Erik Yuzwa (Calgary, AB) has been a professional computer programmer for over seven years since he graduated from University of Calgary in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. In 1995 he joined Wazoo Enterprises, Inc. and is now Lead Game Programmer/Designer. In 2001, he added Game Programming Educator to his schedule in which he instructs the game development process at the University of Calgary Continuing Education.

Erik Yuzwa (Calgary, AB) has been a professional computer programmer for over seven years. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. In 1995, he founded Wazoo Enterprises Inc. to pursue creating game programming related tutorials and articles. Concurrently, he holds a position at EnCana Corporation as a Web Systems Architect, where he uses his Java, ASP/Cold Fusion, C#/C++, and other programming skills to create real solutions with various clients. Since 2001, he has been teaching in the game development process at the University of Calgary Continuing Education.

Welcome to the exciting world of game programming! If you’re already familiar with the C++ programming language and want to learn how to program games, this book is for you. Game Programming in C++: Start to Finish will help you learn how to turn your own game fantasies into playable realities! Over the course of the book, you’ll learn the popular techniques and practices behind today’s games. Not only will you add a lot of theory to your game programming toolkit, but you’ll also create a small basic game from scratch ? SuperAsteriodArena. While you’ll focus on using the SDL and the OpenGL libraries to learn game programming, you’ll also learn the essential Windows principles that you’ll need to create just about any kind of game with any other API such as DirectX. This easy-to-follow book takes current game programming information and filters it down to a practical level. Each chapter and subsection builds upon previous chapters and topics in a tutorial format, allowing you to progress at your own pace. As you work through the book, you’ll build the SuperAsteriodArena game, beginning with engine creation and 3D programming with SDL and OpenGL. From there you’ll move on to animation effects, audio, collision detection, networking, and finalizing the game. A variety of tools are used throughout, including Visual Studio and OpenGL, SDL, Autodesk 3ds Max, and the Audacity sound tool.

Welcome to the exciting world of game programming! If you?re already familiar with the C++ programming language and want to learn how to program games, this book is for you. Game Programming in C++: Start to Finish will help you learn how to turn your own game fantasies into playable realities! Over the course of the book, you?ll learn the popular techniques and practices behind today?s games. Not only will you add a lot of theory to your game programming toolkit, but you?ll also create a small basic game from scratch ? SuperAsteriodArena. While you?ll focus on using the SDL and the OpenGL libraries to learn game programming, you?ll also learn the essential Windows principles that you?ll need to create just about any kind of game with any other API such as DirectX. This easy-to-follow book takes current game programming information and filters it down to a practical level. Each chapter and subsection builds upon previous chapters and topics in a tutorial format, allowing you to progress at your own pace. As you work through the book, you?ll build the SuperAsteriodArena game, beginning with engine creation and 3D programming with SDL and OpenGL. From there you?ll move on to animation effects, audio, collision detection, networking, and finalizing the game. A variety of tools are used throughout, including Visual Studio and OpenGL, SDL, Autodesk 3ds Max, and the Audacity sound tool.

Game Programming in C++: Start to Finish takes current game programming information and filters it down to a practical level for aspiring game developers. The book is written for the hobbyist interested in making their own games, beginning Independent developers interested in starting their own small game company, students, or software developers considering making a transition into the game industry. Throughout the book, programmers work through exercises to build their own complete 3D asteroid game called SuperAsteroidArena. Beginning with engine creation and 3D programming with SDL and OpenGL, the book then moves to animation effects, audio, collision detection, networking, and finalizing the game. A variety of tools are used throughout, including VisualStudio.NET and OpenGL, Paintshop Pro, 3DS max, and the Audacity sound tool. The book does assume an understanding of C/C++ experience and focuses on programming on the Windows platform. The companion CD-ROM includes libraries and tools, including the SDL libraries, trial versions of Paintshop Pro Plus, Audacity, 3D Studio Max 7, InnoSetup, the source code from the book, and the complete game from the book.

