Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C# illustrates the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process, author Lynn Harrison demonstrates many facets of the DirectX 9 software through clear-cut explanations and examples. Throughout the course of the book, you’ll develop an off-road driving game that brings such features as management of large scenes, environmental effects, and physics into play. To write the game, you’ll use cutting-edge technologies--C# and DirectX, and the .NET Framework--and you’ll go beyond simple graphics to explore audio, user input, artificial intelligence, and multiplayer design.

Lynn Thomas Harrison - Lynn Thomas Harrison is both a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer for Diamond Visionics Company (a visualization engineering company). He lives in Binghamton, New York with his wife Gerri and son Michael. Lynn has been active in the simulation and graphics industries for over twenty-two years.

Microsoft DirectX is an advanced suite of multimedia APIs built directly into Microsoft Windows operating systems. DirectX provides a standard development platform for Windows-based PCs by enabling software developers to access specialized hardware features without having to write hardware-specific code. DirectX was first introduced in 1995 and is the recognized standard for multimedia application development on the Windows platform. Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C# will illustrate the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process many facets of the DirectX 9 software will be demonstrated. The C# language is used to show the power of developing a game using a Rapid Application Development (RAD) language. During the course of the book, readers will learn to develop an off-road driving game that brings such features as management of large scenes, environmental effects, and physics into play.

Will illustrate the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process, many facets of the DirectX 9 software will be demonstrated.

Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C# illustrates the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process, author Lynn Harrison demonstrates many facets of the DirectX 9 software through clear-cut explanations and examples.

Throughout the course of the book, you’ll develop an off-road driving game that brings such features as management of large scenes, environmental effects, and physics into play. To write the game, you’ll use cutting-edge technologies—C# and DirectX, and the .NET Framework—and you’ll go beyond simple graphics to explore audio, user input, artificial intelligence, and multiplayer design.

Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design Using DirectX 9 and C# will illustrate the process of creating a simple 3D game engine. During this process, many facets of the DirectX 9 software will be demonstrated. The C# language is used to show the power of developing a game using a Rapid Application Development (RAD) language. In the course of the book, readers will learn to develop an off-road driving game that brings such features as management of large scenes, environmental effects, and physics into play.

Help is at hand!

The book is great and goes to a good level for the beginner. A little research would have revealed that the source code issue (which isn’t Mr Harrison’s fault) has been fixed on the zbuffer forums. A google of "thezbuffer Lynn Harrison Code" (without the quotes) should give you all you need.

Code is useless.

I purchased this book in hopes that I would be able to use the code for examples and as a guidance. However, the code is outdated and unusable. You can download a more updated version of it off of a "fan" website, though still doesn’t work. I contacted the author on the matter, and he said, "I’m afraid it is now becomes an exercise for you and the other readers to take the concepts in the book and work out the latest implementation. " I don’t see how one can work out the exercises on their own when they’re trying to learn the exercise itself!


The concepts in the book are a little useful, though without working code it seems so close yet so far away.

I would not recommend this book to those looking to learn from it.

Poor support for this book

The book although covering most basic topics only gives snipets of code required to build the working game.

Although the source code is available on the apress site its not complete or even compilable. There are lots of posts on the apress site forum about this, however it doesn’t look like there has been any reply to these, the author seems to not be working to fix this either. There are however some people that have actually edited the code themselves and have a semi working game available to download and compile. The book does cover basics but as this is a beginners guide I would suggest this is alot of work for actual beginners. Try "Microsoft Visual C#.NET 2003 (Kick Start S.)" its much better starting point in my opinion.

Code Does not Compile

This was a total waste of my money. If you plan on compiling the code then dont purchase this book. It will not compile and they have known it for a while. But refuse to release a code update.

If you dont believe this visit the Apress website. They know the code is bad.

Not an intro book.

If you’re looking at engines like axiom, ogre, irrlicht, etc... and wondering how they do that... THIS is the book for you.

Just make sure you’ve read at least an intro c# book and 1 or 2 direct3d books.

I’m loving this book, I’ve read 1/4th of it over the period of my workshift... just can’t put it down.

Things like octrees were completely confusing me, and lynn does a great job explaining it.

-1 star for not doing an octree implementation instead of a quad tree (so far... i haven’t read the whole book yet), oh and i saw a "GOTO" statement in his code, which always urks me in OOP.

A godsend.

For those who have already had an introduction into DirectX, this book is a godsend. If you know a little bit about DirectX and are ready to take the next step in designing your own engine this is the book to get. Just for the engine structural knowledge I have gained from reading this book it was well worth it, and that’s not including all of the implementation examples it gives you, such as Terrains, Meshes, Cameras, and Particle Effects to name a few that I liked. If you don’t know anything about DirectX, this book will probably be hard to follow. If you do know DirectX then this book will be very easy to follow. What isn’t in comments is explained enough (in my opinion) in the paragraphs preceding each class and method. If you are still having trouble understanding this book then I would recommend reading an ’Introduction to DirectX’ book, not an ’Introduction to Game Engine Design USING DirectX’ book. All in all, this book was extremely worth it. The author definitely has experience in this field. The book’s title may be deceiving to some, if you only read the first and last couple words and skip the 5 words in the middle. The previous reviews were incorrect about this book. If you have a little bit of understanding of DirectX, and would like to see how to implement some elements of a game, like the ones i mentioned previously(and there are more than that), then definitely buy this book.

Misleading Title

This book is not an introduction to DirectX, D3D, or C#. It is a very high-level introduction to game engine design. One could almost gain as much from saying "Compartmentalise your objects" several times a day.

The title implies that it will give you some help understanding how DirextX and C# work together to create a game engine. This is false. There is a lot of uncommented code in this book (half the first chapter of 26 pages is uncommented code). The explanations given are abstract to the point of being worthless to someone who truly needs an introduction, giving only light glances at the example code. It is impossible to get a clear picture of everything involved.

