Rating: 
Summary: Another Game Programming Book Gone Bad
Review: "What a great book" I thought to myself as looked at the table of contents. It covered everything from DDraw to DSound, but as I started reading the chapters I found myself thinking "Maybe I should have saved my money". There are many reasons for this...1. The source code examples are all laid out, but the documentation is not clear, and there is no clear way to tie them all together. Its like being given a steering wheel, a seat, and gasoline, but nothing to use them with. 2. The author simply mimiced what the DirectX SDK has. In my opinion thi book turned out to be nothing more than a reference manual. 3. Now that I have been programming for a while, I have noticed that the little code in that book was somewhat inefficient. As any programmer knows, one of the hardest parts of creating an interactive game (besides the rendering engine) is the main cycle that must tie together all of the sub-classes and functions. This book covered many sub-classes, that can easily be derived from the directX sdk or MSDN library, but completely ignored how to tie them all together. No helpful information was contained in this book except for the reference section.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I'm frequently asked for book recommendations for learning Direct3D. For a long time, my answer was "There are no good, up-to-date books covering Direct3D". When I heard about this book, I had high expectations. de Goes' previous book had been well-received, and I had enjoyed many of his online articles. I was hoping I'd finally have a book I could recommend. Unfortunately, the book falls far short of my expectations, both in its Direct3D coverage, and in game programming coverage in general. First of all, more than half of the book consists of the appendices, which are nothing more than a DirectX reference. It's nice to have a printed reference, but since the same information is readily available as part of the DirectX SDK, it seems like a waste of space. The remaining 300 or so pages aren't much better. A good 100 or so are a code dump of his DX wrapper classes, which could have just stayed on the CD. The remaining chapters include a good chapter covering 3D basics, the apparently obligatory chapter on the history of 3D games, and then some moderately useful coverage of DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectInput, Direct3D, Artificial Intelligence and Physics. I say moderately useful because in regards to the DirectX coverage, he explains the most useful functions, and his explanations are accurate and detailed, but doesn't ever really show you how to use them. Some demo applications would have been very useful. The chapters on AI and physics are interesting, but again, some demos illustrating the principles covered would have been quite useful. I'd expect that most people would buy this book expecting that when they are done, they'd be able to create a basic 3D game. I honestly don't think that's a likely scenario. I read this already knowing OpenGL and the rest of DirectX quite well, but after finishing this book, I feel like I still don't know Direct3D at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: Although the strong point of this book is not stated in the title, I believe that the book still deserves a good rating for what it really has to offer. This book is an excellent reference. The entire second half of the book is a comprehensive reference on DirectX 7. Every function is listed along with its parameters, their definitions, and the possible return values and their definitions. Excellent stuff to have if you are actively programming in DirectX 7. The first part of the book has the same quality to it in my opinion. It is not an in-depth look at 3D-programming, but at the same time it gives you a very clear understanding of the current method. If you need a reference, this is a great book. If you need in-depth code examples and analysis, try LaMothe.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible teaching tool, only good for reference
Review: As far as learning how to program 3D Games, this book stinks.
Over half the book contains reference sections of the different DirectX methods, and if that is what you want then Ok, but if you want ti for anything else you are better of saving your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: As I see it, this book ok, with some glaring flaws. 1) The Auther should have included some demos of any kind, even a spinning cube demo that as the book progressed went from a flat shaded cube to a fully texture mapped, and lighted (point light source, of course) cube. This is not the case and is a definate strike against the book, so if you are looking for demos, don't look here. 2) This book needs a library! If you have already bought the "Black Art of 3D Game Programming" and "Windows Programming for Dummies" (which any dummy should buy before even looking at another game programming book! as they are both by Andre Lamothe) then you should have all you need to write even a simple spinning cube demo. It's costly, but it's another strike against this book to have to buy OTHER BOOKS to make this one useful. 3) Half the book is a reference to DirectX! I would much rather have had a more "Lamothe" style layout to the book, where you start simple then progress into a game. As it is, the layout is simple and effective, but it is another strike against the book as it leads up to absolutely nothing, not even a demo to put everything together (which I stated before) In conclusion don't buy this book as a sequel to anything, it is more of a reference and I am definately dissapointed at that, but all is not lost. It covers alot of theory and many things I have not seen in any other book! Buy it as a reference to DX with a little bit of theory included, otherwise stay away until you have a firm base in windows programming and simpler DX stuff.
Rating:
Summary: With todays standardsm this book is good
Review: As the previous reviews said, the book covers direct3d, directDraw, directInput and DirectSound, which i found no other book which does. It does however ALSO cover 3d-maths and theorems, physics, some AI, clever optimizations in 3d-rendering and some other tricks of the trade, some of them being so new, only the latest 3d-cards have implemented them. The included cd has demos or freeware of all the software needed to make a complete game, save the c++ compiler. The fact that it uses the directX API only, is of course because this is what people today, using c++, most likely will use. In conclusion, i would've given this book 5 stars, if it wasn't for the fact that it has no complete source code examples, making it necesary to know window-management and include-requirements.
Rating:
Summary: hehe I Guess Im Not The Only One.
Review: First Off, THANKS TO ALL THE PREVIOUS REVIEWERS! for stoping me from makeing a big mistake! I was thinking of buying this book untill i read the first review, then the second, then the third... Dose anyone else love reading reviews on bad books?
Rating:
Summary: A good reference, a poor primer
Review: I always love it when people complain that a book doesn't teach you C++ or COM or the Win32 API even though it says 'Game Programming' on the cover. Look, first you learn the language, then you learn the cool stuff. This book assumes that you have knowledge in Windows programming, and if you don't, then why the hell are you trying to read it? That said, this book contains great referential coverage of functions, structures, and constants of DirectX (even input and sound). Unfortunately, it's damn hard to learn how to create a working project simply by reading this book. I would classify most of it as a skim-over of theory - don't expect any samples (except the few poor ones on the CD). Honestly, the samples included with the DirectX SDK have been much more helpful in learning the API than any books out there. I do, however, still use this as a reference at times.
Rating:
Summary: I returned it the next day...
Review: I am a pretty avid programmer and I wanted to learn Direct3d. But, all you will find in this book is the SDK copied. This book is not very good and I brought it back to Waldens the next day to get my money back. I would recommend Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre Lamothe. It is a million times better!
Rating:
Summary: I returned it the next day...
Review: I am a pretty avid programmer and I wanted to learn Direct3d. But, all you will find in this book is the SDK copied. This book is not very good and I brought it back to Waldens the next day to get my money back. I would recommend Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre Lamothe. It is a million times better!
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