FEATURES * Teaches the technical aspects of game programming in an easy-to follow style * Covers the entire game development process for aspiring game programmers * Explains important Windows programming techniques that can apply to any project * Provides practical insights and guidelines for creating a complete 3D asteroids game – start-to-finish

Not the best, Not what I expected, Not what I would recommend

I have to say that although the book does cover some topics its not what someone would expect from a book.
Its about as good as learning off random sites on the internet, the CD seemed to have been put together by some guy who didn’t read the book and the explanations were less than impressive.

It is a good refference if you would like to put in all the extra work of figuring things out alone, if you want to be taught, go elsewhere

Discriminates

I dont know if its something i done, but for some reason this book didnt like me. at first i assumed it was something i said, but later realised that the mistake wasnt down to me.

upon installing one of the tools you need to program with this, it kept giving me an error message, one of those ones that just DONT wanna tell you how to sort the problem.

it could be just me though.
another problem was that it doesnt really describe much.
for example, at one point it says "now we want to make our character move". then it gives you the code for it, but it doesnt tell you HOW its done, and WHAT each part of the code means. its more like following instructions rather than getting taught how to program.

Start to Finish

This book doesn’t do what it says first the review says you make a game called PanzerGruppe in the book its superasteriodarena and on the disc it’s called disateroids there is no trial version of paintshop pro

there are plenty of other mismatches between the book and the CD like certain files that clearly aren’t on the CD

the book isn’t very clear in its approach

the forum related to the book is of no use whatsoever so you get no help with any questions you might have

i could go on but in short buy something ELSE!

Frustration

I saw the Thomson logo at the top left on the front cover and thought it was textbook quality. I was dead wrong!! As the engineer said, the directions are incoherent and you don’t even know when he has given instructions or just an example. I had to search the web for help answers just to do the "Hello World" application. There is no troubleshooting guide in case you get stuck. If you get stuck you better clear up your schedule cause you will be searching for answers for a while. Why not spend that time and buy a good book on programming. I would expect more from a programmer than this garbled mess of words.

designing games

This programming book was just what my son was wanting. He thinks it will really help refine his gaming progams.

Excellent

Probably the best book on the subject I’ve read. This book teaches some real fundamental programming concepts which other books glaze over. Where some books will throw you into making a DirectX Quake clone, this book focus’s more on building an abstract framework that could be used for any sort of game you wanted to build, and making one infinitely more scalable than the DirectX Quake clone would have been.

This book is "best of breed" for 2 key reasons
1. The engine created is completely object oriented in design, making it infinitely more scalable and stable than those covered in other books
2. The SDL Framework you build is cross-platform, so can be compiled on Windows, Mac, Linux with no problems whatsoever, which in the post-Vista software environment we live in, is increasingly important.

The Only downside to this book, and the only reason its not getting the full 5 stars, is that the code in the book is incomplete, and poorly laid out. The author has squeezed so much in that the full code listings simply had to give way. TBH I don’t mind this (though the books forum is full of people who did) , id rather have the chapters on GLSL and LUA and google the rest of the code.

Although you don’t walk away from the book with a 100% finished game, you DO walk away with something much more valuable, a scalable object-oriented cross-platform core of a game engine which can be used and reused for many different projects.

Not very useful

This is definitly not the best book on the subject ... although i dont doubt the authors technical skills(he is clearly very well informed on the subject matter) his ability to communicate the overall structure of his program is terrible. Code listings are incomplete undocumented and scattered sometimes over 3 or more chapters with no clue as to what code belongs where, he COMPLETLY failes anywhere to give a clue as to what each class does and where it falls in the overall structure of his game engine. Although the bulk of the book contains some very simple and eligant code examples of how to solve certain problems, but no overview of how theywould fit into your own project . I would hazard a guess this book was origioanly much larger, and has been cut down in pagecount by the publisher by someone with less technical knowledge than the autor... probably using a shredder of some description.

