectX (minus Direct3D), and contains other valuable information about AI, advanced algorithms and data structures, multithreading, game physics, etc. It is probably a "must buy" for anyone serious about game programming. However, until Lamothe gets around to finishing volume two, this is really nothing more than a "work in progress." Even as such, the reader had better be prepared to do some serious debugging on his or her own.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent 2D Games book with intro thoughts on every subject
Review: Two complaints. The CD had a few files that could not be read. No 3D coverage (as mentioned in many other reviews). Otherwise the book has an enjoyable writing style and gives you the basics on doing things with some good examples (or just some interesting ideas to think about) -- which I believe is all a person should need to get jumpstarted. Then you can reference the real boring books to get the specific knowledge you need. This is a book I would give to my friends who always wanted to make a game and had little experience in writing one.
Rating: 
Summary: Passable, but definately not for gurus
Review: I have to agree that this appears to be the dummies book with some added filler. I own both, and now it looks like I will wait for the Volume II he talks about constantly in this one, where he will actually start to address some of the 3D programming and some advanced topics. 3D should have been left out of the title on this one. My advice: If you own his Game Programming for Dummies, don't waste your money, if not, buy this as a starting point. Also: Am I the only one who is tired of 20% or more of most programming books covering Programming 101? Over 200 pages on basic Windows programming in this one. 200 more pages on topic would have been better.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of information, good reading
Review: I am enjoying this book very much. The people who didn't like it probably had their expectations too high. The book is not titled "Everything you need to know to write computer games and become a millionaire in 21 days". It is a beginner book. I would have preferred that he left the windows API chapters out though. If you need to handle the windows API then read the Petzold book. You should also be comfortable with C++ before reading this. There is a lot to learn for game programming and you can't put it all in a single book. I am looking forward to Volume II.
Rating:
Summary: An understandable Professionnal Gaming Book
Review: The title says it all ! This is a professionnal Gaming Book that takes you from the real beginning of gaming development, such as Game Design, to the end of what is "writable". The last thing to do is just be creative and well organized.
Rating:
Summary: Did we read the same book?
Review: I don't know about the last comments. But, this book is an outstanding source for those that have SOME understanding of the C language. This book isn't for someone who is looking to write the next Quake engine. This is entirely an introduction to DirectX programming. I, as a Visual Basic and DOS C programmer, had no idea where to start in Windows/DirectX programming until the "dummies" book, and had some understanding. Then this book came out and completed what I that was incomplete (the dummies book). For all the mistakes, yes... I would rather correct minor typos here and there, than go through the DirectX SDK and try to decypher that thing. This book throws you into the meat of things and INTRODUCES you to some advanced Windows/DirectX concepts... this book isn't meant for advanced programmers. I give this book 4 stars... at least for the time and effort to explain what the DirectX functions do in detail. Next time you look up a function, try looking at the "one-liner" help that Microsoft gives you and then compare it to this book. You'll be happy you bought the book!
Rating:
Summary: A well-done book: Informative and Addicting
Review: This 1000 page tome has the best and most game programming information I've found in one place. Yes, I also own WGP for Dummies. This is definitely worth owning though, due to the expanded coverage on Windows programming, expanded information on all interfaces of DirectX, as well as some general programming techniques applicable to games. If you know C and you are an aspiring game-developer, you should buy this book, BECAUSE NOBODY PUTS ALL THIS STUFF IN ONE PLACE BESIDES ANDRE!! If Andre had more competition in the game programming writing market, then maybe this book would receive a lower score (or maybe not). You can buy books about DirectX and general 3D graphics programming, but nobody else ties it together (and ties it together well) but Andre. That's why we need him and like him. Repeat: Andre is good. Andre knows what he's talking about. Andre is our friend. :-)
Rating:
Summary: Falls short of its potential
Review: This is a good book. I didn't want to compare this book to previous books by Andre, but I can't help it. As for the issue of cut/paste, most of the source code is exactly a cut/paste of WGPFD, down to the typos in the comments. If you have both, check for yourself. He does include a lot more in this book than in WGPFD, but except for DirectMusic, most of it either doesn't belong in a game programming book (linked lists, binary trees), or he barely even mentions (genetic algorithms, isometric views). It could have been so much more. He also stresses 8 bit color too much, and not the others. As for the style of writting, this is a low for LaMothe. He puts in a <G> at least once every other page, usually following a lame joke. He also seems to think it's a good idea to refer to his readers as weird names. For instance: "Cool, home slice?" I'm sorry, but what is that in there for? The content is generrally there, but it definitely falls short of its potential. I hope Andre does better on his next book. If you don't own WGPFD, strongly recommended. If you do, it's not recommended as highly. Knowledge of C is required.
Rating:
Summary: If the 'best' book is full of mistakes
Review: I don't know much about the game part of the book, but I quite good on C++, performance optimization, Win32 programming, and GDI. This book is full of wrong and misleading information on these topics. Here are some examples: 1) Pg 24: use shift for multiplication. Compiler can do a better job. 2) Pg 61: hpreinstance is said to be the instance of the application that launched the current one. 3) Pg 131: The problem is that BeginPaint()-EndPaint() sends a message to Windows indicating that the window contents have been restored. Where did he read that? 4) Pg 131: Use GetDC and RleaseDC in WM_PAINT handling. 200% wrong. 5) Pg 139: define COLORREF as 0x00bbggrr. How about PALETTEINDEX and PALETTERGB. 6) Pg 172: GDI broke brushes up into two classes. How about pattern brushes ? 7) Pg 178: if line style is NULL, rectangle will be 1 pixel smaller on all four sides. Actually, only two sides. 8) Pg 179: The brush does not need to be deleted because it was never selected into context; hence, it's transient. Andre GDI resource leak !!! 9) Pg 351: does not handle biSizeImage being 0, width * bitcount not multiple of 32. non-professional. 10) Pg 441: computer sin(theta), cos(theta) twice in every iteration ? Enough ?
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