Are you ready to try your hand at programming games using C#? "Beginning C# Game Programming" is your ideal introductory guide?designed to jumpstart your experience with C# and DirectX 9. It includes the fundamental topics you?ll need to know and covers additional topics that you?ll find helpful along the way. Begin with a comprehensive look at programming with C#?from the basics of classes to advanced topics such as polymorphism and abstraction. Then it?s on to DirectX 9 as you learn how to create a basic framework and a Direct3D device. You?ll also cover DirectSound and DirectInput. Put your newfound knowledge to the test as you program a complete game!

Realy nice book

Realy nice book. I’m not new in C# programing but i’m new in in game programing. This book was very helpful to me.

Isn’t Good for Beginners or Anybody

If you’re a beginning programmer, or even a seasoned programmer, wanting to learn C#, then this book isn’t for you. This book is riddled with errors that no programmer learning a new language should be told aren’t errors. C# has never been able to drop-through in a switch statement, and the break statement in a default block has always been required. And, you can’t have multiple type specifiers in a for-loop header. It amazes me that this book made it through technical review, if it even went through at all. I’ll admit that I didn’t read through the entire book, but after seeing the switch and for-loop statements that were presented in this book, I almost felt sick to my stomach. I’ve been using C# since version 1.0, and I have to recommend staying as far away from this book as possible, maybe even burning it if you see it. If you really want to learn C#, try C# 3.0: A Beginner’s Guide (Beginner’s Guide (Osborne Mcgraw Hill)).

The BEST !!!

DON’T listen to those retards when they tell you that this book is not good.

The first 5 chapters will basically show you most of what you should need
to know about C# in order to get on your way into game programming.

The rest are Game Programing, Setting up a framework, DirectX9 etc...

I’ve found this book very informative and very entertaining as well, the author always try to use humor when making points which is a good thing..

I’ve learned a lot from this book and I recommend it to everyone else interested in learning the basics of Game programing...

Decent intro but outdated

This is a nice basic introduction to game programming but, as mentioned before, there are mistakes. The version of Directx code is out of date.

Usually, one can go on-line and get updates to the code from the developer that fix the mistakes and get the code working with later releases.

Unfortunately the author has not updated the code and it doesn’t look as though the web site has been touched for a couple of years. It is riddled with missing links and php errors. For that reason alone, I just can not recommend this book to people who don’t have much experience as developers.

Good book for the beginner

This book is intended for the beginner C# game developers only. In fact, the title of the book pretty much justifies the content it provides. It does a good job providing a good introduction to the C# language and how it can be used to for the game development.

Not for beginners

This book is not for anyone who hasn’t done programming before. After a nice introduction and history report, the author suddenly starts showing you charts with things like "ushort 2 0 is 65,535". And says stuff like "Using floats, you can represent the numbers 1.0 and 1.00000012, but you can’t represent any number between." What?! What does ushort mean? What are floats?! I must be just stupid, because when I read "This book approaches the topic of C# for a total beginner", I thought it meant it was for a noob like me.

Someone Kick These People

I have read a lot of Premier books in my days. One thing is constant through all of their books: they are riddled with errors. They are not complex errors that only an advanced programmer would catch - they are stupid mistakes that an author who reviewed his work would catch. What’s worse, most of the authors of these game programming books have about as much experience as I do - and I haven’t even worked in the field yet! For a book that spends the first 5 chapters talking about the C# language, you would think the author would realize you can’t have drop-through in switch-statments and that you can’t have multiple type specifiers in a for-loop header. I read these books hoping for some entertainment and to learn some new skills. I definitely get a laugh! I will say that there are some decent programming books by this joke of a publisher, but it is like navigating a mine-field. My only suggestion to beginners is to go to a site like gamedev and see what they recommend. And for the experienced programmer, I don’t recommend Premier books at all. Go for a book that is not split between the language and the gaming library. If you really want, I will give you some definite reads for anyone serious about getting a head-start. For such a large, growing industry, you would think there would be better books out there. All in all, I would not put this book down entirely - it does try to present the language and still has time to cover direct3D at some point. The reality is, though, the world is not ready for C# gaming yet and anyone serious about beginning game programming should find a book using C/C++. I hope this review has not aroused too much spite on my behalf.

Great 2d in directx3d

What you will learn:
how to setup your devices (3d, sound, etc)
how to use sprites in 3d (albeit you have to convert his sprite implementation to directx9.0c ... which is somewhat complicated, but not impossible)

what you won’t learn:
using 3d meshes, 3d animations, terrain, etc.

This really is an introductory book, and i highly recommend it for the beginning C#/MDX programmer. Most of you will find it too novice for your tastes, but even though I gave up trying to convert Ron’s sprites to directx 9.0c, i still learned a ton from all of the chapters up until the sprite drawer. (all of which compiled fine until using Direct3DX.dll)

Pick up the book if you’re new, if you’re new to MDX... but you know DX... skip this book.

Great 2d in directx3d

What you will learn:

how to setup your devices (3d, sound, etc)

how to use sprites in 3d (albeit you have to convert his sprite implementation to directx9.0c ... which is somewhat complicated, but not impossible)



what you won’t learn:

using 3d meshes, 3d animations, terrain, etc.



This really is an introductory book, and i highly recommend it for the beginning C#/MDX programmer. Most of you will find it too novice for your tastes, but even though I gave up trying to convert Ron’s sprites to directx 9.0c, i still learned a ton from all of the chapters up until the sprite drawer. (all of which compiled fine until using Direct3DX.dll)



Pick up the book if you’re new, if you’re new to MDX... but you know DX... skip this book.

