The Six Books I Ordered

12/4/2002:

The Books I Bought:
First, I shall list the books I just ordered.  I ordered them all from www.biggerbooks.com, and I ordered them all knew.  Many people would consider this a waste of money.

These first two were required:

• Isometric Game Programming With Directx 7.0 by Ernest Pazera
• The Zen of Direc3d Game Programming by Peter Walsh

I also noticed a book that sounded specifically appropriate for the course.  The focus of this course is doing 2D graphics in Direct3D.  So I got a book by the same author as one of our other required texts that is specifically on 2D graphics in Direct3D:

• Focus on 2d in Direct 3D by Ernest Pazera

I also ordered three other books.

• Programming Role Playing Games With Directx by Jim Adams
• Ai Game Programming Wisdom by Steve Rabin
• Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre Lamothe

How I Decided:
I spent a good two hours reading various reviews, user feedbacks, and excerpts on lots of different books that seemed relevant before I ordered the above six.  The following are a few of the sites I found useful in my book search:

• http://www.bestbookdeal.com - this is a good site for on-line price comparisons of books
• http://www.amazon.com - Popular on-line book ordering site.  Many books include lots of good information and customer reviews.  Some books include excerpts which typically consist of: table of contents, index, sample chapter.
• Barnes & Noble.com - Gateway - Barnes & Nobles - another big on-line book ordering site.  They too have lots of good information and customer reviews.
• http://www.premierpressbooks.com/ - this is the publisher's site of The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming by Peter Walsh (our primary text).  When I visited it, the Game Development Books section included 25 books all on various game programming topics - Data Structures for games, AI for games, multiplayer for games, etc.  With so many topics, it really does sound like it would be quite feasible to make an entire B.S. on games programming!
• http://www.wordware.com/computer/game_development.shtml - this is another publisher's site (a publisher of game development books).
• http://www.google.com/ - This shouldn't require much explanation.  Just type topical like "games programming books", authors names, publishers names, etc.  Have fun; you can spend a lot more than two hours finding and getting information on some potentially awesome books.

Questions About the Books I Bought?:
If anyone's curious about any of the 4 extra books I ordered or would like to take a brief perusal of one, feel free to ask me about any of them (e-mail  / in class / etc).  I do plan to get a decent look at them over the Christmas break (in which I will be visiting my family in Ohio for two weeks without my fast school computer).

Back to Main