OpenGL Game Programming: Amazon.ca: Kevin Hawkins, Dave Astle: Books

Product Description

Book Description

This robust CD contains source code from the book as well as examples of OpenGL games in the online game development community. Also included are a variety of tools such as the OpenGL libraries, GLUT, Paint Shop Pro shareware, and sound editing software. This book is a complete guide to game development using the OpenGL graphics API. It also covers how to integrate the non-graphical elements of Microsoft's DirectX into OpenGL games so that users can incorporate sound, music, and network functions. Teaching users how to use OpenGL to create dynamic 3D environments and effects for use in game development.

About the Author

Kevin Hawkins is the CEO of GameDev.net, one of the most prominent development sites on the Web for game programmers. He is currently working on his Master's of Software Engineering as a graduate student at Embry-Riddle University, where he also obtained his BS in computer science.

Dave Astle is the COO of GameDev.net where he acts as chairman and editor-in-chief. He is the founder of Myopic Rhino Games and is currently a software engineer in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dave has been programming in OpenGL, DirectX, and C/C++ for several years, and he has developed extensively on both Windows and UNIX.

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Customer Reviews

56 Reviews

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (56 customer reviews)

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Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A few words from the author, Jun 12 2004

By

Dave Astle (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: OpenGL Game Programming (Paperback)

I'm pretty thick skinned, so most of the negative reviews of this book haven't bothered me. In fact, I agree with quite a few of them, and I've taken all constructive criticism into account in the writing I'm doing now.

However, after the last few reviews, I feel obliged to say something. If you look at all of the reviews, you'll see that most of them are positive. In most cases, even people with well-substantiated criticism still gave the book a good rating overall. So to have 4 people in a row give the book a 1 star rating, with little more than brief, vague accusations to support them, smells to me like someone (and I'd guess it really is just one person, considering most of the reviews are anonymous) with an axe to grind. The author of a competing book, perhaps? Whoever it is should be ashamed.

The reality is I think most of the people who have read this book have found it useful, if not perfect. That's the feedback I've received via email, web forums, and in person. People who have had problems with the book or the code who contacted me or Kevin will tell you we were more than happy to help them out.

That said, don't buy this book. We've written another book, Beginning OpenGL Game Programming, which updates most of the material in this book, correcting things that were wrong, providing information about the additions to OpenGL that have been made in the past 3 years, and providing much more information about important topics like texturing and extensions. It's a much better value than this book, so I'd recommend looking at it instead.

I've read dozens of game development and graphics books, and speaking as objectively as possible, I'd give this book 3.5 to 4 stars. But I'm ranking it 5 to offset the real fraud that has appeared in the last several reviews.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this book., Mar 20 2004

By

Maury Markowitz (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: OpenGL Game Programming (Paperback)

This book is so bad I don't even know where to start...

1) not once do the even draw the default axis!
2) there's no discussion about performance and what you should do, shouldn't do, nothing, zip, nada
3) the code is CRAP. some of it is missing, some of it is broken, all of it is the worst code I've ever seen -- they put implementations in the header files!
4) none of the real-world sorts of issues are covered -- multiple textures stuffed into a single file for "stamping", texture compression, LOD adjustments, etc.
5) it's basically all fluff, if you cropped and cleaned, it would be half as thick and kill half as many trees. it would still be terrible though.

Don't buy this. Really.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money, Mar 15 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: OpenGL Game Programming (Paperback)

I thought this book was going to be a useful reference about OpenGL programming because it was nice and thick and contained lots of examples. But Most of the book is just filled with sloppily-written code, a lot of it Windows-centric. Topics are poorly explained, the code doesn't even work half the time, and a lot is left out. The authors are obviously not qualified to teach this topic well, and the book has an amateur-ish feeling to it. I highly recommend The OpenGL Programmimng Guide or the OpenGL SuperBible instead.

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Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Fraud in its purest form...
Not only am I incensed at the authors for writing such a terrible book. I would go as far to say that they should be prosecuted for literary fraud and highway robbery. Read more

Published on Jun 1 2004 by Michael Hops

1.0 out of 5 stars Crappy book
The book is crap. Many of their examples wont even compile (because the code has errors) but somehow they managed to give you . Read more

Published on Mar 14 2004 by karlitobrigante