Rating: 
Summary: How can people rate this 5 stars with a 5MB CD?
Review: Unlike beginners who gives a book 1 star because they cannot compile the code, this should be even worse because there is no code to compile! Yet there a ppl giving 4 or 5 stars!.It is unbelieveable that people can find the code or ideas in the book useful. Anyone who has played an RTS games KNOWS what and how a RTS is, yet the author seems to explain what is RTS (with screenshots) in the first few(many) chapters of the book.(Wasting pages) After reading this book ten times, I don't find myself any closer to making a RTS and that is mainly due to the fact he doesn not teach you how to do program, but rather what should be done. You have to read thorough his code (badly commented and explained) to really understand but if I wanted to read code, there are plently of free engines on the web. Not to mention the code is very buggy ( I found 3 bugs that I have confirmed with the author). Most of the ideas can be found on game development sites, nothing too new there. For people who says they can understand the code, I can only think they are using his engine or already know how to do RTS. REAL PROGRAMMERS WANT TO WRITE THEIR OWN CODE. They want to understand how to do something, not call someone's engine(or debug ppl's code.) The plus side is that it is the only book that attempts to cater to intermediate programmers, though I don't see why intermediate programmers needs anymore line drawing and clipping code. There are some (few) points that you wouldn't find in a beginner book (like other books) but not really worth the price. Plus side, author is indeed friendly as many claim though I wonder what games he actually does with his buggy engine. And what is with the 5MB CD? where has the 650 MBs gone? At least show me what the engine can do, if it is really builds up to a RTS game.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst book ever
Review: I can't believe how bad this book was. It gives simple concepts and then beats them to death with pages and pages of code. The author only touches on the truly difficult problems and refers the reader to web sites for the real material. He fills the pages with endless prose containing little substance. I bought this used for $5 and I paid too much.
Rating:
Summary: Weak
Review: The book is fairly out of date at the time I'm writing this, but I had hoped when I picked it up that it would have some valuable tips for writing games that are relatively timeless. The DirectX API has certainly changed a great deal from 6.0 to 9.0, but good game architecture doesn't change much. The book was disappointing. At times it reads like a collection of disjointed articles written by an amateur programmer, and at other times it demonstrates a clear "been there, done that" presence. Many aspects of the book are, simply, annoying. After briefly mentioning the Age of Empires scenario editor, the author writes in a separate note offset from the main text: "I worked on the scenario editor and it is largely the same as I programmed it to be, at least functionally." This self-important commentary does nothing to promote anyone's understanding of game development. The author's programming skills are poor. Other reviewers have said this; no need to beat it into the ground. I get the sense the author was working on tools for the games he worked on, not the games themselves. This comes out in the text: good explanations of the game development process and tools used by animators and developers, but shaky descriptions of game architecture. The choice of topics is a mix of good and bad. The early chapters on planning are very good, but then we get into a very long chapter on painfully optimizing line drawing, complete with a bad clipping algorithm ("Actually I wrote it myself without any help.") The chapter ends with, "but also realize that there isn't much line drawing in games these days", calling into question the purpose of spending so much time on it. It does have a long chapter on pathfinding, which was nice to see.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Prep for developing a RTS game.
Review: When I first purchased this book, as a C programmer, I had a very hard time understanding alot of the code. So I kinda put in on the shelf and went down to my local bookstore and purchased "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days", so I could understand C classes and templates and object-oriented programming. And I recommend that if you even consider yourself a GOOD C programmer, don't get this book until you first have a great understanding of the things I listed above. The book covers many many gameplay and design topics using the DirectX API. However, if you are not at all familiar with Windows Programming or the DirectX API, I suggest you first buy LaMonthe's book, "Windows Game Programming for Dummies" or "Trick of the Windows Game Programming Gurus". These two books written by the master game programming author do a very good job explaining Windows programming and how it works with the DirectX API. Assuming that you know C++ programming, basic Windows Programming, and are familiar with DirectX, this books is a really good buy. I have yet so see any REAL books on RTS/TTS game out there and they are some of the most popular games on the market. Age of Empires, Age of Kings, StarCraft, all the Command & Conquer games such as Red Alert and Tiberium Sun, the list goes on and on. No books does a better job of covering all the major topics of progamming in this field than this one does. The reason I give it five stars is because even though it can seem complex and not well enough commented, it is still written for Windows Win32 programming using the easiest and best API (DirectX) for video games. And the second reason is because it's the only real book I have found on Real-Time Strategy. Recommended for intermediate to advanced C++ programmers only though.
Rating: 
Summary: This is more of a RTS Game programming topical book...
Review: This book covers a few more rogue aspects of RTS programming. It describes several different key areas in nice detail. However, the book failed to wrap these ideals up into a complete package.
Reading this book was like following a bread crumb trail for miles and miles. Licking your lips at what surprise may be in store for you at the end of the trail the whole way there. Finally crossing over the last peak you find out that the bread was all used up making the trail.
The CD includes very little that a trained group of decrypters wouldn't have to work weeks on. The code was almost totally UN-commented, besides the copyright, and very buggy.
The writer many times throughout the book showed examples of how to emplement certain ideas in code then offered small suttle hints on how to improve the idea leaving you with a less than perfect code example. Come On!
Final thought! I wouldn't buy this book at its cover price. Wait for it on sale or in the bargain bin at the book fair.
Rating:
Summary: I had trouble reading this book...
Review: ...because the noise from the guy patting himself on the back kept distracting me. When I read a technical book, I don't like to spend 50 pages reading the author's opinions on things. I don't like to read every other sentence starting with "this wasn't quite what I wanted, so ME AND JIMBOB wrote it this way...". Though there is some useful information in there, you have to wade through way too much of the author telling how he is great, MS isn't, and how you should write code exactly like he does (keep in mind that I'm not a huge MS fan, but the writer doesn't need to express his opinions on the matter every 3 pages). When I read a game programming book, I want information that I can build off of. This book is so convoluted, the information that you can build off of you could have pretty much figured out on your own given short enough time. With the exception of a few "hmmm"-inducing topics, this book is one for the circular file.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The book does what it says it does.
The text alone is worth 5 stars.It's not a beginners book but it doesn't say it is either. If you are an intermediate/expert programmer you should have no problem with the source code.
Rating:
Summary: Old and outdated.
Review: This book is rather outdated! The author doesn't use object orientation properly, for instance there are a lot of macros instead of const and inline functions. It isn't really that much about directX more about the fundementals of strategy game programming which might be ok. But you have to be aware of the fact that this book is not intended to be as a referance book for directX.
Rating:
Summary: poor approach
Review: this book takes a poor approach, jumps around topics like crazy, and never gets into the meat of the code, especially the multiplayer aspect of the game.. which, in my opinion, is what makes a RTS playable..
Rating:
Summary: Jumpy and opinionated
Review: Beginners, don't pick up this book to learn from! This book is poorly organized, jumping from topic-to-topic. It's a little discouraging for the beginner to pick up a book and see the chapters go from an introduction to a header file full of physics equations. Then it goes on to describe a typical schedule of a programmer, then it goes on to describe topics without much explaination. It's also discouraging to be in chapter 3 and see text referring to a description in chapter 18. If you have an advanced knowledge of C++ you may be able to get through this book with a LOT of patience.
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