Amazon.co.uk Review
This dense, 200-page, hardback book is aimed at those developing graphics applications under Windows 98 using C++. The author is clearly a man on a mission. Getting down to work in the first paragraph, he whizzes through message-based programming in chapter one, moves on to window management in chapter two and object orientation in chapter three.
He covers pens and brushes, bitmaps, palettes, sprite animation, wire frame graphics and polgyon fill techniques. He then explains that C++ can't quite cut it in the clinches so in chapter 10 he gets down to a bit of assembly language. But assembly language clearly doesn't hold enough terror for the intrepid Mark Walmsly, and he goes on to delve into the mathematics of 3D geometry. The final sections deal with hidden pixel and line removal along with colour shading and textures. The last chapter deals with the mechanics of motion: collision detection, pitch roll and yaw, co-ordinate transformation and other arcana of graphical simulations.
This is an impressive and well-structured approach to graphics programming and a lot of it applies in any graphic environment. It will appeal to programmers who want to extend or change their area of expertise.--Steve Patient
Product Description
The Windows 98 operating system makes life easy for the user but the creation of a Windows 98 graphics application can be a bewildering experience for the novice programmer. This book attempts to provide a quick and clear introduction to graphics programming under Windows 98 without encumbering the reader in a mass of extraneous details. The application of object oriented techniques to graphics programming is a principal theme throughout the text and many illustrative coding examples in C++ are provided. The main topics include: message-based programming; window management; working with C++ objects; Windows 98 Graphics Device Interface; pens, brushes, bitmaps and palettes; sprite animation; wire-frame and polygon-fill images; assembly language programming; 3D vector geometry; perspective projections; hidden pixel removal; colour shading and texture mapping; virtual world simulation.
