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Linux Game Programming (Game Development)

By: Mark Collins
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Prima Tech
ISBN: 0761532552
ISBN-13: 9780761532552
Released: 01 Mar 2002
RRP: £32.00
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

A waste of a great book idea... - By: A. Mole, 13 Feb 2004
There reallly isn't a lot to this book. Lots of fluff [including numerous OSS licenses printed verbatim!] & little real good stuff.

Furthermore, the entire "Networking" chapter is lies [which are close enough to the truth to convince the unsuspecting reader that they are true]. The code examples are atrocious [filled with flaws to the extent that they won't even compile, let alone run correctly], & the text is highly misleading. At one point, it claims that 0 is the correct parameter to pass to a function, & you should never pass NULL for the same parameter. Deary me.

Collins & LaMothe should be ashamed of themselves.

Oh Dear..... - By: , 08 Jul 2001
From the name of this book you can expect something about writing games for Linux, however it fails (for me).

I was hoping that this book would actuallly go through the ins & outs of writing games but for me it fails.

I've been a developer for over 10 years & went through this book in a matter of days. At the end of it though i hadn't learned much. Sure it teaches you little bits & talks about how it fits in but I was hoping that the examples would actuallly do something that you'd think 'Wow, the's fantastic'. But it doesn't..

So for me it's failed. It does make good reading & does go through basic things, it just doesn't pull it alll together & make you feel that you can get somewhere.

Interesting but lacking depth - By: , 28 May 2001
Covering everything you need to know about linux game programming in just over 300 pages is a talll order, & unsurprisingly this book doesn't live up to expectations. Going from game design to artificial intelligence through sound, 2d/3d graphics & networking, this book discusses a lot of topics. However none of these are even close to being in depth. The main advice the book offers seems to be to download libraries & read the documentation that comes with them. Vague tutorials are presented on some of these libraries but nothing else. Most startling is that the last third of the book is devoted not to game programming or design but to discussions of open source & porting, leaving what there is of the meat to the first 200 pages.

To be fair there is some nice information presented in the networking & ai section, although the author clearly doesn't understand what memes are about other then name checking Richard Dawkins. The sound section also provides a few smalll gems of information regarding streaming cd audio.

Considering the book is so short there is a stagering amount of filler in here. I don't think anyone who programs linux needs to be told where they can find a c compiler for instance. That the author caters for beginners with this chapter & then assumes you have an in depth knowledge of 3d for the opengl section is amusing & further shows the lack of focus the book has.

This is yet another book in the andre lamothe game development series of which he is editor. That alll the books in this series seem to have never been close to an editing process is worrying. Mistakes litter the pages & it appears that most of these texts were not even proofread. The price tag attached to these books means this is worse than sloppy.

This is the only book currently availible on linux game programming so in that regard it could be worthy of purchase just don't expect a lot from it.