Rating: 
Summary: A great book for any game programmer's library.
Review: Overview:
If you are looking for a book to walk you through the entire cycle of creating a game, then this is the book for you. If you are looking to learn DirectX, get 'Inside DirectX 5.2' instead. But, if you are more interested in creating games, then this book will take you through the basics of DirectX and encapsulates them into a class, or a manager has Mickey Kawick calls them, and allows you to start creating games in a relatively short time. This book covers and includes the Wordware Game Developer's Library that manages DirectX and many of the aspects of creating games. Before you get this book, be sure you know C++, some window's programming, and have a desire to write games. Summary of each section: 1. Welcome
This section has the introduction and talks about different questions such as: "What is a Real-time Strategy Game", "What is DirectX", and "What is This Book About?" This section also talks about required tools, namely MS Visual C++ 5.0 and DirectX 6.0. Although, all the code is ANSI C++ and does not use the MFC framework, therefore, any C++ compiler should work with little to no changes. 2. Gameplay
This section covers strategy, tactics, mood, elevation, terrain, where to build, and resources. 3. Getting Started on Your Game
This section covers the design, the high-level design, the development cycle, programming and programming style, coding style, and the library. It also covers setting up the WinMain and the MessageHandler. You will see some sample code on how to create a simple window application that will be used as a template for the rest of the programs. 4. Documents
This section covers the design doc and the technical design doc. 5. Development
This section covers the cycle, code design, engine design, reusability, which tools to use, hardware considerations, expectations, competition and sales, optimism, backing up, sharing code and source control. 6. Standard Macros and Data Types
This section covers the standard macros and data types that may be used in game programming. This file is nice to have in any programmer's library of code. 7. Background
This section describes how to set up your development environment. 8. Great Ideas
This section outlines the different games that are all ready on the market and evaluate them on what are good ideas and what are not good ideas. 9. Working with DirectDraw
This section introduces DirectDraw and such topics as data types, broad concepts (double buffering, back buffers, blitting, flipping the screen, and GDI), color modes (8-, 15-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit), color models (RGB, CMYK, YUV, HSV, and 15-bit vs 16-bit), and the DirectDraw class (DIRECT_DRAW_MANAGER). 10. How to Draw as Easy as 1, 2, 3
This section covers the basics of how to draw pixels and lines, as well as how to clip them. 11. How to do Your ABC's
This section shows how to build an alphabet manager as well as clipping techniques for both graphics and text. 12. The Drawing Manager
This section shows how to build a drawing manager. 13. Loading Graphics
This sections talks about the issues of loading graphics, and introduces a graphics manager. This book will talk primary about the Targa file format. The graphics manager can handle other formats, but you will have to get another book on graphic formats and do the work yourself. 14. The Black Space and the Wild Void of Life
This section will cover the LLE compression format and how to draw and clip with LLE. 15. Animation
This section covers the basics of animation and how to include it into your game. 16. The Landscape
This section covers several different ways to represent tile-based world. 17. The Interface
This section will talk about a lot of the areas needed for creating a user interface to your game. 18. Objects and Creatures in the World
This section covers defining an entity, creature definitions, and memory management. 19. Pathing
This section discuses different algorithms and structures for determining how to find a path in your game world. 20. Direct Sound
This sections covers some details about DirectSound. Summary:
This book covers a lot of different areas in order to create a game. This is a good book for experienced programmers who would like to try their hand at writing Windows games using DirectX. This is not a stand-alone book though. It briefly discusses many advanced topics, which the reader will have to go and do more research on. Likewise, this book only covers the amount of DirectX to create the different managers without going into deep detail about all the other areas of DirectX. All in all, this is a very good book to add to any programmer's library. And if you have never attempted to write a game before, this is a must have to start your library of computer game programming books.
Rating:
Summary: This Book was the best! if you get 1 book get this book
Review: I found this book to be very resourceful and i think that everyone will, GET THIS BOOK
Rating:
Summary: Definitly an incredible resource for building RTS games!