There are doubtless those for whom this book is the perfect level of abstract discussion. However, I believe this is the exception rather than the rule. Highly not recommended.

Could have been better, but not bad for what it is.

Lynn T. Harrison, Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design in C# (Apress, 2003)

The main problem with Lynn Harrison’s book is that, well, the code doesn’t compile. Which isn’t his fault; Microsoft made some changes in the version of the DirectX Software Development Kit that came out just after the book’s release that compromised the code. But nine months go by, and no code update? Not a promising sign.

That aside, this is a lucid, easy-to-understand book about, well, 3D Game Engine design. There could have been clearer explanation in some places, and it should have been noted at the start that the book wouldn’t be presenting the code in an order the reader could type it in himself (typing in book code will beat downloading it from the website, where learning is concerned, every time). But getting past those minor problems, this is a quite workable piece of writing, and anyone who’s been programming in C# for a few months should know enough to get the hang of the basics, and be able to pick up the rest from the book itself. Recommended. *** ½

Could have been better, but not bad for what it is.

Lynn T. Harrison, Introduction to 3D Game Engine Design in C# (Apress, 2003)



The main problem with Lynn Harrison’s book is that, well, the code doesn’t compile. Which isn’t his fault; Microsoft made some changes in the version of the DirectX Software Development Kit that came out just after the book’s release that compromised the code. But nine months go by, and no code update? Not a promising sign.



That aside, this is a lucid, easy-to-understand book about, well, 3D Game Engine design. There could have been clearer explanation in some places, and it should have been noted at the start that the book wouldn’t be presenting the code in an order the reader could type it in himself (typing in book code will beat downloading it from the website, where learning is concerned, every time). But getting past those minor problems, this is a quite workable piece of writing, and anyone who’s been programming in C# for a few months should know enough to get the hang of the basics, and be able to pick up the rest from the book itself. Recommended. *** ½

Read the Title Carefully

This book is focused on "Introduction to Game Design" and uses the C# language and DirectX 9 technology to illustrate the samples.

This book does not teach C# nor does it provide sufficient DirectX programming concepts.

If you are looking for a book that provides a good overview of how a 3D Game Engine works from the developer-perspective then this book is for you.

For those looking for a pre-built game engine upon which to learn then I suggest that you look somewhere else.

nice concept but poor direct X instruction

Obviously Lynn put a lot of work into the application used as the foundation for this book but unfortunate he did not put as much time into the instructional aspect of the application. Perhaps a good book for someone experienced with Direct X programming and who just want to migrate over to C# but not for a Direct X programming novices.

Exactly what I want.

I just browsed the book in a bookstore in California, and decided to order it from Amazon. However, I am very confused over the negative ratings here. I guess, we are all looking for different things, at different levels. I want to model physical objects, like cars, and show how they move in a 3D-world. My idea is that the best way to get a better understanding of cars and the laws of physics in 3 dimensions, is to develop a program for it! I think this is more fun than any other kind of programming. This book will suit me well. Perfect for my level.

OK, if you like to study uncommented code

I didn’t expect this book to teach me C# or DirectX, so no worries there.

The book, along with the code that you have to download from apress, shows how to design & code a game engine. Actually, it’s pretty weak on the design, since there are NO diagrams, and very little doc in the code, to help me understand what I’m reading. No explanation of relationships between the various objects & classes. What’s especially confusing is trying to find methods that are called by the sample code. Is the method in a base class? Do I need to override it? Is it in another object that I have to write...? If there’s one thing that might save this book, it would be more diagrams, such as UML.

After reading Chapter 1 and its code (which calls game engine methods but doesn’t explain them), I had to download the code and go through it line by line. I wrote out the method calls by hand, and now I finally understand the high-level structure of the engine and the sample game. But that doesn’t even include AI, input, lighting, sound, and how game objects are organized inside the engine. I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me.

VERY BAD BOOK

I found this book pretty much useless, the example code doesn’t work and the downloadable ’game’ doesn’t either. I suggest you check out the www.apress.com forums where there is ongoing discussion with the author about the problems with this title.
If I could give it 0 stars I would.

VERY BAD BOOK

I found this book pretty much useless, the example code doesn’t work and the downloadable ’game’ doesn’t either. I suggest you check out the www.apress.com forums where there is ongoing discussion with the author about the problems with this title.
If I could give it 0 stars I would.

Excellent Game Engine Development Introduction Book

This book is what most other books on the subject should be!At least at the beginer’s level.What excited my curiosity is the simplicity and elegance of the author’s writing. Using C# as his language resulted to an elegant engine design where other books fill space with windows initialization and other trivial tasks.It allows the reader to concentrate on the engine rather on the operating system. The only let down is the lack of a CD with the code although it can be found on the web site.At the end of the book the reader will have a simple object oriented extendable engine with console,gui,3d rendering,audio,simple ai & physics.Networking is mentioned and discussed in very brief manner.
Could well become a classic!
Overall an excellent starter book on game engines!!!

Excellent Game Engine Development Introduction Book

This book is what most other books on the subject should be!At least at the beginer’s level.What excited my curiosity is the simplicity and elegance of the author’s writing. Using C# as his language resulted to an elegant engine design where other books fill space with windows initialization and other trivial tasks.It allows the reader to concentrate on the engine rather on the operating system. The only let down is the lack of a CD with the code although it can be found on the web site.At the end of the book the reader will have a simple object oriented extendable engine with console,gui,3d rendering,audio,simple ai & physics.Networking is mentioned and discussed in very brief manner.
Could well become a classic!
Overall an excellent starter book on game engines!!!