Rating: 
Summary: One of the best game dev books in recent years
Review: Aspiring game programmers face a major challenge. There are plenty of good introductory books out there that will teach them enough to put together a basic game. Unfortunately, the leap from there to being able to program something approaching a commercial game is huge. There are articles and resources covering more advanced topics, but most of them assume a knowledge of several other topics that the reader may have never even heard of before.That's where this book comes in. Core Techniques & Algorithms in Game Programming provides an excellent survey of the most important topics in game programming and serves as a glue between beginning and advanced texts. The topics covered include architectural issues such as game organization, data structures, and design patterns, over 100 pages of artificial intelliegence, scripting, networking, occlusion and LOD algorithms for both indoor and outdoor environments, animation and cinematography, shading (including BRDF, lightmapping, and NPR), organic rendering (trees, grass, oceans, clouds), particle systems (including useful performance tips), geometric algorithms, shaders, and an excellent appendix covering performance tuning. Each chapter also includes a list of resources that can be used for further study. Each topic is covered in enough depth to give the reader a solid, clear understanding of each algorithm or technique without getting bogged down in details. The amount of code listed is limited (but useful), but any decent programmer should be able to easily take the techiniques described in the book and implement them in their language/API of choice. The book moves along at an brisk pace without giving a sense that any topic is being glossed over. There are only a couple of minor negative points worth mentioning. The first is that there were a few topics (such as some of the basic 2D and 3D sections and the appendices covering Direct3D and OpenGL) that are covered quite well in most introductory books that could have been dropped to make room for other things. The second is that there were a couple of topics that could have used a bit more coverage. There's so much good information, though, that these shortcomings are easily overlooked. This is one of the most important game development books to come out in the past several years. For new game programmers, it's a must-have. Even experienced game programmers may find this useful to fill in holes in their knowledge. I highly recommend adding this book to your library.
Rating:
Summary: opinions from one professor to another
Review: Being a professor myself, i approached Sanchez-Crespo's book with skepticism. The NRG series is new, the author is an academic and, on top of that, the book does not come with a CD. Still, much to my surprise I have to say this book is exactly what I was looking for. After reading it (and re-reading some passages) the difference with other books on games is appalling: this is a course on games programming, a tool for those who want a formal, well laid-out introduction, that covers all the main topics and leaves few questions unanswered. The book is structured in two parts: the first deals with gameplay programming, that is, software architecture, artificial intelligence, networks, input handling, etc. The section on AI is one of the best I've seen, and especially the chapter on Scripting Techniques is superb. Both traditional script languages, Lua and Java are covered with detail, so you can get down coding right after leaving the book. Lots of interesting techniques are detailed, such as Djikstra's, A*, etc. so this book is one of the rare instances of AI material designed specifically for games. Then, the technology section is just appalling in scope: approx. 400 pages full of algorithms, starting with simple 3D pipelines, and then indoors/outdoors rendering, character animation, cameras, texturing, lighting, shaders, etc. The book is surprisingly up-to-date, making me guess the author is a graphics programmer at the core. The shader section is based on Cg, and covers topics such as skeletal animation on shaders, BDRFs, toon rendering, etc. So in the end this doesn't feel much as an introductory book, but as a complete volume of knowledge, ranging from the very basic to the very advanced. Finally, there's a couple chapters worth mentioning: one on optimization, which is always handy, and another on APIs, which gives all the basic info about OpenGL and DirectX 9 to start coding. The approach for the whole book is not based on specific APIs, but on the algorithms instead. Then, these appendices tell you how to actually translate that into lines of running code. Overall, my only criticism is that the book could have been longer (physics and audio are not there), and I hope to get a second, expanded edition soon, with more of the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing here. I'll use it for my students.
Rating:
Summary: encyclopedic, well-written, and very useful indeed
Review: Having read many books on game programming, this has to be one of the most "encyclopedic" efforts that come to my mind. There's literally hundreds of algorithms here. I wish it had contained a bit more material on stuff like shaders or HLSL (most of the examples are on Cg), but overall this book delivers what it's supposed to: core material all game developers should know. The first section (gameplay programming) is maybe the one you'll be less familiar with, as books on technology are way more popular than game logic or AI texts. There's a very good chapter on scripting, and another interesting piece on networked games (this one could have been a bit longer). The section on AI is then the most complete: 4 chapters, covering all the basics and many clever tricks. Then the section on technology is just what you'll be waiting for: a long compilation of the most commonly used algorithms out there, including animation, indoors/outdoors renderers, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: For beginners only
Review: I find it telling that the author's bio does not mention any games that he has worked on, because it quickly becomes apparent when reading it that this is *not* the advice of a seasoned developer, and I doubt that he has worked on anything more than very small demos. The book does cover a broad range of techniques and algorithms that are applicable to game programming, but it seems that the author's knowledge of these techniques is of an academic nature - gleaned from reading other books or newsgroups and a little dabbling in his spare time, not from professional game development. As such, it provides an introduction to quite a lot of topics, but as soon as it comes to adding more detail on implementation or practical advice, he suddenly becomes very vague and occasionally just plain wrong. Furthermore, his programming style is very academic (smells of unix) - not of the standard expected of a professional programmer. The book may serve as a good warm-up for a student wishing to enter the industry, but for anybody with a year or two under their belt it is unlikely that they will find anything here to improve their skill set. This does not necessarily make it a bad book, as there are plenty of people out there who want to get into the industry and don't know where to start, and more in-depth books would probably create information overload. However, the book would have got a higher score if it had included the word "introduction" in the title somewhere. As it is pitched, as a reference book for the industry, it is a definite disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Satisfied with my purchase.
