Richard A. Falck's Amazon Review

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    • Richard A. Falck's Amazon Review

      ok, GamerRick, why did you lie?

      amazon.com/gp/product/19321119…n=507846&s=books&v=glance
      I only got about 150 pages into the book before trying to check out the sample program that can be downloaded from the author's site. It will not compile for several reasons. First, he just has some basic errors in it that you can fix. Secondly he uses three 3rd party SDKs that are no longer available in the way he used them. [SIZE=4]His response to me was that I should talk to someone else on the forum that figured out all the changes that must be made to get the game to work with the latest SDKs.[/size] Apparently, he does not see it as his job to provide working samples, [SIZE=4]and no one has gotten the game to function correctly even after fixing the many compile problems.[/SIZE] Thus the 2 stars.

      Other than that, the book is geared to teaching you how to handle the larger aspects of game development, like how to manage your files, and what source version manager he thinks is best. Having been a mainframe programmer for 18 years, I can tell you that there is not one way to do anything, and if you go into a new job with a long list of ways you think they should be done, you will have difficulty adapting to the methods, procedures, and tools of that shop.

      There is some good information in it, but the lack of a working sample pretty much ruins it for me.

      People have made an effort to help you out on this forum despite your abrasive posture, and on top of that, you know full well that people on this forum have gotten his sample to work, yet you point out that nobody has gotten it to work? Is that to cover up your incompetence in not being able to figure out what so many others have already done? It's really amazing how much being a mainframe programmer for 18 years teaches you about game development. This may come as a shock to you, but game development is very different from mainframe programming, and your experience with mainframes, no matter how admirable, do not have any bearing on your potential with game development.

      Also, I do believe his response to you was to revamp the sample code to make it easier for people such as yourself to get it working, Not to ask somebody else. The beta of the recently released revamp was announced on this forum long before you wrote that review in this thread:
      mcshaffry.com/GameCode/thread.php?threadid=496&sid=
      Originally posted by GamerRick
      Sounds good to me Mike. Thanks.

      I have moved on to other books. So, I can wait. Sorry for the ruckus.

      Remember that?

      You are privy to your own opinions on the book, and some of them even have merit, but to FLAT OUT LIE about people not being able to get his sample to work when it was you who couldn't get his sample to work, and also lie about his response to your problem is just baffling.
    • Although I think it is totally assinine of you to make an issue of my review I will repond. I was not "lieing". If you read reviews on Amazon, there are a LOT of bad ones given for bad code. I felt I should post that so that future buyers of the book would know beforehand what I found out. I fully intend to update the review when the code is fixed and available. I tried that beta version and got many compile errors.

      At the time I wrote that, all I saw on this forum was that even though some people got it to compile, the teapot wars game would not run correctly.

      Later, I made that comment to Mike about doing other things.

      Again I will ask the same question. Why don't one of you who adore Mike and apparently take it personally if someone says anything negative (I don't see anything I have said on this forum as being "abrasive", just brutally honest), post the fixes to the source on your own site or give them to Mike so that he can? All I see is this extreme hostility towards me for asking for the fixes. Why on earh am I being attacked for asking for that?

      I might as well be totally honest here as to all the reasons I gave that review:

      1. The code does not compile. And has been broken for most of this year (Novodex was updated long ago though I could not figure out exactly when).
      2. There are no instructions about how to install the Ogg SDK. It comes in two downloadable file that expand to two separate directories. A file in one of the directories references one in the other. I tried to merge them but it still did not work. Why is the source dependent on the Ogg SDK at all? There are no media files included with the source. The Novodex one is easy. Boost seems to work too.
      3. What really irritated me though was the ignorance Mike shows about the min/max issue. The source code explicitly prevents the defines for them from being executed with the "define NOMINMAX" statement in the games source code. Duh. How do you feel when a programmer expresses ignorance about how their code works? The source uses the minmax macros, yet their definition is explicitly supressed for Novodex. How did anyone ever get it to compile with that obvious error?
      4. Some of the opinions expressed in the book about how to manage a large game project don't seem to me to be aimed at the programmer, but instead at the project leaders. And if they have become project leaders, they likely have learned how to manage things themselves. So, if this book is targeted at the want to be game programmer, these opinions aren't going to help him/her much. I can just see some kid waltzing into a shop proclaiming that he knows how things should be done because he read a book. Other reviews of the book have also asked who the targeted reader is.

      So, regardless of how my past experience is relevant to game programming, I believe that if you spend a good amount of money on a book, that the code should work. I don't think my opinion on that will ever change.

      So, I don't know what your relationship with Mike is, but you may want to grow up a lot and accept the fact that everyone else does not think exactly like you do. If someone buys that book they have a right to do exactly what I have done on this forum. People buy books like this one to learn something new, not because they already know it all.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by GamerRick ().

    • While I may not agree with Ricks review, I have to agree that it is certainly right for him to be able to give his opinion of the book at Amazon. That was his opinion and perspective.

      Personally, I don't hang all of my satisfaction with a book like this based on the code provided. Yes, its nice to have some sample code that works, but I often find getting the code up and going is going to take some work and quite frankly, I don't want to fool with it. I get my value from the text.. if the code works witout a lot of trouble, it's just icing on the cake.

      I haven't done anything with the code for this book yet. I tried to compile and realized I don't have the 3rd party libraries.. decided it was going to be a hassle to get those..and went on to something else instead. Maybe when I finish reading the book I will take the time to mess with the code though.
    • I have no problem with negative reviews based on opinion. That is anyone's right.

      It's the lying part I have a problem with... particularly these two things:
      • Nobody got the code to compile and run
      • The author tells him to talk to someone else on the forum and does nothing to help him out.
    • Remember that the issue here is about you saying that nobody got it to work. Here is a more concrete example for you:
      mcshaffry.com/GameCode/thread.php?threadid=454&sid=

      Your point about people having to fix the codebase to get it to compile is well taken and agreed. That is why we decided to revisit the sample code and update it.

      On that note, would you care to address the second accusation of him not doing anything to help? Let us know how the new beta works for you. You sort of instigated it.
      mcshaffry.com/GameCode/thread.php?threadid=550&sid=

      Have a nice day :)
    • I agree that my statement about that is wrong. I should have not said "no one" got it to work. I will delete that review and do a new one (just as I intended to do all along) when the next gamecode release is posted and I am able to get it to work.

      I am tired of arguing about this. I don't see the few scattered posts that have some Novodex fixes, with posts by others claiming it still does not run right becuase of screen issues, as constituting a fix. I would rather wait for the next release of the code, and learn other things, rather than spending time trying to fix the current code myself.

      I came to this site yesterday to seek help. This thread is assinine and offnesive to me. My review of the book on Amazon was my honest assessment of what I had experienced at that time.

      If you wanted to prove me wrong, you could have done something to organize the fixes into a single post or just include the fixed files somewhere for people to download. Attacking me does not fix anything.
    • There is a beta of the next source code release being tested at this writing. It includes the OGG and BOOST SDKs, and disables Novodex by default.

      Teapot Wars depends on Novodex for moving the teapots - so it doesn't do anything until physics is installed, but at least everything compiles and runs - and there's no hassle.

      Getting this done has always been a goal of mine; but schedules being what they are it has taken me some time to deal with it.

      When the beta testers are done with it, I'll send it to you personally to make sure it works.

      After that - and I hope everyone will agree - we can put the issue of non-working source code and representations of various people on this forum, and Amazon.com to bed.

      Sound good to everyone?
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot