Hi, Is anyone else sick to death with the amount of errors in Andre Lamothe''s books. I can only really complain about TOTWGPG but from what I''ve heard his Game Programming For Dummies or whatever was as bad. His code is riddled with errors throughout the book and when learning DX it makes it near impossible. It took me a long time to doubt the books code. I just assumed it would be checked and the error would be on my side. Does he just write the code out of his head and not bother testing? Or is it some elaborate scheme to make it more difficult to learn game programming (as in, only people who spot and correct the bugs deserve help in learning game programming for showing initiative). Oh well, I just wanted a moan after I discovered another fault of his that had been getting on my nerves. Strangely he was getting logical AND and mod mixed up. Regards, David Stubbs

Weird, all of the code in TOTPWG compiles fine for me...

Pg 359, 3/4 down.

_lseek(file_handle, -(int)(bitmap->bitmapinfoheader.biSizeImage),SEEK_END);

Hmm, I can''t find no _lseek in the Windows API, _llseek is in their though?

Pg 290, _RGB16565, messes up colour.

Pg 367, First section of code, line 2, should read

dest_rect.top=y;

I think it read

dest_rect.top=x

Cant really tell though coz i''ve scribbled over the error.

Their are more but I cant be bothered looking through the book for bits i''ve corrected any longer.


Regards,
David Stubbs

if you use the source that comes with the book it will work fine
rather than using the source from the book
I found that out when I was trying to learn very basic windows
programming from that book. I was shocked to discover that
the code in the source was different (cause I thought he would
have cut and pasted, oh well)

try to use the code from the book just to get a basic idea
then use the source when stuff stops working

later


-arsenius

after three days without programming, life becomes meaningless

the source on the cd compiles fine.

JoeMont001@aol.com www.polarisoft.n3.net

Works fine for me... If the masses are fine then maybe you should go email andre about it (I did, and we came to the conclusion that Borland couldn''t do it... at least, Borland 4.02 and Borland 4.54 couldn''t ). I can''t remember his email but I think it was something like CEO@xgames3d.com... you might want to check by his site xgames3d.com to check that though


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Yeah he has messed up the code in some parts of the book, but I understand the guy. If you ever tried to explain something over icq you understand what I mean, you think something, write something else

And when his code fails I usally look in the SDK documents, cuz my cd is so damn corrupt

Chris - Yeah you got the mail right m8
He also got necron@xgames3d.com

Diemonex Games
hades.lodiz.nu/~mnb or
www.tsok.nu/diemonex

You''re correct, n0p3x, that there ARE errors within the code that he includes on the CD. However, I disagree with you in some ways. You make the errors within the book sound much more worse than they truly are- hell, I''m already finished all the way through TOTWGPG''s chapter 8, and I seem to be learning quite fine, actually. I agree with you, that there is no excuse for errors in the code when it has been shipped out to the public. You pay good money ($49.99US, $74.95CAN) for the TOTWGPG book, and you shouldn''t have to deal with errors- but you''re going to have to. All things have errors in one way. There are errors, but not enough to hinder the learning experience to the point of quitting. Not in my opinion, at least.

By the way, I also have the DUMMIES book that he wrote, and the the code still contains errors (In fact, Andre copied a lot of the code from the dummies book into the TOTWGPG). It doesn''t have MORE errors, but the code in TOTWGPG, I find, is much faster and simply better. I just thought I would let you know- don''t get me wrong though, his DUMMIES book is great if you like a shrinked version of TOTWGPG (shrinked as in, less explanation, less examples, less everything).

There are three types of people in the world; those who can count, and those who can't.