Win95 Game Programming

Rating:
Summary: Waste of money
Review: I bought Win95 Game Programming with real high hopes oflearning something about programming games. I was real disappointed soI decided I should write something about this before any of you make the mistake of buying this book as I have. First of all, the title is very misleading. The book has very little to do with Win95 besides give you the functions for rendering 2D bitmaps onto the screen. Everything else is written in Assembly. Basically anything that can be made in Assembly is in Assembly. That really [ticked] me off. Second, the code is very disorganized. In the beginning of a project the author goes into a little design and then starts right away implementing the specifics. First he begins to implement a little of the movement, then he starts on collision detection, halfway through he begins the level editing, and then he finishes the movement. And you never know how to organize the code or what goes where without looking at the samples on the provided CD. Most of the time the author will have you guessing what his next step is (which is covered much later in the chapter) for you to understand the current section. He doesn't explain the structures and the purpose they serve in the game. He just gives them to you and expects you to figure out where they will be used and how. Third, his code is very cryptic. I bet I could have written the games that he wrote in ½ the lines of code. I have to say the format for how he presents his code is VERY bad and uneducational. A professional programmer wouldn't be able to figure out what the author was thinking even if he designed a similar game and knew assembly. Oh, and don't let the graphics in the title page persuade you to buy the book. The only 3D you'll be doing is a cheap space simulation game that has flat shaded polygons as enemies.