Rating: 
Summary: Acceptable but a little lacking
Review: I must say that even though as stated the book is lacking in a few areas, I found that I enjoyed the book over all. As a professional engineer I found the C++ code very readable and understandable. For those people who say that the code was too complex, go back to Visual Basic because in the real world, his code would be considered simplistic to intermediate level.
Rating: 
Summary: But it is worth a 10!
Review: In this book you can learn evrything, begginer to expert, after reading this i could make a game that was like Age of emipers II
Rating: 
Summary: FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS...
Review: I believe this is yet another of those 'game programming'books that builds an entire damn system from scratch, basically reworking tons of tired ideas and methods that have been covered to death in other even worse books, eg. how to plot a pixel, how to blit a bitmap, yadda, yadda. Intermediate to advanced? Not by a long shot. Absolute beginner. Real-time strategy? Some beginner stuff about tiles and pathing, easy to find on the web. I expected to see a fellow game developer share some gems, but found another hard-coded, simplistic, limited, and entirely unrealistic approach to producing a real game. This is retro...very... No goodies on the CD either. No Multiplayer or even single player for that matter discussion, except to fill a page about what you can do. I know what I can do, and want to do, and what I think is cool. Stay away unless you're a beginner and don't want to type text into a search engine. But even that's stretching it.
Rating: 
Summary: you people who give the book 5 stars are truly *insane*
Review: most of you are reviewing the book and haven't even finished reading it much less half way!! Please don't review a book until you finished the *entire* book. I initially thought the book was great but after chapter 12 (almost half way), the book went downhill! He gives you no examples of how to use the code.... I spent many hours trying to figure out how to get the animation and tiling working..and was unsuccessful. Perhaps if he would have showed us a sample code or even a game at the end of the book showing us how to use the code then that would be a lot better. my main criticism is not the directx coverage but his showing how the code works. He gives you bunch and bunch of codes and doesn't even explain it too well. He even doesn't show how you will use it. to give you an example, imagine this. you are given 100 pages of code and only one-line explanation every 5 pages or so. the code is not *fully* implemented and you're expected to decipher the code and implement the complex code even if you don't know what the hell is going on. like i said, if he would of given a sample game with source code that incorporates most of the concepts you learned in the entire book then i wouldn't be complaining.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good book
Review: This book has no usable source code. Judging by the aimless discussion and lack of knowledge by the author, I would say the entire thing is lifted from the various "game programming" sites around the web.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of ideas, but seems rushed and unorganized
Review: I've had the book for a while now, and have completely gone through the material and CD. The book shares a lot of ideas of what makes a commercial RTS game tick, but most of the chapters seem to abruptly end with no explanation. Even index at the back of book the is poorly put together. For example, he plugs several html addresses throughout the book, but unless you keep track of them, you have to go through the entire book again looking for them! It says the level of difficulty on the back of the book is for intermediate to advanced, and this seems true, since he uses pure C++, such as classes, overloaded operators, and structures called templates (which can seem very complex if you do not know how they work). I had my first disappointment when I noticed how scarce and empty the CD was. There are absolutely no executables on this CD! No RTS demos, no RTS games, no test programs, nothing, except a simple alphabet editor program. You would think he would at least put the Age of Empires demo on the CD which he brags about throughout the entire book, but that doesn't happen. And the source code is like the book says, a library, bits of pieces of code, that the author does not even try to put together to create a simple sample executable for you. If you are looking for demos, this is not the book to get. If you are looking for ideas only, this book might be worthy.
Rating: 
Summary: Great resource but some problems found
Review: I read this book cover to cover in a couple of days and found some really useful information. I am currently working on a Real-Time Strategy game and already have an engine but this book has introduced me to some new ideas. It covers all the basics that anyone would need in order to understand how a RTS could be programmed. There are a few problems though. Due to the fact that there is a large amount source code included, much of it is left unexplained. That's not so bad except for the fact that there are bugs that make decoding the purpose of the source code difficult. I believe a test application that used all of the classes would have been helpful and probably helped the author to eleminate the bugs. Other than that there is a lot of good stuff here.
Rating:
Summary: VERY well done
Review: I've heard people in these reviews say some pretty harsh things about this book, considering how complex the code seems. But let me tell you...he covers details on game programming that I have NOT seen any ANY other book. He talks about the dynamics that go into actual planning, gives a "behind-the-scenes" look at the life of a game programmer, and even shares his opinion on the way things should be done. I found the chapters on AI to be wonderful. Most books will teach you the typical chase/avoid algorithms, whereas he talks a great deal about how to code your creatures to give them skills and things like that. His chapter on pathing was also great. Look, anyone who wants to knock this book needs to count their many blessings. RTS gaming is a VERY LARGE project to create. No book is going to teach you everything. But the author shows you the basic ideas and coding structure, and then tells you to take it from there. Okay, he COULD have included a chapter about bringing everything together with a sample game, but under the circumstances, this book gets you at least STARTED in the direction you need to go. One tip though: the author and the other reviews on this page aren't kidding when they say you better have a pretty firm grasp of C++. But, even if you aren't a programming-god, this can at least show you what you're going to need to know.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible book !
Review: The best game programming book I ever seen ! Code is clear and simple to understand. A lot of useful information. A MUST HAVE
Rating:
Summary: Decent, but not amazing
Review: As with most books on game programming, the author somewhere along the way seems to have mistaken the reader's interest in programming with an interest in the way the AUTHOR programs. The author therefore wastes valuable pages discussing code formatting, and offering biased and unfounded statements about commonly accepted practices such as Hungarian notation (his quote: "I don't like it. Do us all a favor and don't use it."). This might not be so aggravating if the author didn't immediately reveal himself to not be the experienced veteran he believes himself to be - tip for the author, if he reads this: a struct is a struct, and a class is a class. Don't mix them. It's sloppy. Another good chunk of the book is wasted with page-after-page of murky, black-and-white screen shot with one line of text underneath it. Supposedly the author is showing the reader "good game design" - in actuality, he is just padding the book. There are some good points in the book, but it could easily have been trimmed in half (without the code dumps and murky screen shots and lenghty opinionated missives) and sold at half-price.
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