Review: This book is definitly one of my favorites in my library at this time. It provides much more material then the average game programming book, including material on the development life cycle, coding methodologies, management, etc. The book contains code samples, and the author is reachable for questions - quite a difference from most of the other books I own which have email for authors who don't write back. Mr. Kawick is quite a good author, and has moved up to be one of my two favorites for game programming books with explanations.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad
Review: I have very mixed feeling about this book. The first few chapters on getting into the industry/design issues should not be there. If necessary he should have mentioned a link to a web site with this information instead. I would have rather seen those pages spent on more details of how to implement weather effects, tranparency/translucency, and especially MENUING AND GAME INTERFACES hehe which IMHO were too short. When it comes to the actual code there are some fantastic examples. He actually cleared up the 5-5-5, 5-6-5 question of 16-bit rendering for me (damn that was pissing me off why my code would look right on one machine but not right on another). While the sections on coding were good there is a lot of code that I disagree with (ah but dont we all just disagree with something that we didnt write :). Then again he's has worked on more games than I have :) Overall there is some great code in this book, it is well worth the money. My only last complaint is about the authors commentary - it definitely detracts from the text. He almost seems cynical (kinda like, "Do it my way, trust me, I know better"). Oh if you are hoping for a working 'demo' of his code in action, it isn't there (heh I guess you could just go buy AofE). Either way beginner's and pro's alike will get quite a bit from this book. Enjoy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Beginners only
Review: Very dissapointing! This book is clearly geared towards beginners, and yet it says it's for intermediate to advanced users. I agree with the other reviewer: there're only a few chapters that are worth anything. All the information in the book is found in the web, and much better explained most of the time.
Rating:
Summary: EXCELENT.
Review: Excelent Book. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I think most people are disappointed with this book because it's a bit advanced and they probably didnt understand most of the code (I had some trouble in some areas as well)... But thanks to this book I feel confident that I can (and probably will) be able to design and code a RTS game. I especially liked all the optimizations the author provides. I wish I had more books like this one, it's the book on which Ive probably learned the most. I just finished reading the whole book, so I know what Im talking about (unlike some reviewers who review a book after they read Chapter 1)... Excelent Book.
Rating:
Summary: last guy was very wrong
Review: I happen to disagree with the last reviewer. There's quite a bit more to programming an RTS game than just pathfinding and AI. There are many fundamental concepts that one must master before even thinking about sitting down to write a game, especially an RTS game. That is where this book comes in to the picture. The book starts from square one (design), and then gets into a (very brief) discussion of DirectDraw. If you want a more detailed discussion, then like the previous author said go look at Inside DirectX. Soon after, however, the author starts discussing various methods of graphics compression (very very very necessary if you want to do any realistic RTS game). Then the book starts getting into animation, tile engines, landscaping, and an extensive coverage of pathing techniques. I have yet to hear a _valid_ complaint about this book. To top it all off the author is a _very_ cool person, and has been very willing to answer any and all questions I've had. If all you want is a book about AI then for god's sake go get an AI book. It doesn't _have_ to have the word 'game' in it to be relevant.
Rating:
Summary: Misleading title and mostly worthless.
Review: Let's get some things straight: This book is 75% about the basics of DirectDraw, 15% about coding and general software engineering, and only 10% about RTS programming. For a book that is labeled intermediate to advanced, talk about dissapointing! It gets worse though. This book does one of the big no-nos of computer books: It has dozens of pages of code (and it's all in the CDROM at the end). And then, after 20 pages of straight code, what does the author do? It copies the code *again* while he talks about it! Who are they kidding? Take out the DirectDraw chapters (get Inside DirectX for a much better coverage), take out the general chapters about programming, take out the pages of code, and you end up with a 50-page book. To top it all off, the author has a very twisted view of the business, and an overly-familiar (bordering slangish) writing style. The consistent misspellings don't help to take the book seriously either. Overall is it worth the money? No way; not even close.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat lacking, but good.
Review: Many important concepts glossed over, and too much space is spent on VERY basic concepts. I would think most people who want to program strategy games would already know lots of this from playing the games. On the up side, the path finding chapter is superb, and probably worth the cost of the book. I hope the autor is working on a second volume. I'd buy it...
Rating:
Summary: If you want to develope RTS games, GET THIS BOOK NOW!
Review: Don't even take time to read the rest of this review! This book goes into a lot of detail about designing real time strategy games as well as giving the programmer a well round view of the development process. He presents a LOT of code for those of you (like me) that need examples of complex methods or topics. Your still reading, aren't you? BUY IT, already! :)
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