The Zen of DirectX Graphics Game Programming (Game Development) (Paperback)

I am a consultant C and C++ programmer, so fairly competent (!) in both, and fancied a look at DirectX as a bit of fun. I have come at this as a very strong programmer with no need to learn this other than for amusement, so bear that in mind when you read my comments...

Buy this book as an excellent entry level primer. For goodness sake don't ever use ANY of the code yourself, or the software police will be round to remove your semi-colon key. DO use it to illustrate the basic way to do things with DirectX, to give you a heads-up on the maths you should be re-learning, and to tell you which topics you should be researching further.

Mr. Walsh undoubtedly knows his way around the topic, and I get the feeling he has been dumbing down to his target audience. His attempt is very successful, despite his sense of humour (sorry Mr. Walsh) which gives you the impression you are being lectured by a Californian surfer with an IQ of 200 [It might suit some]. His techniques and easy style have given me excellent guidance to allow me to develop my own version of just about everything in the book.

To be honest, if you want a book where you can just glance over it, then install the CD and show all your friends how clever you're not, then you are beyond help anyway.

This book is intended to get you started. Read it, understand it, use the examples as just that: examples. Develop your own ideas. Then you'll be ready to decide whether you want a more advanced book on the subject. If you do, I suggest you look for another book with the name 'Peter Walsh' on the cover.

The final example in the book is a solar system model you can mouse around. Copy it off the CD if you like... This is the only DirectX book I have ever read, and MY example has better textures and frame rate, a flight (rather than mouse) model, basic lens flare and a layered sky. And it uses Hardware T&L. To re-iterate - I learnt it all from this book.

Ok, dude? Cool. (Yes, it's written like this)

As a bonus, this book says Direct3D on the cover; that means DirectX 8.0. This book actually delivers, giving plenty of insight into the new features of 8.0, and the differences between it and earlier versions. It even prompted me into a find-and-use search on the subject of programmable pixel shaders.

Big minus points: Look out for errors, from simple typos to the blatant use of wrong types in Vertex structures (amongst other things). If you don't pick them up, you're not on top of the subject anyway, so I've probably just wasted my time typing this paragraph. No fault of the author, but D- to the tech-ed.

To re-iterate - I've done loads of 3D stuff since buying this book, and it is still the only useful 3D book on my shelf.

Buy it.

Well done, Mr. Walsh, for making the subject accessible.

There are only two drawbacks to this book. The first is that the code, while not poorly written or documented, is very badly organized, with all helper functions and classes coded directly into an enormous header file. The second problem is much worse, and it is perhaps more the fault of Direct3D than the author. Direct3D provides an easy method of loading 3D objects, but not animating them using keyframes. While implementing a class that plays back these animations would be difficult, it would be much appreciated in this book. Unfortunately, it's not there.

Still, this book is the best of a bad lot of resources on Direct3D. Highly recommended.

I needn't have been. From the outset, this book was excellent. Aimed at precisely the right level & complexity, it showed me step by step the basics of DirectX with 2D & 3D code, right up to more intermediate topics, such as frame based heirarchial systems. Peter Walsh's informal style of writing made topics very easy to understand, and he seemed to know exactly where the difficulties lay. He's hit this one on the head.

The book starts off with a slow and easy introduction to computer graphics, and the technical side of things. It then moves onto basic 2D operations (an absolute must, which many books leave out altogether), showing you how to create a font rasteriser, 2d animated sprite engine, and layer scroller. Great stuff.

Next, we move onto basic 3D. This is begun with a brief introduction to 3D mathematics, and this is where the book shines. Throughout, some relatively complex mathematical operations are talked about, but if you are useless at maths you are not crippled from continuing through the book. The concepts are explained, and most importantly they work. Through the 3D section we move from "2d 3d graphics" (ie: using the 3d portion of DirectX to create 2D objects), then onto simple rotation & scaling. Next, a brief dip into DirectInput - very useful. We then build up a more complex object - a rotating & scaled texturemapped cube using index buffers in object space, and then move on to the final creation of a solar system model.

Thats the book. Now, some points. Firstly, do not expect to pick this book up and either come out the other side as a fully fledged 3d coder, or to read the book and have a Quake-beater at the end of it. This is NOT what the book does. As you progress, you build up a library of classes that you can put together *yourself*, and create some great stuff with. It's a firm grounding in DirectX, and thats what we need. There are very few beginner resources out there, but plenty of intermediate to advanced ones. After reading this book, you'll be able to understand them.

One other useful feature of this book. There is a very good D3D COM reference in one of the appendicies. It's already saved me time searching the SDK Docs.

Onto the bad points. Firstly, as all the Primatech books in this series do, it suffers from bad pagesetting. It could be worse, but occasionally you really have to look at the example code to find the changes.

Secondly, because of the first point, you may find yourself spending hours searching for a simple bug. Which will inevitably lead you to the CD & example source. Leading to:

Thirdly, the CD with it's example source is a NIGHTMARE. Total and utter screwup. Some of the code on the CD is corrupted and un-loadable. The example 3D Engine code itself is in one HUGE header file, which is extremely bad practice, and hard to read. However, the majority of it you can load & does work properly, which is a blessing.

Fourthly, the book promotes a "searchable HTML version" on the CD. Uh, no. It's not there. I looked. There is a nice eval copy of Paintshop pro though. Don't know why, it's free to download.

Fifthly, the bits it misses. There is no room for mipmapping, a proper explanation of world-modelspace, alpha blending et al. There is, however, a 35page C++ introduction. WHY!? If you don't know C++, don't even think about reading this book.

That may seem like a lot of negative points, but they aren't as major as it seems. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone wishing to start learning DirectX. It will put you on the right path, get you through the painfully steep beginner learning curve, and you'll come out the other side with a good understanding of the basics and where to go next.

I'd like to see another book in this series from Peter Walsh, a more advanced version of this one.