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: 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.
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