Software Engineering and Computer Games

Rating:
Summary: Outdated, not relevant and Padded up
Review: This book is written by a person who has no idea in which direction the game industry has been heading in the last 8 to 10 years. It is a ridiculous attempt at writing a book on a subject the author is singularly inept.

The traditional practices of Software Engineering are usefull in game development but you should take a look at some articles at www.gamasutra.com written by REAL game developers to understand the amazing amount of misinformation in this book.

In my opinion it is impossible today (with current technology in mind) to write a book about game development without considering the usage of DirectX which is the most fequently used development platform. The author has based his work on MFC (when was the last time you saw that in a game???) and a miniscule amount of work on OpenGL, which is impossible to understand.

I believe the author should do a lot more reading about game development before he writes about it and actually learn what on earth is going on today in the world!!

Rating:
Summary: Software Engineering and Computer Games
Review: This is the guy who taught LaMothe at California State University, San Jose.
The book is about 608 pages thick (small size). For beginners, this is the perfect introduction.The author published the source code utilized in the book as Open Source.
So anyone can download it from his website for free.
Getting back to the book:
Negatives: Code is sprinkled with small bits of MFC and OpenGL.(instead of the industry standard Direct X).
Positives: Rudy Rucker does a better job of teaching game programming inside of the c/c++ framework.
Read a good c++ book first,then read (SE&CG).
After that you can read LaMothe: Game Programming for dummies.
This book covers object oriented programming,2d,3d techniques,UML,physics.
This is cgp101: computer game programming(intro to game programming).
All of the programs run inside of a MFC created window(frameset). But if you read the book,cover to cover, you will have the skills-set to "break out of this window".
I couldn't get the picture out of my mind during the whole time I was reviewing this book of thinking back to a past Star Wars episode when Luke was fighting Darth Vader with the "lightening swords". And Luke is trying his best to kick Darth arse. And Darth looks at Luke and says: "Give up Luke, you are but a learner, but I am the Masta".
If you really want to "get it", buy the book.