I have purchased Windows Game prgramming for dummies. I still don''t feel like I can make games, so please tell me if you think buying Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus will be good, or a waste or money... Thanks!

Depends on WHY you feel you can''t make games...

Personally I think Tricks of the... is like a WGPFDummies on anabola!

Start out with really basic stuff. And if you''re new to programming, I mean REALLY basic stuff. Like a number guessing game. Then move on towards a ascii-nibbles game, etc.

Starting out directly with Diablo4Arena you will most certainly feel that you don''t now enough. Check out the GameDev Workshop for some inspiration of easier projects to start with.

I am quite a newbie. Most of these discussions go way over my head. But I bought Lamothe''s latest book and am slogging through it. He uses a lot of slang, leaves things out, and assumes too much in some places, but if nothing else, you get a demo version of Micro$oft''s VC++ compiler, and loads of examples. I say go for it, but get it on online, it''s cheaper.

Hi there

I have also bought Andre''s Latest book, it is very good, but sometimes he peeves me off assuming that the reader is at his intellectual level, still a good book though, I''d recommend it, it will teach a load of stuff you don''t know.

I am a VB programmer so going through the book has been very taxing but I am starting to get the hang of it.

Battle through it and your journey will be worth while

Erick

My 0.02 worth: I think Andrea''s TotWGPG is great. However, you do have to have some C/C++ background and he does not cover 3D at all in his first volume of the book. Other than that, the book has a lot of grounding in 2D graphics and should be able to assist you in creating a game on your own especially with the 2D graphics library Andrea provided. It also comes with a game for the last chapter so maybe you can reverse engineer that one to make your own.

Best regards,
Sherman

I bought (recieved as a gift, actually) this book for Christmas. I have to say, I skipped along through most of the book because it wasn''t really anything I didn''t know. There were some interesting chapters on handling win32, state machines, physics, and ai however.

If you''re a beginner, I think it would be a great book. I haven''t read WGPD, so I don''t know if its easier or harder than that one.

The #1 thing you can do to REALLY learn is by doing. Most of the concepts in the book were things I already knew because they were things that I stumbled on my own as I slowly refined my simple game projects. Of course, reading a book on it and THEN doing it can speed the process along. But if something is seeming too hard, just work at your current level for a while, and most likely you''ll understand the need for and use of the next chapter(s).

I bought this book and although I like it, you really need to know C++, not just C. If you don''t know C++ I''d reccomend fooling around with it for a bit before trying to get too deep into this book. I personally found the transition from C to C++ more difficult that I thought it would be, but after reading some other books (even just skimming) it makes things A LOT easier. Anyway, good luck!

-Josh de Bever

In response to the original post, if you have WGPFD, then Tricks... maybe a waste of money. It''s basically an expanded version of WGPFD.

You have to know your C/C++ pretty well. Hack out some simple games. You''re going to run into problems, you''ll be discouraged, but the only way to "feel" like you can make games is to actually make games.

I didn''t think I could make games either but I''m almost done with my second one.

But then again, I''m only writing this so I can see how many posts I have (cool feature!).

Dan

The latest book of André LaMothe: Tricks of the Windows... (You know the rest of the title ) describe every part of a game engine. It covers every aspect of DirectX (except Direct3D which will be in the second volume) and I think it does it very well if you don''t know a lot about DirectX. But you still have to know a little about C++ before reading this book but if you don''t, there''s a little resume at the beginning of the book.

Good luck in your quest for knowledge...

i read WGFD and i must say i think it sucked. i couldnt find anything in it that i didnt find in the SDK docs, except how the bmp & wav file formats work, but hey, thats what we have wotsit, faqsys and flipcode and all those nifty sites for. well, i have to admit you wouldnt find the physics chapter in the docs but we all read that in highschool. if not, its not that hard to look it up, takes a minutes or two at most.