Concise

At first glance this book doesn't look like much. It's fairly small compared to the typical game-programming tome (even with its medium-sized print), and not much less expensive. If you went strictly by the number of words per dollar, you might overlook it.

If you're planning to write a 2D game with the DirectGraphics API, however, this book is exactly what you need. There may not be a lot of words, but they're the right ones.

The first 40% of the book explains how to do everything you could do with 2D interfaces, and a little more. Copying rectangles, copying non-rectangular images, and page-flipping are explained. Added to the mix are rotation and scaling effects that were generally not possible (or at least not fast) with DirectDraw.

The next 40% gets into 3D engine details, explaining just enough to let you take advantage of Z-buffering, anti-aliasing, and lighting effects without needing you to be the Wizard of Polygons. The math review is brief and to the point.

The last 20% is something of a waste. A long chapter is spent learning how to parse a ".x" file that contains a 3D model, something that is largely uninteresting for people whose focus is on 2D (and unnecessary for everyone else). Another covers particle systems, which is interesting but completely out of place in this book. One might suspect the author was padding it out a bit. A section on text rasterization with Direct3D might have been more appropriate.

Overall I got exactly what I was hoping for. The author describes the different approaches clearly, points out areas where you can get into trouble, and for the most part stays focused on the subject at hand. The result is a book that will get you up and running with 2D under Direct3D in a few hours.

Other Reviews

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