Rating: 
Summary: A for content, D- for presentation and organization
Review: Pros:
- covers a lot of material and background in 2D
- starts newbs from (nearly) the ground up, including Windows programming and 2D rasterization primitives
- stuff on AI
- stuff on 2D scrolling
- tasty stuff on the two CDsCons:
- way too much code printed, and then reprinted! This book could lose 300 pages, easy
- overly verbose... does nearly every flag for every DirectX call need to be printed? This book meanders between dry reference tables and step-by-step tutorials. Why not put the reference stuff in an appendix, or better yet, leave it on disk? Why list code for trivialities like hand-crafted .bmp files? Give the reader credit for having half a brain
- LaMothe is (as he admits) not very adept at C++. That's okay as far as the C++ savvy readers are concerned, but I cringe to think that this is what gives newbs their first impressions of C++
- really sloppy typesetting! Some of the code is in there without indents... I mean, come on! :) Some of the math equations have expressions like "xr", but it's not obvious whether he means x times r, or x "sub" r
- 2D scrolling stuff is there, but there's only five pages of it. After all the verbose detail, the one thing I was hoping he'd ramble about was horribly brief! To summarize, there's cool knowledge in there, but it feels lik e the book was written quickly, given the scattered content and sloppy layout.
Rating: 
Summary: #DEFINE Andre_LaMothe BOOK_IS_AWSOME
Review: What can I say, I thought I would read it slowly and enjoy myself and make a game at the same time... Yeah Right! Once I picked it up and started reading it I couldn't put it down! Sure it's over a thousand pages of reading but I couldn't get enough of it, and I finished it in less than a week. I learned something new and awsome every chapter, and it was explained in such a way that was easy to understand and apply. I can't wait for the second volume to come out! If you are a programmer and want to learn how to write games this book is for you... trust me!
Rating:
Summary: Andre' is amazing
Review: If you ever want to know how to program your own video games, there's really one thing to look for - Look for any book that has the author Andre' LaMothe's name on it. This guy is truly amazing with all the knowledge and expertise of game programming he teaches you through his writing, especially in this book. And that's not all. If you ever have a question about programming, you can always e-mail him and he will be able to help you out. This book is definitely worth buying.
Rating:
Summary: Choppy...
Review: I found the book hard to follow as a beginner. I've had a few semesters of c++, so I'm only a newbie to DirectX. This book would be a good supplement book for the details it presents, but I found myself getting lost having to go re-read some of the chapters, only to get lost again. When teaching beginners, the best thing to do is go over some material and give them an assignment that uses the material covered (like in school!). Lamothe tends to tell you to just look at the source on the cd. We need examples, or even better, design/build a game as you go!
Rating:
Summary: Finally it makes sense!
Review: I love this book. I've been trying to learn game programming for a couple of years now and until now have been beating my head against the wall. This book is like a cook book. It's not just a lot of theory and neat ideas thrown together, it really walks you through the process of creating a game. This book is for beginners and people like me who learn by doing. I can decipher the other books I have now that I've gone through this one. I look forward to Volume II, I can't wait. The CD on the book also contains some good ebooks and other useful information. One of the ebooks is on the basic principles of 3D and some rendering algorithms the other is pretty good book about setting-up and using Direct 3D, however, it appears that it is DirectX 6 or 7, not version 8. The CD also contains trial software for game programming. I recommend you know C/C++ before you try this book. I've only had a couple of semesters of programming in college and it seems to be enough to understand the book. Thank you Andre LaMothe, someone needed to write this book.
