Beginning C# Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) [Paperback]

"Beginning C# Game Programming" is Ron Penton's third effort in game book-authorship. It's a ground-up tutorial on the C# programming language, starting from the obligatory "Hello World" program and ending with a pretty rudimentary "spaceship at the bottom of the screen shooting at things coming down at you" game called "Generic Space Shooter 3000".

If you're already an old hand at similar languages like Java or C++, then the first half of the book won't be much more than a refresher for you. The first half of the book covers simple screen output, followed by primitive types, operators, looping, classes, arrays and file streams. It covers these topics fairly quickly (all in about 120 pages), so you won't be spending much time on each topic. Apart from one significant exception, the language tutorial is well-organized.

The "significant exception" raises its head with chapter 6 (creating a project). After spending 120 pages learning how to write, compile, and execute small bits of C# code, chapter 6 shows you how to set up a project in SharpDevelop (a free C# programming environment). If you need help compiling your code in chapters 1-5, the only help you'll get is a brief mention of Visual Studio.NET, SharpDevelop, or the C# command-line compiler. If you invest in a copy of "Beginning C# Game Programming", I recommend that you read chapter 6 first. Then go back to chapters 1-5. Finally, head over to chapter 7 and build yourself a space-shooter for the rest of the book.

The space shooter chapters are well-done, with good coverage of doing directX graphics in C#. The topics covered are a bit large for such a simple example game (alpha-blending, force-feedback, direct3D), but this is done with the understanding that you'll be wanting to write a more significant game than "Generic Space Shooter 3000" by the time you're done with the book.

If you want a good "ground-up" start with C# game programming, "Beginning C# Game Programming" is a good start. It takes you from the very beginning to a complete arcade game.

Just don't read it in order.

You will probably want some prior programming experience to make the first 5 chapters easier to digest. I'm a seasoned C/C++ programmer, and I was able to learn C# quickly with the help of this book (although admittedly C# is very much like C++). I knew a little about DirectX, but even if I didn't this book did a great job of starting basic and building on that foundation. What I like most about this book is the author goes step by step through a simple framework which gets Direct3D up and running. In about 150 lines of code, the author manages to make a Direct3D Windows application that does something. For Windows and Direct3D this is no small accomplishment given their complexity. Other books I have seen stick the Direct3D initialization into a helper library and never bother to explain it. Not here. Each line is explained well. This book will not, however, teach you advanced Direct3D topics. Only 1 chapter describes Direct3D, but it does a good job. You will want to get another book after this one to learn more advanced topics.

If you know nothing about C# or DirectX, but have some programming experience, this book is for you. The title is very fitting of the contents. Highly recommended.

I have read a lot of Premier books in my days. One thing is constant through all of their books: they are riddled with errors. They are not complex errors that only an advanced programmer would catch - they are stupid mistakes that an author who reviewed his work would catch. What's worse, most of the authors of these game programming books have about as much experience as I do - and I haven't even worked in the field yet! For a book that spends the first 5 chapters talking about the C# language, you would think the author would realize you can't have drop-through in switch-statments and that you can't have multiple type specifiers in a for-loop header. I read these books hoping for some entertainment and to learn some new skills. I definitely get a laugh! I will say that there are some decent programming books by this joke of a publisher, but it is like navigating a mine-field. My only suggestion to beginners is to go to a site like gamedev and see what they recommend. And for the experienced programmer, I don't recommend Premier books at all. Go for a book that is not split between the language and the gaming library. If you really want, I will give you some definite reads for anyone serious about getting a head-start. For such a large, growing industry, you would think there would be better books out there. All in all, I would not put this book down entirely - it does try to present the language and still has time to cover direct3D at some point. The reality is, though, the world is not ready for C# gaming yet and anyone serious about beginning game programming should find a book using C/C++. I hope this review has not aroused too much spite on my behalf.