Game Programming Gems 7 (Game Programming Gems Series) Review

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Game Programming Gems 7 (Game Programming Gems Series) ReviewThere is some decent written material here, although the articles are typically vague and seem to omit important implementation details more often than not. However, if you're buying this book thinking you are going to get working examples... you're not.
The CD is absolutely ridiculous. Of the half-dozen examples I've looked at so far, one was completely missing and all but one of the others just didn't work. The binaries died with strange errors; trying to build the source gets you a laundry list of nontrivial errors. One example appears to have been built on top of a very old version of the DirectX sample framework, and doesn't include a copy of any of the headers that it needs from that framework; another throws errors about missing arguments in function calls.
Even if the code did compile, though, it's generally absolutely horribly organized. One example chose to pile everything into a single source file--including a TGA loader class cribbed from GPWiki, some basic utility classes, a bunch of DirectX setup code, and (somewhere in there) the several dozen lines of the actual example. Comments are generally sparse.
Despite the fact that the book has been out for almost a year and that there are a significant number of problems, there is also absolutely no errata available via the publisher's website. In fact, the only way I found the missing example was to find a forum post discussing the fact that it was missing which included, in a reply, a link to the author's blog. The blog was, of course, being "updated" and so the post in question was gone; it took a trip to Google's cache to get the download link on that page to get the source.
Read the articles! They're decent stuff--but the CD is a bad, bad joke. Since most, if not all, of the articles in this book are simply about implementing techniques that are well-covered in the literature, that detracts significantly from the book's usefulness and appeal.Game Programming Gems 7 (Game Programming Gems Series) Overview

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3ds Max 8 Bible Review

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3ds Max 8 Bible ReviewLooking through this book I saw immediately that it suffered from the same problem as it's predecessor: lack of thought to the student's learning path.
It is a problem that is almost universal to computer instructional guides do... lack of any educational theory in its writing. It does not guide the newcomer through the art of learning the software, but rather deals with issues as if one is going through the menu commands. The tutorials consistantly use elements and commands that one will not cover for another hundred por more pages, and the chapters are not designed to "build on the student's knowledge" but rather to give all information about a given cocept right from the beginning. Thus, I am taught how to personalise the user interface and use XREFs (external references) before I am told how to create even the simplest of objects.
I am an experienced 3D analylist, with knowledge of CAD and GIS, so I am not the least experienced of readers on this topic. Even so I found it frequently infuriating to attempt to learn this software using this book.3ds Max 8 Bible Overview

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2D Game Building for Teens Review

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2D Game Building for Teens ReviewI just finished the chapter entitled "Your First Game Project" and it was something of an ordeal. Duggan provides us with a series of game scripts which we are to either type into a text editor or the sample version of Torsion which is included on the book's CD. In at least two instances there are typos in this code which cause the intended effect not to occur. I found this out after a lengthy process of comparing the code I typed in with the code as it was printed in the book. I found them to be identical in every case, thus ruling out "operator error". I gave up on that strategy and decided to try and analyze the code to see if I could find any errors. I am not familiar with Torquescript or with C, but I did manage to find the typos and correct them (this thanks to a rudimentary familiarity with HTML and PHP). I can easily imagine how frustrating this would be for a newbie with zero technical knowledge. I am concerned that in subsequent chapters there will be errors that I will not know how to fix and the book will effectively become useless to me.
Because of these errors, I feel that 2D Game Building for Teens is a failure, and not an effective introduction to the Torque Game Builder. I bought the book in part to help me with evaluating the engine. If I used the book as my only yardstick, I would have moved on by now. Fortunately, the demo of the engine which comes on the CD has tutorials which serve to fill in some of the gaps. I could have easily downloaded this demo from Garage Games and saved myself the 20-odd dollars I spent on the book.2D Game Building for Teens OverviewBring your video game ideas to life with 2D Game Building for Teens! Written for anyone with an interest in creating video games, this book will show you how to use the Torque Game Builder, a simple drag-and-drop game engine, to make your very own games to play and share. Following easy-to- understand techniques and directions, you'll work your way through hands-on tutorials that help you put your new skills to use right away as you build simple to more complex games. Everything you need to build your own 2D game can be found in the book, including an introduction to the Torque Game Builder, how to design game graphics, basic programming and scripting techniques, and more. You'll even find an overview of the game development industry to give you an inside look at what it takes to make games, and information on the history of classic 2D games. If you've ever wanted to create your own video games, 2D Game Building for Teens will show you how.

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