Hi there, before flaming me for asking a stupid question like "whats a good book to learn Dx8" when a list of books with reviews can be found on this very site, please consider that the reviewing crowdd rarely writes very much about there own background knowledge, which is problematic for me. It seems that everybody today is C people, struggling to learn C++ and OOP. Well, im sort of coming from the "other side", im a Computer science and Mathematics student pretty well fluent in Java. In java, im pretty confident in AWT/Swing(ie the Java equivalent of MFC), and have also done some programs needing basic graphics capability. I even participated in making to small games, one a result of a OOP framework for Arcade games, which we, to show it was working, fleshed out into a breakout clone. I also participated in making a Checkers game, with decent AI, GUI etc. Recently ive taking an interest in C++, which i mostly find compelling because of operator overloading, MFC, DirectX, and the way it compiles to a native executable without using special compilers. Since ive been "raised" strictly too use OOP "everywhere" i found alot of C++ tutorials confusing, because they weighted explaining OOP principles(which i already understand) above the rest(like messing with pointers, C++ code/naming conventions etc). But now im starting to catch on to C++, and would really like to look into game programming and DirectX programming. But i would really appreciate a book that took a strong OOP view on how to structure programs and didnt have "C-style" examples. So the obvious question is, which book should that be? I would strongly prefer one that covered DX8, since there seems to have been some major changes in DX8 compared to DX7. Finally, it doesnt need to bother explaining the mathematics of the 3d graphics too much, since i already had some courses in linear algebra. Thanks for any help you can give, and for reading this ridicously long post. PS: I use Visual C++ 6.0 for all my C++ programming so it would be really nice with a book that did the same.

"The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming" .. although Prima-Tech seems to have dissapeared ( site with updates to the book is not active I suppose ).

Thanks, thats what i call a fast response
I already noticed this book on Amazon but wasnt sure if it was 100% DX8 or if it dabbled in deprecated methods and just included DX8 SDK on the CD(already have DX8 SDK
But from checking the Prima-Tech homepage i can see that is not the case.
Just too bad it has such an *ugly* cover, but i guess thats Prima-Techs fault

"I probably wouldn''t advise Direct 3d Game Progamming. "

Do you mean the "zen" or the "beginning" book?
Anyway, as stated earlier i really dont want to learn what goes on behind the scenes(or at least not start by learning it), i like OOP, and that also means i like the idea of just taking nicely encapsulated code other people have made and use it myself.
Of course, you should always have a good idea of how the things you are using are implemented, but that part comes after you''ve learned how to use it.(This might be more true for Java where the classes you use for the foundation of your program is always "safe", they dont really make alot of assumptions that you need to know about, from what ive seen of C++ this is usually not the case(accessing arrays out of bounds comes to mind). So perhaps understanding whats going on behind the scenes is more important here).
But thanks for the warning all the same

What exactly is the difference between these 2 books? They sound pretty much alike. Also reviews of them on Amazon differs wildly.(i checked amazon.com,.co.uk,.de).