Real Time Strategy Game Programming Using MS Direct X 6.0 (Wordware Game Developer's Library) [Illustrated] (Paperback)

What this book is: This is an advanced book. It has tons of code snippets, and more ideas on how to expand and personalize the code. It has a few chapters that could be shorten or taken out completely, namely the first 8 chapters, except chapter 5. These chapters have a lot of ideas, but if you are familiar with games and/or programming, you already know a lot of it.

Chapter 9 briefly describes DirectDraw, for more see a differant book (I have found Windows Game Programming for Dummies good), but it doesn't claim to be a DirectX tutorial either.

Chapter 10 has some good stuff on drawing lines and rectangles, not used too much in RTS games though.

Chapter 11 teaches font and text building, could have been better, but has a lot of good information in it.

Chapter 12 puts 10 and 11 together in a single class for you. Could have been shortened but oh well.

Chapter 13 describes how to load graphics and keep track of them.

Chapter 14 has some very good stuff on blitting graphics to the screen. He teaches LLE compression which is one of the best ways to blit to the screen(compiled sprites are still a bit faster).

Chapter 15 has a lot of good information on keeping track of animations.

In chapter 16 He does a very good job of teaching landscape. He has a lot of good code examples, and suggestions on how we could add more to it.

Chapter 17 is on the interface. Lots of good stuff in there.

Chapters 18 and 19 talk about creatures and pathing. Good stuff.

Chapter 20 is kind of an addon chapter. It describes DirectSound Overall, this is a very well written book by an author with a lot of experiance programming. I suggest buying it.

Things i would have liked to see: More on DirectX,especially DDraw and DInput. Networking.

Can you find some of this on the internet? Yes you can find some of it. I have found nothign on the internet that can compare to some of these chapters though. Buy it, its worth it.

With that said, the content included is superb. I haven't yet loaded the code, but the CD contains a full encapsulation of DirectDraw for 2D graphics programming, and a lot of practical advice for using it. His examples include blitters with progressive levels of optimization, letting you get inside his thought process. The code appears to be free to use and modify.

The book also has sections on design, scheduling, and a comparison of several RTS games with appropriate screen shots. As someone who has worked on a variety of programming aspects (AI, graphics, etc.), Mickey has sharp opinions on almost everything, and states them plainly. (Don't mention Hungarian notation...) This "attitude" adds life to what can be painfully dull subjects.

Overall, this is an extremely valuable work for anyone in the programming, design, or even art sides of the industry. As a convenience, here's a copy of the highlights of the Table of Contents:

1. Welcome

2. Gameplay

3. Getting started on your game

4. Documents

5. Development

6. Standard macros and data types

7. Background

8. Great ideas (overview of existing games)

9. Working with DirectDraw

10. How to draw as easy as 1, 2, 3

11. How to do your ABC's (alphabet/font design) [ An alphabet design tool is included ]

12. The drawing manager

13. Loading graphics

14. The black space and the wild void of life [ LLE compression, optimization ]

15. Animation

16. The landscape [an excellent, deep summary]

17. The interface

18. Objects and creatures in the world

19. Pathing

20. DirectSound

Index (8 pages, reasonable detail)