 |
|
Title: Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows
ISBN: 0470126779
Author:
Benjamin Nitschke
Publicate Date: 2007-04-30
Publish: 2007-04-30
List Price: $39.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Paperback
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $0.01
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $21.24
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: Awful book!
I agree with all the other dissatisfied buyers of this book. I have had this book 1 day and will either pray I can resell it or just plan give it away. I am on chapter 2 and can't even get it the Pong game going because more than 50% of the code needs to be downloaded. The writing style is all about the authors practices in game development and not the XNA technology. He does not teach you the XNA Development platform but rather how to right unit test and about 25% game development. I agree he is probably and outstanding game programmer and should stick to that. Very, Very bad buy and I have read alot of programming books in my day and have to say this is the Number 1 worse. Pllleeeaaase I beg that you save your money and buy a different book and don't set yourself back $40.
|
2: Already Returning This Book
I've spent a couple hours with this book and I'm already decided to return it. I am just a step above "beginnger" when it comes to coding and I realize just enough that this book is completely outdated. The published date says Feb 26, 2008 which is exactly two months ago, however, version 2.0 of the Game Studio Express is fully out in the public and there are TONS of differences between it and what is presented in this book; so much so that it is actually confusing me to read this book INSTEAD of learning something.
Furthermore, a big reason I purchased this book was to read more about the Dungeon Quest game mentioned in the book. The author makes it sounds like this will be a fairly fleshed out example game by the time the book is released. However, what I find online is merely the example that was created in his 4 day GDC stent and nothing more. To make things worse, I cannot get it to compile in v2.0 of Game Studio Express.
Sorry.
|
3: Bypass this book
The author has talent, there is no doubt. However, I believe he thought he was writing a book on unit testing. Sure, unit testing is important ... but use those precious pages to explain code. Code is valuable ... but code is free and unfortunately, the book doesn't do much to explain the code. Reason for 2 stars instead of 1 is that the examples are polished. Plus getting a glimpse of what he was thinking with the XNA Racer starter kit was good.
|
4: I'm satisfied - but I may be an exception
Ben is a really awesome contributor to the whole XNA community. He also really knows his stuff. Unfortuately, this book tends to leave us guessing what he knows and what he's thinking about. I can really understand why there are dissatisfied people with the content provided in this book. I am not an experienced game programmer nor am I vastly familiar with Visual Studio, but I am used to relying on my own research to find the information I'm looking for. This book is perfect for me because it helps me to identify what I need to understand and how I should go about performing that research. Not everyone finds this method a compelling manner to learn however. This may seem like repeating what others have said but it's actually coming from the 3rd paragraph of the introduction: "For a more practical use of this book, you should follow along with the examples and code." That means, as I have seen mentioned before, at the computer, VS open, and the example code downloaded and displayed on the screen.
This book is for a variety of audiences, but its not for complete beginners. One will need to first understand C# (or another C-style language like C++ or Java), have knowledge of Object-Oriented Programming and design, and perhaps have more than a few bookmarks in his or her browser covering some of the more in-depth topics on getting started with game programming in general. This book should not necessarily be viewed as a "How-To" book but rather a book regarding personal experimentation and exploration of XNA development practices and content (with an emphasis on the practices), during which a few games are created. If that doesn't seem like what you are looking for, then perhaps you should start with a different book. Perhaps, the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide by Stephen Cawood and Pat McGee (ISBN-10: 0-07-149071-X, ISBN-13: 978-0-07-149071-9). Though that book goes over XNA Game Studio 1.0 (don't think it's even the 1.0 Refresh), it has much of the code and explanations in the pages. There are downloads for it from McGraw-Hill as well. Then, go over any tutorial you can find covering the basics. After that, Nitschke should be right around the corner.
|
5: Disappointing
I'm another reader who was disappointed with this book. Browsing through the book while in the store, I was excited about the different games that the book covered. I have a little bit of programming experience, but not writing games. Once I sat down with the book, it left a lot to be desired. The first chapter or so is all right, but after that it becomes a mess.
The author spends too much on unit testing, as mentioned by others. The code is often incomplete, and not explained very well, if at all. The snippets of code were too much of a mess to make head or tails of, and I ended up downloading the examples and compiling them.
|
|
|
|
|
