I've never read the book, so I can't comment about the content, but by the sound of it, some of you didn't like it too much.

Here's a question - what would you like discussed in a book on game programming? At what level - beginners, intermediate or expert?

If the book was for beginners, then you couldn't get anything usable in a small amount of space (and be able to fully explain something).

Experts would have an existing knowledge of things that make it easier on the writer to use technical methods that won't make you shake your head and ask WTF.

Intermediate is great, but you start to leave out the beginners, and assume the reader has some knowledge to follow along.

So I ask again, what would you like to see in a book? How would you like to see it organized?

Jim Adams

- The pieces brought together to make a small sample game that showed animated sprites.
- Info on adding multiplayer support (not just basic DirectPlay setup, that's fairly easy, but how to organize data to be sent between players) would have been nice.
- Some info on adding configurable AI support and campaign creation via scripts

As far as the level - intermediate to advanced.

I'm not asking for much am I?

I like that question. Well, I would really like to see more on bitmaps. This seems to be the one aspect that keeps beginners from leaping to intermediate status. Too often I get to a part of a book where they say "see the code on the cd" and don't explain what I consider a key part for myself.

I have a TNT2 which supports 16 & 32 bit colors, but haven't been able to view some of the examples from Lamothes new book such as converting 24 bit to 32 bit or 24 to 16. The screen comes up for a split second and crashes! Also, all of the utilities are corrupt and I've yet to hear back from them about a replacement cd.

Back to the topic though, I for one would like to have my hand held through a complete game that isn't another asteroids game. I'm not looking for a Q3 game to make, but how about something else? It seems like every book does an asteroids/space game. I would like to go step by step and get the reason why certain things need to be done. Instead of implementing the aspects of say DX in one project, you see how to use different interfaces in a seperate project, but too often they never mesh so you don't see how to use them together in one project.

Personally I found Lamothes latest to be the best book yet. It contains WGPFD with updated material and a lot of useful new stuff. He has helped me more with this one book than all the other books combined so far when it comes to games. The very first game programming book I bought a couple of years ago almost screwed me up for life. It was the "Win32/DX3 Game Development" book. There was so much stuff left out, not to mention that the final products he develops turn out like crap! Well, thats my beginning game programmer opinion. I just got my MCP in MFC development but game programming is a whole different world! I love it.

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