One good chapter, lots of bad code.

Alexandre Santos Lobao and Ellen Hatton, .NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 (Apress, 2003)

The best thing about this book is the theory; Lobao and Hatton lay out the basics of working with DirectX, etc., in simple, easy-to-understand language for those of us whose programming experience is limited to, say, database access, and have never had a use for graphics.

The code, on the other hand, is deeply flawed, not to mention not all here (the authors refer us repeatedly to the book's CD, which is all right-- unless you're borrowing yours from the library and the CD is smashed into seven or eight pieces). I've tried copying some of it straight from the book into VB.NET, with, shall we say, questionable success. I've been able to debug a good deal of it myself because I do code for a living, but I can't imagine a beginner, who's never coded anything before, doing anything but being thoroughly puzzled by the errors.

The rating is given mostly for Chapter 3, which is valuable. ***

Other Reviews

• -5 Stars!
• One good chapter, lots of bad code.
• You can do much better
• Reconsider buying this
• At least I like the title of the book ...