Anyone who's read OpenGL Game Programming

i reviewed it on gdnet and on amazon, but amazon is slow as crap so i dont know if they have it up yet. I am not bothered about the CD, you can just download the source code, but I think another book should come out about 2D OpenGL game programmming, where you actually make a game Just a suggestion. If I knew OpenGL well enough I would like to write a book on 2D games.

"I''''ve sparred with creatures from the nine hells themselves... I barely plan on breaking a sweat here, today."~Drizzt Do''''Urden

Already gave my review to Kev... But I might as well do it here too.

In my opinion the book is great for beginners to OGL. Not exactly the best thing for more ''advanced'' people, but still good never-the-less. So, I''ll split my review into two parts, for beginners, and for the advanced.

For beginners, the book is great. It gives a few tutorials on some of the basic features of the Win32 API without giving too many features that bog down teh beginner. Then you start by going into the math required for 3D programming which is, in my limited math knowledge, one of the best explanations available. (I may be a little off order, I don''t have the book around to reference the chapter''s content). Then you go into increasingly advanced topics that will get the beginner going with OpenGL. You also give tutorials on loading/saving with the BMP & TGA format, and later on loading a PNG. Which is really good, and is something I really could have used when I started using OpenGL. You also give informatino about loading MD2s, which is nice to have. And then we have the DirectX information, which is just SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than teaching someone to use the Win32 API''s input and sound. So all newbies are getting started on the right track.

Now, for the advanced programmers, the book isn''t too great. The first time I read it, I just basically skipped a lot of the chapters, and concentrated on Multitexturing, Special Effects, DirectAudio (since it changed quite a bit from DX7 to DX8), and the last two chapters. I also really missed some complicated 3D theory, but I guess that is what Real-Time Rendering, and the ''net are for.

In general though, I would''ve liked to see more games throughout the book. I can''t count how many times I get asked if OpenGL can do 2D games, so showing a couple of 2D games (on the CD, or in the book) would''ve been nice. But overall, the book was pretty good. If any of this doesn''t make sense, its because I overloaded my neural net with too much AI and terrain research.

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Trent (ShiningKnight)
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