Game Coding Complete

by Mike McShaffry, David Graham

Welcome to Game Coding Complete, Fourth Edition, the newest edition of the essential, hands-on guide to developing commercial-quality games. Written by two veteran game programmers, the book examines the entire game development process and all the unique challenges associated with creating a game. In this excellent introduction to game architecture, you'll explore all the major subsystems of modern game engines and learn professional techniques used in actual games, as well as Teapot Wars, a game created specifically for this book. This updated fourth edition uses the latest versions of DirectX and Visual Studio, and it includes expanded chapter coverage of game actors, AI, shader programming, LUA scripting, the C# editor, and other important updates to every chapter. All the code and examples presented have been tested and used in commercial video games, and the book is full of invaluable best practices, professional tips and tricks, and cautionary advice.

Genres: Programming, Games, Reference, Technical, Technology, Computer Science, Nonfiction

1291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2003

Reviews

[Diogo Muller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book, with lots of great tips and info about the games industry. However, it has some problems, in my opinion.

One of them is that, while this book is a great resource to learn about an ample variety of subjects in Game Development, the way a few parts could use more examples, less code. I confess that, since I had some previous experience with Game Development, I kinda skimmed a few of those parts I already had some experience with, searching only for tidbits. However, those parts are few and between, and everything is well explained, in a general way.

Another (small) problem this has is, since this is a techlonogy book, a few things evolved from a few years ago - Version control systems have changed; The sample project need a few modifications to run on current versions of Visual Studio. However, most of the technology shown here is still up to date, and/or very useful for current skills.

Now, the good. This book shows a lot of great insights about game development - not only about code, but at how things happen on a real game company. The "Tales from the Trenches" are, sometimes, the most interesting part of the chapters.

If you want to have a general idea about game development, know programming well, and has patience for big code dumps, this book is great for you! If you want more in-dept info, or have absolutely no experience with coding, search somewhere else.

[Victor Sui · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read, but was hoping for more guidance. Felt more like a reference book than a guide. Seemed to lose its steam about halfway through.

[Danien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers a number of good and proven game programming practices, by someone who has extensive professional experience in AAA (large teams, commercial) game development.

This review refers to the 2nd edition.

This is a comprehensive book on what is required to build a game engine in C++, covering a high level architectural view of the engine, and all the different components such as a game loop, resource handling, input handling, renderer, networking, audio, and the event system that ties them together. It uses the Windows and DirectX API but its concepts can be applied to other platforms.

This is a foundational book that covers what is required for a typical game engine. Advanced programmers should already know most of the material.

This is a good guide on all the different components of a game engine. Junior programmers trying to learn more about the overall engine or those starting out on their first complete engine should definitely read this.

[BeestigeBoi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall the book is well written and well structured, it covers all of the necessary topics and does so from a professional game development perspective. The examples are tied to Windows and DirectX as well as being a bit dated at this point. Not all of the approaches, data structures and algorithms are still considered leading best by today's standards but they certainly still are workable solutions.

I skimmed past the chapters on networking and multiprogramming as I personally exclusively use Linux based operating systems.

The weaknesses of this book are twofold, first the quality of the chapters degrades towards later chapters, as in most books. Secondly, I don't personally see much value in the concrete game example chapter 'a game of teapot wars'.

All together, I would recommend this book for programmers with no game development experience or for game developers with no professional experience.

[Ryan Bowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, without a doubt, the greatest programming book I've ever read.

I learned more from this book than I did from years at university (although unfortunately my university course was horrendous so it's an easy benchmark to meet).

The concepts are clearly explained, the architecture is pure genius and it's a genuinely enjoyable read.

If you want one negative: it's so big! There's so much crammed into this massive book that holding it can be unwieldy but that didn't stop me reading it from cover-to-cover and loving every second of it.

[Rado · Rating 3 out of 5]

+ книгата върви с готов engine. опростен, но цял
+ минава през доста страни от разработката не енджин
+ има интересни коментари за реални ситуации по време на разработката на не една или две игри

- книгата е по-скоро ръководство към енджина с много рядко разглеждане на алтернативи за решението на различни проблеми

[AngryKarl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Odhodlal jsem se ji označit za "přečtenou" až po roce - u podobných knížek se prostě těžko určuje, kdy je "přečtená". Některé kapitoly jsem vynechal, jiné jsem četl klidně pětkrát. Když budu přehánět, tak čtení většinou probíhalo tak, že jsem přečetl jednu stránku a pak týden programoval :-)

Doporučuji všem programátorům, kteří chtějí proniknout do vývoje počítačových her. To, co je v téhle knížce, na internetu sotva najedete. Alespoň ne takhle uceleně. Bez znalosti C++ si ale neškrtnete. Což ale není špatně - kniha prostě není ve stylu "Nauč se programovat hry za 24hodin"..

[Ahmed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know that book since its first edition in the early of 2003 as I remember.
There is no much DirectX stuff there, but it scratches all the game development topics. I would love to see more demos in the next edition. I also liked the chapter that's about the scene graph and its implementation using DirectX. The AI chapter is very breif introductory, and I would recommend a specific book on AI itself. Chapters by the second author are really great and its about practical experience in coding, I enjoyed reading his debugging techniques chapters a lot.

[Dirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is ok for beginners in game programming. Having experience in C++ helps. The example code is ok as well - which means it does it's job.

As an experienced coder I bought the book mostly for tips on how to build an efficient architecture and data structures. Although the book contained pretty basic stuff on that, it wasn't anything new or out of the ordinary. So for me, it didn't contain what I'd hoped for. But as said it's a good overview on how to get started.

[Avi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because I was going to do some game programming, but that didn't pan out. Also, the book didn't turn out to have much, if anything, to do with the kind of game programming I would have been doing.

However, it's very well-written and contains a lot of wisdom that applicable to any software development efforts. I'll be keeping my eye out for any more of McSahffry's books, even if they have nothing to do with anything I might ever work on or otherwise encounter.

[Thomas Lassanske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts out really great, going into some good detail on engine design with some important "in the trenches" pieces I haven't seen elsewhere. The last 1/3 of the book is not as useful, seeming to skim over its contents superficially. The sample game won't win any awards (once I got it to compile and run successfully), but that is probably the point.

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by a professional game developer, he also gives tips about his experience while working as a game developer. I really like the book, one problem is his engine is not abstracted that much to work with opengl and directx. Also the book covers directx 11, but very short introduction directx is giving. I highly recommend that book to any beginner and intermediate game programmer.

[Sergey Ignatchenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on game development out there. While on the surface it is Windows-only, the concepts from it apply across the board (except maybe Cell but as Cell is gone for good, it becomes a moot issue).

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lot's great stuff in here, but I wish some of the topics were talked about a bit more in depth, versus other topics.

[cartmanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it on my kindle.
It has a wide topic in game development, so I think I'd rather take it as a reference book.