Rating: 
Summary: Poor writer and worse programmer
Review: I agree with the other reviews that this book was largely content-free. The author spends way too much time discussing basics of the RTS genre from a players standpoint and is WAY too opinionated in his writing. The opinions he voices seem to have come from a very narrow experience. In addition to the code being full of bugs, he has specific problems like he says you should use a "Booch diagram" to illustrate the design (that's not the name of the diagram, BTW). The diagram he draws uses the Booch notation, but he uses classes and draws lines between them to indicate functional flow. It's an old-fashioned data-flow diagram--and its not even clear what the flow is. Add this to all the other problems of poorly documented code, nearly empty CD, no real running examples, and blatent padding (you can read about them in other reviews), and this is a real dog.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book -- can be used for more than just RTS
Review: I found this book to be a excellent reference for DirectX and game programming in general. The author takes you through the development of a RTS game, but the chapters I found most useful were that on DirectX development. For new programmers a decent tutorial book is a must, and I think this one fits the bill. This book doesn't deal with any Direct3D stuff, but for a beginner you don't want to deal with these concepts until you've dealt with the 2D stuff. I use a combination of this book and Andre Lamothe's Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus and the combination of the two will definately serve you right.
Rating: 
Summary: Opinionated, mostly organised, and frequently brilliant.
Review: What this book doesn't tell you, it will tell you where to look up. Within each chapter are at least 3 recommendations of other books that you "must read." Overall, the book itself is quite good, too. It's an excellent coder's eye view of how RTS games are and should be turned out, in the here and now. It's obviously strongly influenced by what has already been done with the genre, and takes a narrow view of what that genre is. The author is prone to throwing out declarations of How Things Should Be Done that are sometimes questionable, but it's clear that he has such strong opinions because he's been programming on the front lines for that long, and has seen way, way more than most of what can go wrong. Follow the plan in this book and you will end up with the framework of a respectable starcraft/aoe clone. Creativity must be left up to the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it for the algorithms
Review: I have often reached for this book when I wanted to see how 'real' game programmers implement algorithms. Even after the Direct X stuff is outdated, the book will still be valuable.
Rating: 
Summary: Dont be fooled by all the hype!
Review: One word desctibes this book... BUNK! If you dont get that word dont feel bad.. it generally used my computer geeks and programmers... and the cd itself is worthless... maybe 5mb of extremely bugy source code yuck! After the first few chapters we get into the code, and it's here that the book falls down, with far too many pages of source code, and not enough explanation of what the author is doing. Some sections of code, like the line drawing algorithims, the compression stuff, text blitting etc, is all very helpful and worth a look, whereas some of it seems to be just padding. It's a big pity that the game dosen't actually come with a finished RTS as an example. It's also a pity that so much is missing from the game, such as mutliplayer coding and top level (non-pathing related) AI. There is also very little connection with DirectX, which is encapsulated within one chapter and then forgotten. You have to wade through a lot of padding to dig out the gems in this book, but if you are seriously writing a game, its probably still worth the coverprice. Although there are some good nuggets of information here, you will have to look hard to find them. There is a lot of source code and not much explanation: and even the code is not of a very high quality, veering between C and C++ code, duplicating functionality already provided in the C++ standard library. Another issue is that the author cannot decide who the book is aimed at: professionals one moment, when he assumes that you are just the programmer, and are free to leave many details to your artist or your designer... and an amateur the next, when he details how to set up MS Visual Studio! I would only recommend this book once you have the basics down, as it is not a good book to learn from. Rather, it is a reference manual that you may pick up the occasional hint from. Last point... there was supposed to be a 2nd edition, but after looking on the publishers website it doesnt look like there will be. If you know your programming you should be able to understand this book and find some use... but I think ill just wait till LaMothe does a book about RTS games. ~fin~
Rating:
Summary: Decent
Review: This is an excellent introduction to the difficulties and concepts involved in the creation of RTS/RTT games. It is not a book on how to write games in DirectX. It is not a book about DirectX. The book's stated goal is to describe the process by which RTS/RTT games are created. The author accomplishes the goal with success. While several topics are covered in detail (the path finding section for example), most topics are left alone for further research by the reader as there are well known, well respected books covering these topics (tile sets, resources vs. expenditures, threat levels vs. defensive capabilities, etc.). If you want a book describing how to create a RTS/RTT game, this is a good book. If you need a book on how to code, go elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Real-Time Strategy Game Programming
Review: I do not recommend this book! Talk about re-inventing thewheel! Much useless information. I bought this book for the pathingexamples. CD included is a waist of time. Good luck getting anything to compile! END
Rating: 
Summary: good book for some things...
Review: i am working my way through this book, and find that although it has enough useful information for me not to regret buying it, there is a whole lot more that makes me wonder. mostly, i am quite happy with the code that is presented (other than it not compiling with dx6; there should be a website for the book with updated code). on the other hand, there are many opinions offered as fact which rub me the wrong way. statements like "i hate writing technical docs; if you have half a brain, you will too." just don't sit right. some people may well enjoy this; more power to them. another example in the description of pascal: "so why not? I'll tell you why: BEGIN and END." choosing a language based on typing out the basic block has got to be the worst way to choose a language, period. write a preprocessor if you don't want to write BEGIN/END, for god's sake. anyway, too much ego, too much strange advice. i get a strong feeling that i have significantly more software engineering experience than the author, yet i am being lectured. but he does have way more game experience than i do. if the book would stick to discussing games, and talk more in terms of pros and cons and less in terms of what the author does and prefers, and less in terms of made-up statistics, i would be happier. i will still keep the book and finish it. of value, but i anxiously await a book by andre lamothe on this topic, or maybe an updated version with less ego, less lecturing, less dubious statistics, and more solidly useful advice and recommendations on how to implement specific game features.
Rating:
Summary: Examples Don't work
Review: All of the code offered in the book will not compile with MSC++ 6.0 Further the problems with the code is with the DirectX part of the code. My advice is don't buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: This is a typical Bla, bla, bla book..
Review: This could of been a good book. If all the samples worked. And if he cut down on all the bla,bla about different game types and added some good programming samples. Before I started to read this book I read DirectX Complete (by Michael D. Root, James R. Boer; Paperback) which is a well structured and good (beginners)book ( in this book you learn something new about games on each page..). In Kawicks may learn something about RTS after 200 pages of reading. The lack of good programming samples and to much bla, bla makes this book a total waste to buy.
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