WGPFD rocked!! I know we all have our opinions and stuff but sometimes I think people give up to early.I couldn''t get the BOB game engine to work so I just went about editing Andre''s Games. I learned a lot from editing and finally got the BOB game engine to work. Now that you''ve read WGPFD read it again, program a little windowbox that says Hello World or something and use Andre''s templates. He gives you two templates which will save you the time of having to make a window all by yourself.

I bought both of A LaMothes books. WGPD and tricks. Most of the complete code examples are on CD''s. That is perfectly alright. If you don''t get used to looking at other people''s code you''ll have a hard time later I beleave.

One point about tricks is that it is based on directx 6.1 while the dummies book covers directx 5.

I''m really satisfied with the books.
gprogramming.tripod.com

I think WGPFD sucked too. He basically makes a stupid engine and is like here, read the code and figure it out. Not to mention i couldn''t even get his engine to work. Anyway i recently bought Teach Yourself DirectX in 24 hours and this, THIS is the way to go. By hour 5 the author has covered what took andre 12 chapters to cover in WGPFD. I''d buy it ASAP. I recently finished my own 2D engine in directX 7, it compares to lamothes and is object oriented.
However the author has a lot of ground to cover and doesnt waste time holding your hand, but it is perfectly understandable for a newbie who reads and absorbs every bit.

Eckiller

I bought WGPFD awhile back read it in aday and then put it away for the most part(I still look at it from time to time to see memory requirements for certain screen resolutions. Belive its on page 90 or 92). A little later I bought Inside Directx which was a great help to me(And it covered Dplay which none of andre''s books do.)I have the cd to TotWGPG ,and yes it is mostly the exact same code from WGPFD. Overall I would say go ahead and buy them for something to read or if your a newbie,or even maybe if your convertering from dos. But otherwise theres better resources(The sdk, Code on the Cob helped me alot,and theres ton of stuff on the net.)

I would have to say if you have WGPFD then the Tricks book probably won''t give you much more help. You''d be better off trying something else. I''ve heard mostly good things about Inside DirectX and I''ve ordered DirectX Complete to evaluate.

Breakaway Games

Tricks is prett cool and straight forward\. the first 4 chapters are good for windows programming. then it goes into direct x and then into more advance things. it teaches you everything a beginner needs. And also, it gives you alot of artwork and music w/ sfx. I say this is the way to go if you know a good amount of C++ , you should get the book. oh yeah if you come upon some C++ you dont know theres a primer in the back of the book this is good buy.