Ok i was going to buy "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Guru" by Andre Lamothe since it averaged about a 4 out of 5 stars here at gamedev and it seems to be a good book for beginners then i started to wonder what the context for beginners was? was it beginner at coding? or beginner at game programming? I mean..if its just gonna walk me thru LLs and BSTs then wouldnt "Game Programming Gems" be a better choice for the more intermediate programmer? i have about 2 years of programming experience (not counting pascal) with Java/C/C++ and most comfortable with an OOD, im familiar with semi-advanced topics like AVL/2-3/Game Trees, Sorting & Hashing, Analysis of Algorithms and i did learn Linear Algebra and Matrix Math in my first year of University...so i just have to relearn dot/cross products/row reduction/matrix operations/rank/subspaces and transforms so i wouldnt actually say im a beginner..and im afraid TOTWGPG might be a waste of money...but i do think im a newbie at game development...i dont even have a tetris clone up. would Game Programming Gems be over my head right now? does it assume youve already created at least one game? ive also heard that "Introduction to Game Programming" by Ian Penbarry is very well written but looking at the customer reviews on fatbrain and amazon.com..they didnt like it at all. and "OpenGL Game Programming" is rated #1 here and all the reviews for it say its fantastic...but im again afraid that it might be alittle over my head and assumes your comfortable with game programming so whats the best book for me? an intermediate coder with good math background...Tricks or Gems or Intro to Game Programming? or something else?? any ideas and comments are welcome

i just got game programming gems and i''m digging it. If you are already comfortable with C/C++, then I would probably learn either DirectX or OpenGL from tutorials on the web and go with Gems for game programming stuff. But sooner or later you would probably want to get the Red Book and have MSDN handy if your developing for Windows.

The thing is that 'Game Programming Gems' does NOT show you how to make games. It's just a collection of 'gems' - like the title states. I think you should get TOTWGPG still. It's easier than looking for online tutorials (although the book covers dx 7.0 I think it's a good start if you haven't touched dx before.) Yes - it will teach you a bit BST and linked lists, but that is not it's main purpose. 'Game Programming Gems' will only show you tricks to try if you already are programming games.

Just wanted to say: I've got both books. So I think I know what I'm talking about.

//John
-----------------------------------------
Swedish saying:
"The one who joins the game must face the consequences of the game."

Edited by - parklife on August 8, 2001 3:10:13 AM

OpenGL Game Programming any good for intermediate coders that have no experience in game dev? or tricks would be best?