Recommend a good book for game coding and dirext x

Can anyone recommend a good book on direct x programming and game programming,

I'm currently interested in doing 2d tile mapping stuff and 2d engine designs.

thanks.

Kong.

Exactly what I'm interested in and looking for! I hope someone replies to this. But if it helps, kkong, there's this guy named Simon Price with a website at...

http://www.vbgames.co.uk/

...where he has some DirectX tutorials. When I have a few hours of straight time to block off, I'll look at them, but I think it's mainly 3D, and like you, I'm looking for 2D, though I wouldn't think making DirectX 2D FROM 3D would be all that hard, but I don't know.

I purchased a book that a peer recommended to me but I have not read it yet.

Visual Basic Game Programming with DirectX


JDT

Try this link.

Sorry, try <a href = "http://r1.us.rmi.yahoo.com/rmi/http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp/rmivars%3ftarget=_top?WRD=directx&userid=0NF9J0209P&sourceid=00339421583948693611&bfdate=08%2D11%2D2001+17%3A22%3A49">THIS</a> link.

JDT

tip... dont buy sams teach yourself vb game programming.. i heard it's a horrible book that teaches you nill...

B-b-b-bob the Builder

I have purchased a total of three Sam’s books, the first two were VB and C++, and the third was for SQL. The first two books were horrible to say it nicely. The last one though was decent. Personally though, I would recommend a different publisher. I did see one the other day that I wrote the name down cause it looked interesting but I didn’t have the money on me at the time to buy...it was something like swords and chips or something like that. hehe I know that doesn’t help much. Maybe a search on a book website will help. Something with the keyword swords and gaming...found it at Walden’s originally.

Sort

quos deus vult peredere prius dementat

Hi thanks for the links etc, I`m starting to get a good idea of what I need to use.

I just by chance have picked up the book you all mentioned as bad... (it was a good price so I had to go for it, even though the title's a bit corny). I've only read the opening chapter (no code yet) but it seems to make sense!

Was their nothing good in it at all????
I want to purchased another book though on possibly just direct x, and or gaming theories.

Kong.

what was the book?

-The Builder

Here's the outline for my upcoming book that is due out in January-2002, Visual Basic Game Programming with DirectX. I don't know what book the previous poster was referring to, because this book's title is unique and it's not out yet. I know Wayne Freeze is working on a similar book too. I've posted a few demos to various threads here showing off some of my code already. I'll let the outline speak for itself.

PART I: Introducing Visual Basic and DirectX
Chapter 1: Game Programming Basics
Chapter 2: Getting Started With Visual Basic
Chapter 3: Visual Basic Programming in a Nutshell
Chapter 4: Getting to Know The Windows API
Chapter 5: Optimizing Visual Basic With Objects
Chapter 6: Supercharging Visual Basic With DirectX

PART II: The Nuts &amp; Bolts of Game Development
Chapter 7 : Break Out The Bitmaps
Chapter 8 : Supersonic Sprites
Chapter 9 : Let The Animation Begin
Chapter 10 : Diving Into DirectDraw
Chapter 11 : Playing Sound and Music with DirectX Audio
Chapter 12 : Getting a Handle on User Input
Chapter 13 : Building The DirectX Game Library

PART III : Hardcore Game Programming
Chapter 14 : DirectX Graphics and Direct3D
Chapter 15 : Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 16 : Networking with Sockets and DirectPlay
Chapter 17 : Multiplayer Client/Server Programming
Chapter 18 : Effective Game Design Techniques

PART IV – Complete Game Projects
Chapter 19 : Block Attack: Classic Arcade Game
Chapter 20 : Warbirds 1944: Scrolling Shooter Game
Chapter 21 : Sword of Shanara: Role-Playing Game
Chapter 22 : Conquest Wars: Turn-Based Strategy Game
Chapter 23 : Star Quest: Space Exploration Game
Chapter 24 : Armored Assault: Real-Time War Game

PART V - Appendix
Appendix A : Visual Basic Game Library Reference
Appendix B : DirectX for Visual Basic Reference
Appendix C : Windows API Reference
Appendix D : DirectInput Keyboard Codes
Appendix E : Recommended Reading
Appendix F : Visual Basic Gaming Sites
Appendix G : What’s On The CD-ROM?


Regards,
Jonathan S. Harbour

JS--

Your table of contents mentions using DirectDraw. Does that mean you will be using DirectX 7? Why not DirectX 8?

Take a look at chapter 14 again. :-)

Regards,
Jonathan S. Harbour

Your book sounds good JSharbour, I might just take a look.

the book I purchased intially was:
sams teach yourself vb game programming in 21 days.

It's not too bad a book and some of the examples are useful if you want to write single screen games, and their is a basic introduction to DX at the back of it, on the CD it said their was the DX7 SDK files... but they weren't on their??

Anyway I was more interested in Scrolling 2d stuff. I've been looking at a lot of the turtorials on the DX sites mentioned here and have been reading up on game programming theories.

I`m just about to start coding a 2d tile engine in DX.

Kong.

i got that sams book

its not a very good book..it doesnt really explain how to do things properly and the game it shows u to make are very very old games

there are no diablo or even close style rpg examples or racin games

the best it gets is makin pingpong and using a bit of directx which i dont get

diablo, you must be kidding.

It's a game many programmers worked on for many months (maybe even years) and you want the source code explained in VB, line by line ??????

Books are about principles/techniques not about showing the source code...

Sortarius,

The book you are referring to is "Swords &amp; Circuitry: A Designers Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games" by the same publisher I work for, Premier Press (formerly Prima-Tech). They're also working on a book dedicated to just programming RPG's, which should be cool.

Regards,
Jonathan S. Harbour

p.s. I was a newbie to VB game programming a few years back, and was working with an online buddy named Renzo Calderon on a Star Control game in VB. We never finished it and I lost track of him. Anyone know him? I think he lived in Peru.

I've read every VB game programming book in existence, and found that the absolute best one ever was written for VB3 (with support for VB4 in a later version). It was called "Black Art of VB Game Programming." I liked the book because I was a total newbie and it answered a lot of questions for me...like how to use WaveMix and joysticks, and included a ton of games at the end. Very, very cheesy stuff..but for a newbie, it was very helpful when learning VB. For instance, when I say "cheesy" I mean that the book used Image and PictureBox controls, with pre-drawn masks. Hey, not bad for a really old book...but today there is no need for that with code to generate masks on the fly (not to mention DirectX).

"Sam's Teach Yourself Game Programming with VB in 21 Days" is great for absolute beginners, but it is not very good if you already know VB. The back cover talks about a "commercial-quality RPG" in the book. Well, it turns out that the game uses an array of PictureBox controls, representing "rooms" in the RPG game. My, oh, my.....I was embarassed for the author for making a claim like that. The book doesn't touch DirectDraw or Direct3D....just DirectSound for mixing waves. Graphics are totally limited to moving controls around, with some use of BitBlt here and there. Again, total beginner's stuff if you already know VB....but if you are starting out, I guess it's a cool book. I found it next to useless. It seemed like an app programmer's guide to writing sucky games.

Regards,
Jonathan S. Harbour