Mac Game Programming

Rating:
Summary: awful, awful, awful
Review: I learned a whole lot from the exact 'game programming gurus' book mentioned earlier, and picked up this book and bought it assuming it would be useful in some way. I was wrong. None of the code beyond chapter 7 compiles.. Well most of the complaining has been covered, I just figured this book needed another 1 star review to have the average better reflect the quality

Rating:
Summary: awful, awful, awful
Review: I learned a whole lot from the exact 'game programming gurus' book mentioned earlier, and picked up this book and bought it assuming it would be useful in some way. I was wrong. None of the code beyond chapter 7 compiles.. Well most of the complaining has been covered, I just figured this book needed another 1 star review to have the average better reflect the quality

Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I really want to like this book - it fills a niche, it contains a ton of information, the author seems like a good guy and has clearly worked REALLY hard - but it's just not possible, especially at the price. And it's a little odd to discover that the author hasn't actually published a game - one of the reasons I buy a programming book instead of scraping together information off the internet is in the hope of a little authority.

The intended audience seems inconstant - a collision detection subroutine (will either corner of this edge of the square hit the object if we move it?) is repeated 4 times, one for each direction, with identical supporting text each time. Seems like this could be left as an exercise for the reader. But I should "create a window for my application in the resourcer." This is to describe in excruciating detail how to unlock the driver's door, then the passenger's door, and then the trunk; oh, and if you get a flat tire, just change it.

There are strange problems with the diagrams - they appear to have been delivered correctly, but they show up in the book with chunks missing or displaced. Correct versions are available on the publisher's and author's web-sites, but it shows a lack of concern for correctness on the part of the publisher and throws the accuracy of every diagram into question.

The same is true for a lot of the code snippets. (And the book cannot stand on its own without the included CD.) There are a lot of syntactical typos, the indentation is frequently just wrong - something I'm inclined to also blame on the editors. It feels like they were more interested in getting the book out the door than getting it out the door correctly. The code provided is frequently inelegant - there are memory leaks, multiple calls to functions whose parameters and return values won't have changed. And yes, maybe they're side-effecting functions and this is what you have to do when you're using InputSprocket - but tell me that, don't make me wonder.

There's a lot of information here - much of it good and helpful. But it's sparse and hard-won. I'm perfectly happy to sit and puzzle over something I just don't get, as long as I'm sure it's just me not getting it. It's frustrating when there are so many inaccuracies ('cause sure, everyone makes a typo or two) that I can no longer trust that process.

Rating:
Summary: A good start
Review: I think the book is good for someone who has some knowledge in programming and is willing to specialize in game development on the Mac. The web site is also a good complement to the book and is updated regularly. Almost the only book on the topic available for Macintosh and a good one.

Rating:
Summary: Error in Project Builder version of the source code
Review: Since I contributed to this book, I shouldn't rate it. However, I would like to encourage Mac developers to purchase the book to garner further interest from publishers to release more Mac specific programming books. In addition, I would like to inform readers that an error exists in the Project Builder version of the source code that comes with the book. If you load any of the project files on the CD-ROM and try to compile them, the build will fail. This is because the file InfoPlist.strings is not on the CD-ROM with the source code files. Fortunately, the author has a small download to fix the problem. Visit his site for instructions...

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating
Review: This book is almost impossible to sit down and get much of value from.
I will omit detailing all of the syntax problems and compiler problems that have already been mentioned here (a contributor to the book admited that nothing on the CD would even compile, and he gave the book 5 stars - enough said),

This book is poorly organized, the author jumps around at seemingly random without any clearly defined goals in any of the chapters that I've read (im about half through) He has pages and pages dedicated to the theorys of how and why Apple chose to do this or that, but barely a snippet of how to actually accomplish anything. When the author does attempt to show you something, he makes grand assumptions about what you already know. Example : in chapter 4 he decides to show you "creating a window", but he only shows half of the process he just mentions offhandedly that you will need resedit or resourcer to actually create the window that he has just shown you how to draw. To the author : if the person reading your book does not know how to "create a window", then why do you assume that they know anything in the world at all about resedit? You didnt even include it on the CDROM, or at least you could have provided information about where to get it!

Thats just a single rant of mine about this book, but the half explanations and lack of follow-through here carries on for chapter after chapter. Frustrating.

I am not new to Mac programming, in fact I've written several proprietary programs for my business, have been working on a game as a hobby, and I am nearly lost reading this mess. I learned graphics on the Mac with the EXCELLENT book "Secrets of the Mac game programming gurus". Sadly that book is no longer published and unfortunately alot of the quickdraw stuff taught in that book is not supported in OSX carbon. But if you could find "Gurus" and another book on carbon programming, you'd be far better off than wasting your time with this mess.