Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 (Wordware Game and Graphics Library)
£19.98
One of the BEST! - this Series of books is the best DX9 book i read, it covers all the bits with good examples of a large proportion of the graphics needed to make wonderfull games.You should get the Advanced book of this as well, its just as good as this one.
Perfect book to ge started for the best foundation of 3D - When I started reading this book, I immediately skipped part I, because it s a pure mathematical part. 30 Pages wasted for me, but probably because I have the basic mathematical knowledge.Part II gets to the point. You set up a 3D environment with all the tricks basically available. After having done part II, you ll be able to set up a scene with lighting and texturing, and stencilling (shadows and mirrors)Part III goes into the additions of Microsoft in DirectX. These were not that interesting for me, because I m a low-level kinda guy but I got a lot of tips from that chapter on how to improve things.Part IV then gives you all the information you need about shaders. It even shows you how the built in shaders of rendering works by showing you examples of where you program to do the same! That s really interesting if you wish to understand more about the pipeline!Short: this book helped me a LOT to make me set up a great foundation of a 3D engine. Now I m looking for a book that helps me with effects and stuff like that. This book helped me create a game with basic graphics (which means, the graphics are great (I mean, detail s ok, framerate s ok, base is ok), but the lack of effects make the graphics look old) (http://www.tears-of-betrayal.com if you wish to see what this book made me create)Really! Buy this book and with the right spirit, you ll do it!
Amazing introduction book - This book takes the starter programmer to a decent level of knowledge in a few pages. Nice chapter about 3d math that bring you the basis needed to fully understand what you (will) do and don t spoil the whole book. Another perfect chapter is the one about pixel / vertex shaders, clear and consise.
Does exactly as it says on the tin - This book is one of my favourite purchases of the past few months. If you re like me and you ve been mooching around the game development scene for a few years then you ve seen different versions of DirectX come and go, This book, being about DX9 will teach you some very important concepts which - like me - you may not have been able to glean from the Microsoft docs available, such as HLSL - Microsoft s Pixel and Vertex shader language, and the programmable rendering pipeline. The author presents the information in a way that is logical and easy to digest. No CD but you can download all the samples off the books website.So why 4 stars? It s because the author does not go into as much detail as you may like in some of the chapters. Particularly, I feel that the pixel and vertex shader chapters could have been fleshed out with more information.All in all, a great book for anybody looking to learn DX9. Plenty of information to get you well and truly stuck in though you ll probably be going back to the Microsoft docs after finishing this book to look up some more advanced information. Definitely deserves 4 stars.