A good DirectX 9 tutorial book
Hi guys.
I have spent a lot of time trying to find a good DirectX 9 book.
Unfortunatley all I can find are one or two sites on google.
Are there no good books??!?!
I need a book as I have a Dial up connection to the net.
Anyone knows a particularly good book?
I've used Frank D. Luna's "Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0" and Wendy Jones' "Beginning DirectX9".
I would recommend Luna's book as it is more in depth and has a nice math primer if you have been out of school for a while. The book doesn't actually touch on "game programing" as the title my suggest... this book will not teach you about game loops, keyboard input, creating a window etc. It is about Direct X and will bring you to a point of competency with directX if you already know what it assumes you to.
Jones' book however has some serious type-o's and a lot of the examples will not yield working code. But it covers some of the more basic game programing stuff, and has a bit on 2D which Luna's book doesn't.
BTW both have examples in C++, but you could probably modify them to fit your language of choice.
I would recommend Luna's book as it is more in depth and has a nice math primer if you have been out of school for a while. The book doesn't actually touch on "game programing" as the title my suggest... this book will not teach you about game loops, keyboard input, creating a window etc. It is about Direct X and will bring you to a point of competency with directX if you already know what it assumes you to.
Jones' book however has some serious type-o's and a lot of the examples will not yield working code. But it covers some of the more basic game programing stuff, and has a bit on 2D which Luna's book doesn't.
BTW both have examples in C++, but you could probably modify them to fit your language of choice.
I would skip any books not shader based. I love this book (older one mention above I believe):
"Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c A Shader Approach" by Frank D. Luna
Awesome book.
"Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c A Shader Approach" by Frank D. Luna
Awesome book.
Quote:Original post by Firecore
I have spent a lot of time trying to find a good DirectX 9 book.
Everyone has their own idea of what makes a good book. When I started writing mine (so long ago now I'm embarrassed to admit it), the only book out there was this piece of shit by Kovach with "awesome" in the title. That book was riddled with so many errors and bogus statements that I said (famous last words) "I could write a book better than that!". So I proceeded to write the book that I wanted.
Well, I'm 800+ pages into it now and while its not complete, its complete enough to be useful.
You can eat it one chapter at a time or you can download all the PDFs and chew on them for a considerable number of evenings.
Oh, and I'm making it available for free. You can't buy a dead tree edition, but you can print out all the PDFs. I was never doing it to make money, only to help other people figure out Direct3D in a consistent and comprehensive way.
You also have the advantage that you can ask the author (me) a question on gdnet and get an answer.
Follow the "Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" link below.
Cheers mate.
A free online book would be very useful.
Ill take a look right now.
A pdf shouldnt take long to download.
A free online book would be very useful.
Ill take a look right now.
A pdf shouldnt take long to download.
I read several books to get differant perspectives on the subjects
i would learn some basics about win32 before diving into DX if you havnt already
Charles Petzold - Programming Windows 5th Edition is all i needed to read and have been able to create pretty much any win32 app i want(gave me all the info i needed to point me in the right direction..MSDN did the rest)
DirectX books
Introduction to 3D Game Programming With DirectX 9.0
Premier Press Beginning DirectX 9
Premier Press Beginning Direct3D Game Programming
Shaders Books
CG Toolkit
^
(to get a good idea of the syntax wich is easy if you already know c/c++)
Advanced Lighting And Materials With Shaders - Wordware
Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists
its really easy once you understand it(i was expecting all sorts of trouble)
just my 2 cents
i would learn some basics about win32 before diving into DX if you havnt already
Charles Petzold - Programming Windows 5th Edition is all i needed to read and have been able to create pretty much any win32 app i want(gave me all the info i needed to point me in the right direction..MSDN did the rest)
DirectX books
Introduction to 3D Game Programming With DirectX 9.0
Premier Press Beginning DirectX 9
Premier Press Beginning Direct3D Game Programming
Shaders Books
CG Toolkit
^
(to get a good idea of the syntax wich is easy if you already know c/c++)
Advanced Lighting And Materials With Shaders - Wordware
Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists
its really easy once you understand it(i was expecting all sorts of trouble)
just my 2 cents
Agreed. Frank D Luna's "Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DX9", has been my bible now for a few months. Surprisingly for such a small book, its chock full of really good stuff and seems to have some room to throw in tasters of advanced topics such as Shaders.
Also from the same publishers is "DirectX9 Graphics" by Alan Thorn. I bought both books together and did find myself reading a particular topic from both books to make sure I had all the angles covered. As expected Thorn's book is more graphics based as he touches on animation, video and advanced texturing.
Saying that however, if money is tight, stick with Luna. His book has the edge.
One last book (which I also bought along with the other two), is "DirectX 9 User Interfaces" again by Thorn. This book gave me some good insights into designing DX9 driven GUI's, but it was a bit too Windows based for my taste, in that, the GUI he implemented still relied on Windows to do all the message handling. Although saying that, that's not a bad thing as such, since developing your own message handler can be a right pain in the ass. His book did point me in the right direction however.
Also totally agree about Petzold's book, if you're looking for a good Windows API book. Although to be honest, it's not essential to know Windows 100%, and I would go as low as 20% (perhaps lower) to start DX9, and his book is literally a bible on the subject. I've had it for ages and there are still some chapters (just a few mind) left unread.
Also from the same publishers is "DirectX9 Graphics" by Alan Thorn. I bought both books together and did find myself reading a particular topic from both books to make sure I had all the angles covered. As expected Thorn's book is more graphics based as he touches on animation, video and advanced texturing.
Saying that however, if money is tight, stick with Luna. His book has the edge.
One last book (which I also bought along with the other two), is "DirectX 9 User Interfaces" again by Thorn. This book gave me some good insights into designing DX9 driven GUI's, but it was a bit too Windows based for my taste, in that, the GUI he implemented still relied on Windows to do all the message handling. Although saying that, that's not a bad thing as such, since developing your own message handler can be a right pain in the ass. His book did point me in the right direction however.
Also totally agree about Petzold's book, if you're looking for a good Windows API book. Although to be honest, it's not essential to know Windows 100%, and I would go as low as 20% (perhaps lower) to start DX9, and his book is literally a bible on the subject. I've had it for ages and there are still some chapters (just a few mind) left unread.
Just wanted to amend / update my suggestion: go with the newer Luna book that Mike2343 recommended.
Its got everything the non- shader one does and the shader stuff is great. And as Dx9 is the last directX with the fixed function pipeline your gonna need to learn shader sometime.
edit: also "a shader approach" has some stuff that is not exactly shader related that the first book is lacking that is almost 100% necessary for game development; such as mesh hierarchies / bone animation, multi textured terrain etc.
Its got everything the non- shader one does and the shader stuff is great. And as Dx9 is the last directX with the fixed function pipeline your gonna need to learn shader sometime.
edit: also "a shader approach" has some stuff that is not exactly shader related that the first book is lacking that is almost 100% necessary for game development; such as mesh hierarchies / bone animation, multi textured terrain etc.
I just bought Luna's book. After searching for a decent Direct3D book, I was just thumbing through it at the book store and decided it seemed pretty good. He really does a good job explaining things.
The only downside of it is that it doesn't come with a CD, but you can still get the source from his web site.
Another thing that I like about it is that at the end of the chapters he has some problems for you to solve on your own, which I think is pretty cool.
The only downside of it is that it doesn't come with a CD, but you can still get the source from his web site.
Another thing that I like about it is that at the end of the chapters he has some problems for you to solve on your own, which I think is pretty cool.
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