I bought Programming Role Playing Games with Directx by Jim Adams, but I can only get some of the source code to work. In about Chapter 6, or 7 (or 9), one of the header files tries to load dplay9.h and I can't find it. I searched my comp and in the DirectxSDK(August) I can only find dplay8.h. Even when I google for dplay9.h nothing comes up. And when I changed it to dplay8.h I got a buttload of errors. Please help. P.s. I'm installing the October SDK right now if that would help.

As far as I know Direct Play was eliminated from the DirectX 9.0 SDK. It's still available in the Dx9 SDK but as part of the DirectX 8.0 legacy headers (i.e. dplay8.h). Hope this helps.

So does that make my book useless?

Seeing as I haven't read the book I can't say wether it is or not. You could simply search and replace all dplay9.h references with dplay8.h, which may fix the problems. Even though the examples may not work, there may be valuable information about structuring, code design, and tool development which may be of use.