Rating:
Summary: one complaint, it's taking to long for vol 2
Review: This book is excellent. if you can program in c this is all the knowledge you need to read this book. It's mainly for beginners which is what I am, so that's good. to put it blunt this will give you everything you need to know to start programming 2d games with directx. one thing I like about this book is the way he conveys the theory. he doesn't leave much to the imagination as to what is actually happening in DDraw function calls. in fact, before you start using a feature of DDraw, he often presents you with a software algorithm that accomplishes the same task. this ensures you know what the hell you are doing when using DDraw functions because you can write them yourself! being a beginner I found it a pleasure to read and easy to understand. He brings an energy and enthusiasm to his writing that ensures you won't find yourself waking up with your head in the book. In short, I came in with no previous graphics experience. now I could probably write 2d games like sonic/streetfighter/mk, not that they would be as good, just trying to give you an example of what you'll come out of the book with. pending you have a little creativity(for the AI and collisions) up stairs. there is only one problem. volume two is taking to long to finish. NOTE: this book teaches you 2D only. volume 2 teaches 3D. you really need to know 2d before 3d. if you just jump into 3d without knowing jack about 2d you're most likely going to fail. Gotta take algebra before calculus you know. peace
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the best book to start Game Programming
Review: It's good that LaMothe released an updated version of this book to use _most_ of the new DirectX interfaces but there's a few problems with this edition. - He uses DirectX 8.x interfaces for DirectSound, DirectMusic, etc. but STILL continues to use the DirectX 5 interfaces for DirectDraw. In case you don't know, DirectDraw was abolished by Microsoft in DirectX 8.x to make way for an new architecture to make Direct3D better. This doesn't mean that using DirectDraw is wrong per se, but a new edition of an old book SHOULD use this new architecture to be current (and not even current at that as DirectX 9 comes out 11/02 and promises even more architectural changes...). He should be using DirectGraphics (DirectX 8.x) or better yet show programmers how to use Texture-Mapped Polygons instead of 2D sprite so you can get 3D acceleration for your 2D game. - I found a GLARING error in the first edition of this book and guess what?!? It WASN'T fixed in this edition. In the first edition (page will be different for this edition) page 932 he states that to free the memory for a dynamically allocated C++ array you do : delete x; Well if you follow this code what you will get is a NICE, BIG, FAT MEMORY LEAK!!! It should be : delete [] x; The reason is the "delete x;" will only free ONE element, NOT an array. This will free the first element of x and leave the other 999 elements dangling off in memory space! DO NOT DO THIS! Professional programmers _rarely_ make this mistake so don't write ... code and leave memory leaks all over the place. With all that said, I can't really recommend this book if you already own the first edition. The changes are nothing you couldn't get by reading the DirectX SDK help and implementing it yourself. Also, by not staying truely current this book is a weak reprint at best. Still, if you're just starting and don't own the 1st ed. this would be your best bet for getting into game programming. Just make sure you know C really, really well because you'll use all of it in game programming, especially pointers!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for a beginner
Review: This book is the perfect starting point for anyone interested in creating games. Of course you'd have to do in 2d first but there is a vast amount of information in this book that will definately appeal to the newbie. In fact, even after reading this book once and already written a 2d game and currently working on a 3d game, I still find it useful to go through the book for the easy to follow optimizations he has in the book. Creating a 2d game is still just as fun as creating a 3d game thanks to this book. However, I did not give it 5 stars because this book is essentially the same as the old one when I browesed throught it. There is a bonus chapter buts its already on the CD in the old version of the book.
There were a lot of typos in the old book, but I would assume that its all corrected in this one. Especially the one in chapter 7. The bitmaps in chapter 13 was not loaded correctly and resulted in a blurry object. I remember this demo was the first real program that I ever came across that would enable me to write a very simple animated scene. The surface pointer in the Scan_Image_Bitmap should have been advanced by lPitch and not dwWidth. I sent a message to sams publishing regarding this last time but I never saw it appear. So for those of u who are beginning to read this book and found that this error have not been corrected or posted on the errata section, then change it. I remember the feeling I got when i got it working.
Rating: 
Summary: Caution - not Relevant!!!!!!
Review: Although a good and comprehensive book at it's time, it is relevant for directX 6 or 7 at best. The fundamental changes made by ms in directx 8 render it not relevant in many aspects and anyone buying this book should consider that. There are many things a newbie might get from this book but it mostly deals with outdated 2d concepts and the examples look and feel old (386 old). The author is good and I would definitely go for the directx8 or 9 version of this book but this one should not be sold any more (not at that price anyway)
Rating:
Summary: Precise!
Review: Recieved a copy, and in 8 days, (and after reading 500 pages), im half the way writing a 1941 game clone (with Blitting, Double Buffering, Flipping, Clipping, 16 Bit). Believe me i had ZERO experience in game programming.
And as a bonus, (i'm an experienced Java developer, but was quite naive in win32 with C++), I've learned incredibly, the WIN32 calls.(translated: Dont have to use the ugly wizard of V.Studio. Yep i can write the code myself, doesnt mean im going to!, but at least i know very well whats going on down there)
Need to say more! p.d.: Hey andre, hurry up with your Volume II!
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