Palm OS Game Programming
(Premier Press Game Development
Series) by Nicholas Pleis
Good Book, I'll Tell You Why
To the average person, a Palm OS PDA is merely a handy calendar and
address book. As a game programmer, however, you see its potential as
much more than that. You see a device ready to be programmed with an
array of exciting games. This book shows you how you can accomplish
just that. Beginning with a detailed discusion of how the OS works, you will
soon be writing your own programs as you learn about loading and
drawing bitmaps, physics, Artificial Intelligence, and many advanced
concepts of Palm OS programming. Before beginning, you will need to
have a working knowledge of C and C++ as well as some experience
using a Palm device, although experience programming a Palm is not
required. As you progress though the book, you will develop a game
framework that you can use as you create your own games in the future.

Personal Review: Palm OS Game Programming (Premier Press
Game Development Series) by Nicholas Pleis
This book does a good job of focusing on Palm OS game development at
the Palm API level. It is true that this stuff can be collected anywhere on
the Internet, but that would hold true for any other Palm book. If you think
about it, the pending switch to the ARM processors makes many of the
down and dirty discussions instantly irrelevant (Dragonball assembly will
be emulated on the new platform where API functions have the luxury of
being bridged to native ARM code). The author seemed to understand this,
and thus filled the book with quite a bit of useful material.I found his
treatment of design to be particularly good. While the library that ships with
the book is not perfect, it is extremely well designed and it shows. I found
the example code to be a little rough (it lacks the polish of a commercially
published title), but the libraries the author writes to drive it are very well
written. He explains his design choices in detail and walks programmers
through the process. In the end you are left with an understanding of the
motivation for these libraries... very good indeed.The chapters on Physics
and AI are particular highlights. The author covers basic physics in a way I
have not seen in other books. Instead of describing gimmics (like gravity
wells) the author chooses to concentrate on kinematics and forces to
actually describe the motion of objects in a game. This is a powerful
concept, and one that I have already put to use in my Palm endeavors.The
AI chapter is nice, it describes several pathfinding algorithms and takes a
stab at basic behavorial structuring. I found the discussion of
"Environmental SI" to be very pointed and informative. This is the type of
AI concept that seems absolutely ideal for the Palm platform. The chapter
also introduces Fuzzy Set Theory and Fuzzy logic... I'm not sure why the
author includes this, as it is not a terribly applicable concept for most Palm
games... as best I can guess it is just something that the author finds
"cool."Another interesting thing I noticed about the book is that it has only
small source code listings in it. I like this approach. Most game
programming books consists of thousands and thousands of lines of
source code listings which generally result in me flipping through lots and
lots of pages to get to the discussion. While this greatly decreases the size
of the book, it increases its utility ten fold. A lot of content is packed into
this book... and I think it can benefit programmers of all levels.If you can't
tell, I liked this book. My only real complaint has to do with what the author
left out. After reading this book you will have a strong foundation in the
realm of Palm OS game programming. If you have previous game
programming experience you will be good to go.. the book does a
wonderful job of bridging the gap between desktop and handheld game
programming. It would have been nice if this book had included a
discussion on topics like special FX (particle systems, screen wipes, or
blends) or other "cool" game programming tricks. These are useful topics,
so if you are a novice game developer I reccomend picking up this book
and another general game programming book to help develop these
specialized game development skills.Overall, I think this is a great book
and I can't wait to see what the author does next:) The lessons you will

learn in library design are worth the price of admission, but I can guarantee
you will learn so much more.
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