Beginning Direct3D Game Programming by Wolfgang Engel, Amir Geva
Published March 2001
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Amazon Sales Rank: 119,109
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I've been waiting for a long time for a decent Direct3D book to refer beginners to, and this is one of the best so far. On the other hand, being the "best" among Direct3D books really isn't saying much, and this book is far from perfect.
Overall, this book covers a lot of good material, including some of the more advanced aspects of DX8, and the code itself is pretty solid. Unfortunately, the explanations can be a little hard to understand, partially due to the fact that the author isn't a native English speaker (the chapters on physics and collision detection don't suffer this problem, though, being written by someone else), so you may find yourself having to reread things several times.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have some game programming and DirectX knowledge, but I would recommend it for someone who wants to get up to speed on the latest version of D3D, especially if they have used a previous version of Direct3D - or even another 3D API - or if they are willing to put the effort into working through the chapters to dig out the (truly useful) information they contain.
I'm just now starting out with 3D programming but have done DDraw, DSound, DMusic, and limited DInput in the past. I was having trouble with the SAMS Direct3D section of their DirectX book, so I bought this one. I bought the first edition because I wanted the Quake stuff in it. It's pretty good so far, but I'm still in Chapter5. I've found some problems with the first samples on the book and no explanation of them anywhere on the net. Problem1: You need the DX8.0 sdk installed to work with the samples. DX8.1 changed the common files, breaking his stuff. Problem2: Some of his stuff is broken....Go to www.Direct3d.net to get the working versions. My bet is this stuff is fixed in the 2nd edition since it goes over DX9.
In short, this book should be called 'Beginning Direct3D Game Programming if you know 3D already from another book'. Examples are poorly explained at best, that is if he even bothers to explain something at all. The book flow is hard to follow, and sometimes I found I had to re-read something several times to understand what he was trying to say (english isn't his first language). If you are going to claim something is for 'Beginners' try to spend a little time explaining the basics next time. Either get Zen or "Programming a Role Playing Game in DirectX"
It's a good book but it isn't presented very well, the author obviosly knows what h'es talking about, but doesn't know a good way to present his knowledge to beginers. But, it does have some good information.
don't waste your time or money on this one...spend the extra $20 or so & get the Zen of direct3d game programming. It's a far superior book which covers everthing that this one does...and then some.
I dont really know how to put this book. Theres alot of information in it, But the way it is presented is very hard to understand. The author does not explain the code very well. This book in my opinion scares people new to DirectX and Game programming. If your looking for a beginners book try Andre LaMothe's "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" or Peter Walsh's "The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming". By the way the last two chapters of this book cover Game Physics and Collision Detection written by Amir Geva which are very informative. (Probably the reason i gave it a bit higher rating)
While this book does have some good information on D3D, its hidden in the bad english of the author. Most of the source material is poorly commented (and in german), as well as being straight rip offs of the DX sample programs. The code formatting in the book is horrible with seemingly random indentions. This makes the matrices that are in the code much more difficult than they need to be.
There is a section on Quake 3 (MD3) model formats, but it seems incomplete as well. The sample program doesn't even load a complete quake model, but about one-third of a player model at most, as well as not texturing it.
This is a very average book, and I am surprised at the number of good reviews that it has received.
The author’s English is not very good (I believe that English is his second language) which makes most of the examples in the book difficult to follow.
I purchased this book because the foreword by Andre Lamothe (a very good game programming author) made it out to be really good. However, if you purchase this book expecting something of the same quality as Tricks of Windows Game Programming Guru's you are in for a big disappointment.
It's crap if your are a beginer. Most of the examples do not work and it's hard to follow. I recommend buying "The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming" instead. (definitely for beginers).
Trust me if you want to save your bread errmmm money.
Finally, a good book for when DirectX 8 is your first exposure to DirectX. I've been struggling with DirectX 8 for a while, and while the documentation is complete, there is simply nothing there (other than a few very simple examples) to tell you how to turn DX8 into a complete game.
This book bridges that gap. As others have mentioned, anyone with previous DirectX or other 3D game programming experience will find this book redundant, but hey, the name of the book is Beginning Direct3D Game Programming. It was exactly what I needed to start to make sense of the API.
The downside: The main author, Wolfgang Engel, is German, and English is his second language. While he's very good at it, he's not perfect, and througout the book you'll see some stilted grammar and one word substituted for another. For instance, one sentence starts with "Let me be more precious:" when he obviously meant to write "Let me be more precise:". This is actually a reflection more on LaMothe as the editor of the book than it is on Engel, really.
But none of these grammatical mistakes obscure the meaning. There will be other, more in-depth books on DirectX 8 published later this year, including the official one by Microsoft, but if you can't wait and you're starting from the beginning, I see no reason not to pick up this book.
I have 5 books on 3D game programing and this is the one that helped me the most. Now I understand the first four. If you've started with other books and still don't get it, check this one out.
There are many things included in this book. From the basic window to a multitextured cube. You can also take a Quake 2/3 object and insert it in your program. That's awesome! But the inconvenient is that you don't have all feature of directx included (like directplay, directsound,directmusic, etc. If you want a full loaded book on directx , buy "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming", but watch out, it's not a direct3d book , it's an entire directX book with all features!
I just got this book last week and I am a rookie at D3D programming but it seems to be well structured and easy to follow. Even though I only had a quick glance through it, it seems to tell the reader the different techniques and effects used in q3 and other 3D games. Also, for example, he tells the user how to port 3d studio max work to work in DirectX.
Probably not for the advanced D3D programmer but still a good referenence and a good starting place for a beginner!
Bad though that his support weak site is not continuing the vertex shader tutorial because he is using it over at gameinstitue I think this refers to chap 7 or 8.
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