In truth, I buy very few game-oriented computer books at this point, mostly due to me being a Junior in college, and spending a crap load of money on books already. I stumbled across quite a gem with this one.
Before I really get to my opinions, I should tell you about myself, so that this review might mean something (or it might not). I am a Computer Science (honors...normally I wouldn't have mentioned that, but the honors degree is completely different from the other one) major at a respected university in the northeast. It's only been a year since I've been a "real" programmer, though I've dabbled in code for maybe 5 years, and have been on the computer since birth. It was 5 years ago that I decided to make my own, simple, web-based game. In truth, it probably wouldn't have been THAT hard, though it was going to have to use StarCraft for the battles (which is kind of ridiculous). I tried making it by myself, and didn't do so well (despite getting a good following going...which is like 30 people, but that's what I was aiming for), then I took on someone with even less experience than me, and we were going to use MS Access for a database...and that was a mistake (I was doing everything by hand....EVERYTHING). Eventually, I invited my programmer genius friend along, and we made the interface, but no game core (the game's expectations had grown beyond StarCraft since then). We got bored and decided to make the more amibitious sequel to the game (which was quite interesting), and of course that lead no where, which everyone assumed it would. So, last year I decided it would be good to have a project, so I started making it in Java (yeah, my school teaches Java, which I suppose has its ups and downs as an educational tool), and then eventually got the same friend to come back on board. Now its in C/C++ (of course), and we have the attitude of "it would be cool to finish someday, but eh, we just want something to work on for college." We considered getting a couple of online buddies of mine to help, but we really just couldn't bear to NOT do it all ourselves.
So, the book. I happened upon this book in Borders not too long ago ago (December, I think), and in truth it was on sale next to an Andre LaMothe book. I looked at both, and picked this one (I picked up the LaMothe one a week or two ago), and I couldn't put it down. This book nearly cost me my final exams, in fact, and yet I still finished it in about 2 weeks I think (I didn't experiment myself with anything, just did a read through), on the Friday of the week of finals. This book is brilliant, with some of the best writing in a book of this type I have ever seen. It has a good amount of polish for a "first edition" as well. I came into this book looking for coding concepts, and that's what I got. The book was as easy to read as if it were a novel, and it didn't have as much code as books tend to (I hate that). I'm reading the LaMothe book now, and to be honest, I really wish you had written it, as his humor rarely hits the spot with me,a dn his writing style reminds me of a professor of mine (playful yet condescending). I certainly don't mean to pick on poor Andre (especially since I haven't gotten far enough into his book to have an grounds for doing so), but for writing style and brevity, he's no McShaffry.
In closing, I certainly hope that this is the start of a whole line of books in the McShaffry name.
Before I really get to my opinions, I should tell you about myself, so that this review might mean something (or it might not). I am a Computer Science (honors...normally I wouldn't have mentioned that, but the honors degree is completely different from the other one) major at a respected university in the northeast. It's only been a year since I've been a "real" programmer, though I've dabbled in code for maybe 5 years, and have been on the computer since birth. It was 5 years ago that I decided to make my own, simple, web-based game. In truth, it probably wouldn't have been THAT hard, though it was going to have to use StarCraft for the battles (which is kind of ridiculous). I tried making it by myself, and didn't do so well (despite getting a good following going...which is like 30 people, but that's what I was aiming for), then I took on someone with even less experience than me, and we were going to use MS Access for a database...and that was a mistake (I was doing everything by hand....EVERYTHING). Eventually, I invited my programmer genius friend along, and we made the interface, but no game core (the game's expectations had grown beyond StarCraft since then). We got bored and decided to make the more amibitious sequel to the game (which was quite interesting), and of course that lead no where, which everyone assumed it would. So, last year I decided it would be good to have a project, so I started making it in Java (yeah, my school teaches Java, which I suppose has its ups and downs as an educational tool), and then eventually got the same friend to come back on board. Now its in C/C++ (of course), and we have the attitude of "it would be cool to finish someday, but eh, we just want something to work on for college." We considered getting a couple of online buddies of mine to help, but we really just couldn't bear to NOT do it all ourselves.
So, the book. I happened upon this book in Borders not too long ago ago (December, I think), and in truth it was on sale next to an Andre LaMothe book. I looked at both, and picked this one (I picked up the LaMothe one a week or two ago), and I couldn't put it down. This book nearly cost me my final exams, in fact, and yet I still finished it in about 2 weeks I think (I didn't experiment myself with anything, just did a read through), on the Friday of the week of finals. This book is brilliant, with some of the best writing in a book of this type I have ever seen. It has a good amount of polish for a "first edition" as well. I came into this book looking for coding concepts, and that's what I got. The book was as easy to read as if it were a novel, and it didn't have as much code as books tend to (I hate that). I'm reading the LaMothe book now, and to be honest, I really wish you had written it, as his humor rarely hits the spot with me,a dn his writing style reminds me of a professor of mine (playful yet condescending). I certainly don't mean to pick on poor Andre (especially since I haven't gotten far enough into his book to have an grounds for doing so), but for writing style and brevity, he's no McShaffry.
In closing, I certainly hope that this is the start of a whole line of books in the McShaffry name.
-Larrik Jaerico
www.LarrikJ.com
www.LarrikJ.com