Tricks of the Windows Game
Programming Gurus (2nd Edition)
(Other Programming) by Andre
LaMothe
Excellent Starting Point For Game Programmers
Tricks of the Windows Game Programmin Gurus, 2E takes the reader
through Win32 programming, covering all the major components of DirectX
including DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectInput (including Force
Feedback), and DirectMusic. Andre teaches the reader 2D graphics and
rasterization techniques. Finally, Andre provides the most intense
coverage of game algorithms, multithreaded programming, artificial
intelligence (including fuzzy logic, neural nets, and genetic algorithms), and
physics modeling you have ever seen in a game book.

Personal Review: Tricks of the Windows Game Programming
Gurus (2nd Edition) (Other Programming) by Andre LaMothe
I have just read all the Amazon reviews of this book going back three
years, and one things stands out -- nobody recommends any other book to
replace this one. That tells me a lot.
I am a software developer who hasn't done any Windows interface
programming in several years. During those years I've done some Java
programming, but mostly low level C programming on Linux and
embedded systems. Recently I needed to do a custom Windows interface
for an embedded system, sort of a "dashboard" that would display data
from the embedded system and allow the user to interact with it. I needed
a quick refresher course on basic Windows programming, plus some ideas
on how to do the custom controls I wanted (e.g. speedometers, scrolling
line graphs, sliders, etc.). I went looking for the right book, and on the third
try I picked up this one.
For my purposes, this book is almost perfect. It covers the basics of
Windows programming in the first three chapters, at exactly the level I
needed, then moves quickly into Windows graphics programming. By the
end of the first seven or eight chapters (about 400 pages, which took me
two days to read), I was convinced that I should write my program like a
simple 2d game, and I had enough information and explicit examples to do
it. Within another three days, I had a working version of the dashboard.
In my experience, most Windows programming books get lost in the
bottomless pit of Microsoft gobbledygook. Once the author goes there, the
reader is truly lost. This book is different. LaMothe has exactly the right
attitude about it -- he cuts through the immense Windows overhead, shows
exactly how to use a minimal set of necessary Windows functions, and
encourages the developer to get on with creating their own software the
way they want it to look and behave.
It's true that this book is five years old, and uses an old version of DirectX.
But programs built with that version are still supported by the latest DirectX
runtime. Since the number of DirectX calls used by the end of Chapter 8 is
quite small, it should be trivial to convert them to the latest version, which
is my next project. If anyone knows of a better book, or an equivalent book
that is current, please tell us about it.
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