Disappointed

This book is my introduction to C# and although the style of writing is reasonably clear there are enough errors or omissions in the accompanying software on the CD to make the examples difficult for a beginner. The examples are created for use with DirectX 9.0b, and although there is a disclaimer in the book saying that an update for 9.0c will be forthcoming it has not happened. Emails to the author go unanswered. Some of the code has errors and will not compile, even though I have gone to the trouble of removing DirectX 9.0c and replacing it with 9.0b. I eventually was able to find and fix the error in example 6.3, but only after considerable effort that was not of benefit in learning the subject material.
In summary, I do not recommend this book.

Best intro book, very comfortable to understand, very precise

I think it is the best intro book in the market. I already bought several C# intro books, but all of them always miss something while explaining topics, but this one very esily shows what the things are created for, how they are done, with easy to understand examples. I think the author has a brilliant talant in teaching, alredy predicting in his book the way you are thinking while understanding things. If only this book were more comprehencive, may be it would be the best C# book ever written. Anyway, before reading any other other C# books, I would recommend reading this book first.

Good for beginners

This is a good book for people looking to get their feet wet in C# and learn a little about DirectX. However, this is not recommended for persons past the beginner stage. The book shows limited amounts of DirectX and DirectX extensions. If programming games intrigues you and know nothing about a programming language, this is a great start. This book shows the beginning steps of C# using SOME DirectX.

This book is a good buy

I already read this book and I must say that I am more then satisfied. This book is not for people who never wrote a line of code but if you already know how to do basics like conditions, loops, switch etc. in some language you should be able quickly understand how to do it in C# (this is meaning of first couple chapters). After that the fun begins and you are going to play with Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound and finally you will make an interesting spaceshooter game. I think, this book is well written but I must lower rating by 1 stars becouse the source code is made for DirectX 9.0b and sometoimes didn’t work with 9.0c. Ron Penton promised that he will update it someday but it looks like he already forgot :-(
Anyway try it, it will help you lot and you should instal Managed DirectX 9.0b from the CD and everything will be alright.

Great 1st book for learning C# and DirectX

You will probably want some prior programming experience to make the first 5 chapters easier to digest. I’m a seasoned C/C++ programmer, and I was able to learn C# quickly with the help of this book (although admittedly C# is very much like C++). I knew a little about DirectX, but even if I didn’t this book did a great job of starting basic and building on that foundation. What I like most about this book is the author goes step by step through a simple framework which gets Direct3D up and running. In about 150 lines of code, the author manages to make a Direct3D Windows application that does something. For Windows and Direct3D this is no small accomplishment given their complexity. Other books I have seen stick the Direct3D initialization into a helper library and never bother to explain it. Not here. Each line is explained well. This book will not, however, teach you advanced Direct3D topics. Only 1 chapter describes Direct3D, but it does a good job. You will want to get another book after this one to learn more advanced topics.

If you know nothing about C# or DirectX, but have some programming experience, this book is for you. The title is very fitting of the contents. Highly recommended.

Great Intro Book to C# and Game Development

This book is a great book for people starting out in game development. It covers all of the basic topics and leaves you wanting to explore all the possibilites with DirectX and C# game development. I would reccomend this book for people wanting to learn DirectX with C#, or anyone that is interested in getting into game development with C#. Game Development is a huge topic and this book is a great "Beginning Book" that just cracks the tip of the iceberg of game development, teaching fundamentals and leaving you wanting to explore with your new found knowledge.

Great book

I bought this book because I needed to learn C# really fast, but then I noticed that the only review of this book on amazon said it was terrible, so I got kinda worried. But it turns out that I was worried over nothing, because this book is great! It teaches almost every topic I needed in an easy and playful manner, so I never got bored or confused. The book even goes as far as teaching how to write a complete arcade game, something that most books don’t even bother doing! 5 Stars, this is an excellent book, and I was able to learn C# in a very short time.

A good intro to C# game programming

"Beginning C# Game Programming" is Ron Penton’s third effort in game book-authorship. It’s a ground-up tutorial on the C# programming language, starting from the obligatory "Hello World" program and ending with a pretty rudimentary "spaceship at the bottom of the screen shooting at things coming down at you" game called "Generic Space Shooter 3000".

If you’re already an old hand at similar languages like Java or C++, then the first half of the book won’t be much more than a refresher for you. The first half of the book covers simple screen output, followed by primitive types, operators, looping, classes, arrays and file streams. It covers these topics fairly quickly (all in about 120 pages), so you won’t be spending much time on each topic. Apart from one significant exception, the language tutorial is well-organized.

The "significant exception" raises its head with chapter 6 (creating a project). After spending 120 pages learning how to write, compile, and execute small bits of C# code, chapter 6 shows you how to set up a project in SharpDevelop (a free C# programming environment). If you need help compiling your code in chapters 1-5, the only help you’ll get is a brief mention of Visual Studio.NET, SharpDevelop, or the C# command-line compiler. If you invest in a copy of "Beginning C# Game Programming", I recommend that you read chapter 6 first. Then go back to chapters 1-5. Finally, head over to chapter 7 and build yourself a space-shooter for the rest of the book.

The space shooter chapters are well-done, with good coverage of doing directX graphics in C#. The topics covered are a bit large for such a simple example game (alpha-blending, force-feedback, direct3D), but this is done with the understanding that you’ll be wanting to write a more significant game than "Generic Space Shooter 3000" by the time you’re done with the book.

If you want a good "ground-up" start with C# game programming, "Beginning C# Game Programming" is a good start. It takes you from the very beginning to a complete arcade game.

Just don’t read it in order.