In the end this book was put to one side and replaced with the online tutorials published by LazyFoo, which provided a cleaner idea of how to use SDL

If you want a complete code listing to type in and modify to your own game concept and learn along the way.. the listing here are incomplete and overcomplicated, and of little use to a beginner/intermediate level programmer.

On the possitive side ... the listing are (With very litttle modification) Completly cross platform (worked on a Mac fine, id assume linux too) making it one of very few books to tackle the whole "will it run on my mac" question. And the Sections on Programming mathmatics and scene geometry are probably the most concise and well written ive so far had the pleasure to read on the subject.

The book has a lot of very good descritpions and explanations of certain tecniques used in game programming, and solutions to the problems you will face on the way to a finished game .. but "start to finish" it certainly isnt.

Made me Dizzy

It’s ironic that a programmer would be so terrible at giving directions. To start out with, the directions for setting up SDL (a necessary programming toolkit) were almost non-existant. Just this small task took me 8+ hours, and I had to resort to browsing web-forums!

Often the directions were so terrible that it wasn’t even clear whether or not he’d just given directions for a procedure or was just providing an example. As a programmer, the author should be able to give sequential, succinct, and easily-followable directions. At this,the author, unfortunately, fails miserably.

Avoid This Book

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who is trying to start out in game programming. I am a grad student engineer and have been programming for over 5 years. I just recently got into game and graphics programming and this book is really terrible compared to some others I’ve seen. The only reason I gave it two stars is because the chapter on graphics mathematics is fairly complete, and the book provides a good high level picture of how a game is structured. However, the code specifics are downright horrible, the listings seem to be randomly thrown in without any clue as to where they should go in an actual program, the writing is boring, the directions are sparse and inchoerent, and much of the source code provided on the CD is incredibly difficult to get running (if it runs at all). Also, there is a discussion board on wazoo, but don’t excpect much help. Many of the forums end with unanswered questions including many that I had. For an intro book to programming games, save your money for another book, because this book just isn’t worth the cost in wasted time and money.

A graded learning approach

Erik Yuzwa’s GAME PROGRAMMING IN C++: START TO FINISH will lend particularly well to prior C++ programmers and users who want to learn game programming. Chapters use current game programming information and take a lesson plan graded learning approach to building an entire course in C++ game programming, from the basics to creating a complete game.

Fairly good

Overall, the book is fairly useful. However, it lacks several things:

1. Contains many snippets of code that cannot be determined where they go

2. Constantly uses forward-slashes (/) instead of backslashes (\) for filenames (even if outside of code).

3. Does not justify certain variable names; ie a local variable one would normally call "fontSize", he calls "m_pFontSize".

4. What exactly is something such as a "PNFGLGETQUERYOBJECTIVEARBPROC"? He uses types like this alot, but never says what they are (even in the introduction to OpenGL).

Fairly good

Overall, the book is fairly useful. However, it lacks several things:
1. Contains many snippets of code that cannot be determined where they go
2. Constantly uses forward-slashes (/) instead of backslashes (\) for filenames (even if outside of code).
3. Does not justify certain variable names; ie a local variable one would normally call "fontSize", he calls "m_pFontSize".
4. What exactly is something such as a "PNFGLGETQUERYOBJECTIVEARBPROC"? He uses types like this alot, but never says what they are (even in the introduction to OpenGL).

Moving on from a C++ Base

This book make the presumption that you are already familiar with programming in C++. From there it takes you on to the theory, concepts and additional software packages that are used to facilitate rapid game development. Much of this software is to be found on the CD that is included with the book. As such, this book is a complete course in moving from straight C++ programming into actually producing a game.

The basic technique used is to lead the reader through the development and programming of a small basic game called ’SuperAsteroidArena.’ While not a complex game, and certainly nothing that could be taken to market in these days, this little game illustrates the basic techniques that are used in today’s game development along with the commonly available software tools. Of course, the completed game is also incldued on the CD.

The first part of the book is an introduction to the software that you will be using. Don’t let the seemingly endlist of software packages get you down, it will all make sense eventually as you actually use each of the packages.

A very well done book, but as I said, not for the complete programming beginner.