Make the book actually about programming games. This means:
1. no basic Win32 stuff that you should know already
2. no basic DDraw stuff that you should know already

In short, no beginner topics. That''s been beaten to death. Please try to at least achieve Intermediate status.

quote: Original post by Buster

Make the book actually about programming games. This means:
1. no basic Win32 stuff that you should know already
2. no basic DDraw stuff that you should know already

In short, no beginner topics. That''s been beaten to death. Please try to at least achieve Intermediate status.

Buster, I (and most others) agree with where you''re coming from, but it''s already been extensively covered in this thread. The beginner sections are mandatory. I assume this is down to commercial pressures: a book covering just intermediate topics will only sell to intermediate programmers, whereas the same book with a primer on Windows and DirectX will be able to reach a much wider audience. From the look at the proposed content, the rest of the book will certainly go into more advanced topics, so you and I will just have to skip to the later chapters, not an immense hassle.

what do i have to say?

1. Make sure the book is extensive on 16, 24, and 32 bit colours. No more of the outdated useless 8-bit code.

2. Adding a section on networking would be a great bonus, as there are many people who want to write online games like UO.

i''m not even going to be MENTIONING palettes. its all going to be 16/24/32 bit RGB stuff.

and this is the LAST time i''m going to say this:

Section Zero, the introductory stuff, is a requirement of the Series Editor, Andre LaMothe. Which part of "required" arent people understanding? At my current estimate, it''ll take up about 150-200 pages. The book is going to be about 950-1000 pages, which leaves about 800 or so pages on the stuff that the book is actually about.

Well, i know this may sound weird, but...

Make ''the infamous Section Zero'' easily rip-outable (is there a better word?).

This way i can rip out 150-200 pages of garbage i don''t need. Ok, it may not be practical, but im sure it will save me some space.

keep the examples simple. Im quite new to programming and one thing that really annoyed me when learning was examples showing you for example arrays, and the source code was almost a complete program containing arrays and file I/O that wasnt going to be covered for another 5 chapters. Basically, show only what you are demonstrating, and avoid using anything else, especially material that has not been covered yet.

I agree with the above post, but to a certain extent in that the programs should not just remain simple. They should get progressive more and more complex and finally result in a full fledged game that has all the major features of real retail game.

Possibility