Beginning DirectX 9 [With CDROM]

by Wendy Jones

Book Overview

There exists a gap in the game programming market where beginning programmers are finding themselves without an introductory guide. Existing books focus on the 3D component of DirectX only, leaving... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592003494
• ISBN13: 9781592003495
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Course Technology
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Do not believe the negativity

I can understand some of the bad reviews because a few of the variable names are inconsistent from text to source code; but that is really the only thing wrong with the book. The code is very clear and follows the chapters well. The explanations of code are adequate for a 300pg book and you really don't need to go more in-depth if you are a beginner. I feel that most of the bad reviews are by people who let small inaccuracies cloud their mind, who cannot problem-solve very well, or who feel like they should be able to read the book once through and understand everything. There are no actual errors that I could find in the code since it compiled fine, they are simply typos. The reason I can say this is actually a good beginner book is because I read through the book thoroughly. Every time I start one of the sections I read the section while I type the whole program from the beginning and then I repeat the section several times keeping good coding practices in mind. MISCONCEPTIONS UNRAVELED... The source code is not written using the best practices, it is written with readability in mind. So feel free to throw all the DirectX stuff into its own singleton class. The whole message loop fiasco that a couple of others wrote about is explained in the book (maybe try reading instead of skimming). It was very clear to me what the author did. The code solutions are for VS7 which was standard at the time of publishing. So you need to use VS7 or later, I have VS8. The book is only 300 pages so you will have to use the CD source code. You have to compile the source code to use it, no executables are provided. And I can assure you the code _WILL_ compile. CONCLUSION... This is a good book to learn DirectX9.0c if you are a beginner. Skip it if you are more advanced. I haven't found any better books to learn DirectX since I really don't like the Wordware collections.

Great book

This is a good book on directX 9. Yes there are some rough points I would like to mention. First off , the author does change some of her code in the source files, which I myself found to be annoying. but she does a great job covering directx, and if you wade it out, you will find a great instructional manual.The material is solid, and it successfully covers a lot of ground. Chapter 2 covers getting directx up and running. Chapter 3 covers sprites. Chapter 4 covers vertex buffers. Chapter 5 covers Projections and matrices Chapter 6 covers materials and lighting Chapter 7 covers meshes Chapter 8 covers particles Chapter 9 covers dinput Chapter 10 covers dsound, and Chapter 11 Has a project that wraps it all together This is a great introduction to game programming as well

Fantastic Learning Tool with Proven Results, Great for BEGINNERS

This book is entitled "Beginning DirectX 9" and not "Make a Killer 3D Game Engine in 20 Days." One can see from the detractors comments that they certainly don't sound like beginners, do they? I have successfully taught DirectX to many game programming students using this book. Wendy Jones gets right to business from the very first chapter and explains 2D and moves to 3D swiftly. This is a great book for $20. It's been more useful than a few books by the same publisher that cost more than $40. (The publisher has a few books on this topic. This is the result of having inherited Andre la Mothe's collection of game development books.) Yes, this book does suffer from the typos that have been mentioned. Many programming books have typos in them, as well as on the CD. That is nothing new. It's the publisher's fault for using non-technical people to proofread and manufacture these things. These issues get resolved in second and third printings. The content is great, and I have proof in the form of many students who can attest that they learned what they needed and wanted to from this book. Yes, they had me as an instructor, but I was not holding their hands and explaining every last concept. After you get your first DirectX programs running with this book, you can move on to other books and tutorials available on the web and have a much better grasp for the new material you'll learn there. No book is ever going to be perfect. Look at reviews of the 3D Engine books and you'll see even more conflicting reviews, based on the author not having covered one or two specific topics that people were looking for. The subject matter is not about doodling with crayons. You have to apply yourself when you come up against conflicts between something on the printed page and on a CD. If you can't really do that, then you should reconsider whether your C++ skills are even at a place where you can properly take up DirectX programming at all.

Very nice

This is a very nice introduction to DirectX 9, although it's a little confusing as to why there is also a Beginning Direct3D 9 book also by this publisher, that covers the same material (but written by a different author). The reason I make this comparison is because this book is about 80% Direct3D, and the other 20% covers DirectInput and DirectSound.But, I would have to say, I enjoyed this book more than Beg D3D because it is easier to read, definitely a good choice for a beginner or an experienced programmer who wants to get up to speed with DX9.

Good, but not great

I have several DirectX books and this one is the only one that I actually learned from. Hopefully I will be able to use the knowledge gained from this book to help me through my other books. I feel I can only give this book 4 stars though. As far as the book goes, it is very well written. Concepts are explained to you first, and then implemented. The author never throws more than a page of code at you at a time. However, there are some complaints. For some of the functions, the author doesn't say what actually calls them. This can lead to confusion if you are trying to do the code yourself and then checking it (which is the preferred way of learning). Also, the author doesn't point out all the things you need to change to move from one example to the next. Often the compiler will give you warnings or errors that you have to fix, although they are trivial in nature. A major complaint is that half of the .exe files on the cd do not work, and one of the directX updates doesn't seem to be a valid Win32 application, although I'm pretty sure the other update on the cd covers it. A problem I had was when the author chose to create the device using the Microsoft REF in one of the parameters. To get the example to work I had to use the HAL. After that everything worked just fine. This is a good introduction to directX and you will benifit greatly by owning it. You should also get another book that goes into more detail, after you have mastered the basics.I have come back to edit this review and knock the star rating down to 3. In the chapter about lighting, there are no examples of using any light besides ambient light. When you try to use other lighting techniques, you get no results. Here's what I found out, after looking through the DirectX SDK Documentation, and samples. ** You have to use surface normals **. Thats right. Nowhere in the chapter did the author state you have to change your vertex definition to include the D3DFVF_NORMAL flag. For anyone who may be stuck in that chapter, this is probably your reason. Also, for texture mapping, you have to use the vertex buffer, not the index buffer, to get the correct mapping. It would've been nice had this been stated. To reiterate, the examples in this book are completely useless. In fact, I found much of the book taken word for word out of the SDK. It is still a good book to have though. It is the only one that has helped me learn DirectX. Just be prepared to look through the SDK documentation, especially in later chapters. Perhaps Wendy Jones was not the most qualified author to write this book. It seems like she's just familiar with the material in the book and is uncomfortable presenting some ideas clearly.