Indispensible for modern Windows/XBOX 2D Game Designers

Unlike many of the other books in the Premier Press Game Development Series, this book is a short 270 or so pages. That said, it's information dense and INCREMENTAL. It's also apparent how the book can prepare someone to make the transition from 2D to 3D quickly.

Some of the topics the author covers in this book that I found particularly useful:

- Alpha blending for 2D effects
- Z buffering (this topic is covered extensively elsewhere, admittedly; but this author has explained Z-buffering in the most lucid manner I have seen to date)
- Lighting for 2D
- Simple vertex shading for 2D
- Particle systems for 2D (very useful)

The later chapters, in particular, were extremely useful. All the code WORKS. This book was written while DirectX 8.0 was the latest and greatest, so there may be some issues with DirectX 9 and higher, but of course that's to be expected.

All in all, This book has been one of the best investments I've ever made in my game development education. Furthermore, it has been a constant companion and reference during my own commercial game development.

Other Reviews

• ok read
• Indispensible for modern Windows/XBOX 2D Game Designers
• Concise
• Code That Works!