Linux Game Programming (Game Development): Amazon.co.uk: Mark Collins: Books

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Product Description

Synopsis
This title addresses game development for the Linux community. It covers the game development cycle from artificial intelligence to threads and user interfaces. It is aimed at those who have some programming experience and are familiar with the Linux OS.

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First Sentence
Why is a game different from any other type of application? Read the first page

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3 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

1.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A waste of a great book idea..., 13 Feb 2004

By	A. Mole (London, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There really isn't a lot to this book. Lots of fluff [including numerous OSS licenses printed verbatim!] and little real good stuff.

Furthermore, the entire "Networking" chapter is lies [which are close enough to the truth to convince the unsuspecting reader that they are true]. The code examples are atrocious [filled with flaws to the extent that they won't even compile, let alone run correctly], and the text is highly misleading. At one point, it claims that 0 is the correct parameter to pass to a function, and you should never pass NULL for the same parameter. Deary me.

Collins & LaMothe should be ashamed of themselves.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but lacking depth, 28 May 2001

By A Customer

Covering everything you need to know about linux game programming in just over 300 pages is a tall order, and unsurprisingly this book doesn't live up to expectations. Going from game design to artificial intelligence through sound, 2d/3d graphics and networking, this book discusses a lot of topics. However none of these are even close to being in depth. The main advice the book offers seems to be to download libraries and read the documentation that comes with them. Vague tutorials are presented on some of these libraries but nothing else. Most startling is that the last third of the book is devoted not to game programming or design but to discussions of open source and porting, leaving what there is of the meat to the first 200 pages.

To be fair there is some nice information presented in the networking and ai section, although the author clearly doesn't understand what memes are about other then name checking Richard Dawkins. The sound section also provides a few small gems of information regarding streaming cd audio.

Considering the book is so short there is a stagering amount of filler in here. I don't think anyone who programs linux needs to be told where they can find a c compiler for instance. That the author caters for beginners with this chapter and then assumes you have an in depth knowledge of 3d for the opengl section is amusing and further shows the lack of focus the book has.

This is yet another book in the andre lamothe game development series of which he is editor. That all the books in this series seem to have never been close to an editing process is worrying. Mistakes litter the pages and it appears that most of these texts were not even proofread. The price tag attached to these books means this is worse than sloppy.

This is the only book currently availible on linux game programming so in that regard it could be worthy of purchase just don't expect a lot from it.

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oh Dear....., 8 Jul 2001

By A Customer

From the name of this book you can expect something about writing games for Linux, however it fails (for me).

I was hoping that this book would actually go through the ins and outs of writing games but for me it fails.

I've been a developer for over 10 years and went through this book in a matter of days. At the end of it though i hadn't learned much. Sure it teaches you little bits and talks about how it fits in but I was hoping that the examples would actually do something that you'd think 'Wow, the's fantastic'. But it doesn't..

So for me it's failed. It does make good reading and does go through basic things, it just doesn't pull it all together and make you feel that you can get somewhere.

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Linux Game Programming (Game Development) (Paperback)

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