Quote:Original post by programmermattc

Quote:Original post by Ravyne
But the "Teach yourself X in 21 days" books are always bad. They're the kind of book I thought was great when I was 14 because it taught you the basics and gave you lots of sample code, but in my older, wiser age have come to realize what utter crap they really are. As a rule, books with this type of title should be left to collect dust on a bookstore shelf where they belong.

What did you find wrong with those books in particular? Just curious to see if I see the same thing in it now that I'm a bit more proficient than I used to be at the language. Aren't the basics what he should focus on and now jumping right into some API?

I said they "teach the basics", not "they teach the basics well." They're certainly not the devil or anything, and I'm obviously painting with a dangerously broad brush... but they, in general, don't cover things to an acceptable depth (or at all) and the pacing, if you actually kept to the 21 days, is ridiculous. I've found them to be fairly more error-prone than "real" programming books.

Quote:

Quote:
XNA is fine if you are more Xbox-centric, otherwise SlimDX is the better choice if you're only concerned with the PC platform.

I wouldn't consider XNA an Xbox-centric API because you can specificially target the PC as well. While it was tuned down for Xbox, there are plenty of developers using XNA for PC-only games. I've never used SlimDX and the wiki makes it sound useful, but is biased against XNA GS in several spots and should be updated.

Its been said by many, many people that XNA is a console API that happens to support a matching subset on the PC. It *is* Xbox-centric (and "centric" here is a very carefully chosen word) The entire API is limited to what the Xbox can reproduce, and this often means artificially limiting what PC users are able to do.

Now, XNA is designed to be cross-platform and the limitations are, therefore, quite necessary -- no one argues that.

What I'm saying is that, if you're targeting the 360 at all, XNA makes sense (and is the only official hobbyist path); but, if you're only concerned about PC development then SlimDX is the better choice in terms of flexibility and feature-matching newer DirectX technologies than XNA can ever support.

I would highly recommend
Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach

Very good book used it at Uni

also for game design

Theory Of Fun
Rules Of Play

Thank you everyone for your very informative posts. I have added many of the suggested books to my purchase list.

I am going to stick with C# as my first (main) language if only to humor the idea that I will be able to learn it quicker than C++. I do plan on getting a handle on C++ as well. If I end up liking the programming route of things I may continue on from there, otherwise I'll use the knowledge as an alternative to whatever else I'm doing. :)


I appreciate all the help!