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5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, I'll Tell You Why, April 12 2002
This book does a good job of focusing on Palm OS game development at the Palm API level. It is true that this stuff can be collected anywhere on the Internet, but that would hold true for any other Palm book. If you think about it, the pending switch to the ARM processors makes many of the down and dirty discussions instantly irrelevant (Dragonball assembly will be emulated on the new platform where API functions have the luxury of being bridged to native ARM code). The author seemed to understand this, and thus filled the book with quite a bit of useful material.I found his treatment of design to be particularly good. While the library that ships with the book is not perfect, it is extremely well designed and it shows. I found the example code to be a little rough (it lacks the polish of a commercially published title), but the libraries the author writes to drive it are very well written. He explains his design choices in detail and walks programmers through the process. In the end you are left with an understanding of the motivation for these libraries... very good indeed. The chapters on Physics and AI are particular highlights. The author covers basic physics in a way I have not seen in other books. Instead of describing gimmics (like gravity wells) the author chooses to concentrate on kinematics and forces to actually describe the motion of objects in a game. This is a powerful concept, and one that I have already put to use in my Palm endeavors. The AI chapter is nice, it describes several pathfinding algorithms and takes a stab at basic behavorial structuring. I found the discussion of "Environmental SI" to be very pointed and informative. This is the type of AI concept that seems absolutely ideal for the Palm platform. The chapter also introduces Fuzzy Set Theory and Fuzzy logic... I'm not sure why the author includes this, as it is not a terribly applicable concept for most Palm games... as best I can guess it is just something that the author finds "cool." Another interesting thing I noticed about the book is that it has only small source code listings in it. I like this approach. Most game programming books consists of thousands and thousands of lines of source code listings which generally result in me flipping through lots and lots of pages to get to the discussion. While this greatly decreases the size of the book, it increases its utility ten fold. A lot of content is packed into this book... and I think it can benefit programmers of all levels. If you can't tell, I liked this book. My only real complaint has to do with what the author left out. After reading this book you will have a strong foundation in the realm of Palm OS game programming. If you have previous game programming experience you will be good to go.. the book does a wonderful job of bridging the gap between desktop and handheld game programming. It would have been nice if this book had included a discussion on topics like special FX (particle systems, screen wipes, or blends) or other "cool" game programming tricks. These are useful topics, so if you are a novice game developer I reccomend picking up this book and another general game programming book to help develop these specialized game development skills. Overall, I think this is a great book and I can't wait to see what the author does next:) The lessons you will learn in library design are worth the price of admission, but I can guarantee you will learn so much more.
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