Review: I got this book around Xmas and haven't yet finished reading it, but so far I'm extremely happy with my purchase: the contents are extremely up-to-date, and the explanations are kept simple, friendly. I've been using books like Real Time Rendering for a while, but these are more "reference" texts... Core Tech & Algorithms is a 900-page textbook, and its goal is clearly to help you understand techniques, not to try to squeeze as many techniques as possible in the smallest space. Still, the book delivers complete tutorials on all of today's general algorithms (portals, BSPs, IK, it's all here), and many all-time classics (from Atari to Zelda, etc.). I'd recommend it to people who'd like a textbook-tutorial approach: you'll understand each and every technique Mr. Sanchez teaches here. I wish the book was longer, and more techniques were added in... a chapter on Audio and another on Physics seem somewhat lacking to me.
Rating:
Summary: Nice overview, but very few details
Review: I guess I'm the kind of software engineer who likes to see code from time to time in my programming books. While the author does provide a decent overview of basic game techniques and algorithms, it doesn't flush them out very well. Buy it if (and only if) you want an overview.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent textbook
Review: I have just finished using this book as a textbook for our computer game development course at the University of Otago. The text covers almost all of the important areas that need to be mentioned when discussing the development of computer games(audio and physics are a bit thin). When looking for a textbook for this course I compared several other titles including "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" by La Mothe. The problems with La Mothe is the writing style and the heavy reliance on API specific code. Sanchez-Crespo avoids these problems by explaining ideas in a clear and concise fashion. By intentionally focusing of the ideas behind the algorithm Sanchez-Crespo has created a book that has a self life beyond most of the current stock of books. If you found La Mothe hard to stomach because of the writing you will be pleasantly surprised with this text. The text does not provide cookie cutter code samples that make it impossible to set assignments or learn by implementation, but instead provides the background knowledge required for successful application. I would recommend this text for any student interested in understanding the breadth of knowledge required to be a good game programmer. The feedback from the students in the course was that this was one of the best textbooks they had used for any of their courses. If you are a Professor who needs a text for your senior level University course, I would suggest that they would be hard pressed to find a better text than this.(I know I've tried) Simon
Rating:
Summary: An excellent textbook
Review: I have just finished using this book as a textbook for our computer game development course at the University of Otago. The text covers almost all of the important areas that need to be mentioned when discussing the development of computer games(audio and physics are a bit thin). When looking for a textbook for this course I compared several other titles including "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" by La Mothe. The problems with La Mothe is the writing style and the heavy reliance on API specific code. Sanchez-Crespo avoids these problems by explaining ideas in a clear and concise fashion. By intentionally focusing of the ideas behind the algorithm Sanchez-Crespo has created a book that has a self life beyond most of the current stock of books. If you found La Mothe hard to stomach because of the writing you will be pleasantly surprised with this text. The text does not provide cookie cutter code samples that make it impossible to set assignments or learn by implementation, but instead provides the background knowledge required for successful application. I would recommend this text for any student interested in understanding the breadth of knowledge required to be a good game programmer. The feedback from the students in the course was that this was one of the best textbooks they had used for any of their courses. If you are a Professor who needs a text for your senior level University course, I would suggest that they would be hard pressed to find a better text than this.(I know I've tried) Simon
Rating:
Summary: A grain of salt
Review: I have pretty seen much of the content featured on the book elsewhere: both in freely accessible documents found on the net or in other books - much better written and narrower in scope that the one we are discussing here. And being 'broad in scope' is not necessarily a good thing always - I find the book to be give a shallow treatment or ignore some of the things that really 'matter' for me. And it gets very very detailed (verbose should fit more adequately here) in things that are so prone to change such as shading languages or very specific algorithms. If you want an encyclopedic approach to Real time rendering try the book by Haines and Möller - at least they credit the original authors of the algorithms by citing papers, webpages, etc a thing I miss also in this book. Some concrete objections: The part about "efficient" data structures is an exercise in schyzophreny since on one hand it tells you to reinvent all the types in the STL and then tells you that is a good thing to use STL, deriving into some ranting about COTS development, good coding practices & testing, etc. The Design Patterns part is laughable - a 'common practice' is something that may, or may not, qualify as a design pattern. It depends on the justifications the pattern's advocate present to fellow engineers. And I have no seen such justification anywhere beyond the 'Uh, lots of people do that and it works'. I find the part about project managing quite misguiding. Thinking about developers as one might think about the critters AI in a game is *not* the way to handle people, and especially, such a thing as game developing. If you want something about that, read Alistair Cockburn's "Agile Software Development". And finally the recurse of citing some philosophers/thinkers/scientists at the beginning of each chapter is something that given the tone and the scope of the book sounds quite pedantic. Ah, and saying 'nah, game programming is different' is not enough for justifying the defects I explain above.
Rating: 
Summary: good for general information
Review: I have read about half of this book so far. I was very excited about this book while reading it because it does contain a lot of useful general information. However, if you are looking for actual code examples...this book falls short. I am writing my own game engine right now and I went to the book to use an algorithm it had listed...except the algorithm doesn't actually work! i tried to debug the algorithm for hours before giving up and writing my own. (Which was a good exercise in itself) Once again I turned to the book for an algorithm it listed, but the explaination of it was so bad I decided to write that one myself too. So...if you are a programmer already this book will be useful to you because the code snippets provided are less important that overall concepts which is why i bought it in the first place. But if you are a beginner programmer looking to learn how to code, I wouldn't recommend this book to you.
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