Nope! This book assumes that you understand C++ to some degree and understanding OOP would be a good idea, the book itself explains engine architecture but also covers working with Direct3D.

This question has been asked before a few times as others have also wondered the same thing, this book although it does give a lot of coding examples and also full source code online, is not one of those books where you start at chapter 1, and by the time you are at chapter 10 you have a complete program. Instead the book mostly discusses architecture and many different systems of a game engine, however, if you are good at coding it won't take long to piece together the various systems and have yourself a nice little engine to begin coding with (ok it may take a little long, but thats the nature of programming). Since it has been asked so many times I will try to make a nice little guideline if you need some direction on where to read to get that 'linear' style of book.

- Chapters 1-5 - Get your project set up as well as some "Application Layer" coding done
- Chapter 11 - Get your event system set up, since it permeates almost every system in the engine
- Chapter 7 - Get your process manager set up, this is handy to do early on as I consider it a 'generic' system which can be used anywhere
- Chapter 8,9,12 - Various systems to plug in to the application layer
- Chapter 6 - Get your actor system going
- Chapter 17 - Get some physics going
- Every other chapter

This is in no was a definitive way to read the book, I found I read it through cover to cover, than maybe backwards, than skipped through chapters, than I finally think I understood every aspect of the way the engine is presented in the book.

I would personally say no, in my opinion if you know C++ this is the right book for you, but when you say you know c++ do you;

- Know how to write a reasonably large program
- Work using OOP principles
- Understand basic algorithms and data structures

If no, than you should brush up on C++, it's really up to you how you learn, but I would recommend GCC as your beginner guide to game engine programming.

Also, the book you linked doesn't really show you how to make a simple game engine. It shows you how to use DirectX, which is useful, but is only one component of the engine.

I would agree with mholley statements. For me, I read GCC cover to cover relatively quick. Then once I had a general idea of how all the pieces fit together I went back and started poking through the full source code while using the book as a further explanation if I didn't understand something.

I think it all boils down on how you learn (as said before). I am a total beginner in game development and my C++ knowledge is also not so deep. Before I read some stuff about design patterns and I skimmed over some books which teach DirectX or OpenGL or some other API. The only field I am quite "fluent" in is the math part.

Now I am reading GCC ed. 4 and it has absolutely the right level of difficulty to not bore me (like some of the DX and OGL books who only teach API usage) but on the other hand explains enough so I can follow. More importantly: it explains the RIGHT stuff.

(it really helps to implement the systems described in the book on your own. I myself do not work on Windows so I have to reimplement a lot of the stuff but this helps a great deal!)

oh man! Used to play that game! Back then i used to play that on a black n white crt monitor!

I knew the game as "Scorched Earth"