Buy it at Amazon
Read a Sample Chapter From The Publisher
| Author | Matthew Tagliaferri |
| Publisher | APress |
| Length | 408 pages |
| vbRad Rating: | 4 fingers up. (4 out of 5) |
| Reviewed by | Robert Gelb |
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Learn VB .NET Through Game Programming
Buy it at Amazon Read a Sample Chapter From The Publisher |
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The flow of this book is cool: the author writes a simple game, then rewrites it to show better methods of coding (encapsulation, OOP, etc…) So the first chapter is your first game about rolling dice. Second chapter encapsulates various objects in the game (Die class, DiePanel class, etc…) showing benefits in code reuse. Along the way you also learn how to create an .NET control. The 3rd chapter expands on the encapsulation work you've done in the 2nd chapter by creating a new game that will use the Die classes for its logic. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 expand on OOP by introducing other features such as polymorphism, interfaces and inheritance. To that effect, the author shows how to create a cellular automata based games like Conway's Life and The Voting Game.
Chapter 7 deals with multiplayer games and how to keep the games in sync. The chapter deals with turn based games, rather than real time ones, but the code is generic enough that one could adopt it.
Chapter 8 is the intro to DirectX. Author acknowledges that writing simple tile games is ok for GDI+, but if you want to smash speed barriers, you better move to DirectX. Turns out, DirectX programming is kind of simple. I was flipping 250 dice at high rates in no time. Then the author produces an Asteroids like game. Chapter 9 is wrap-up designed to pick up pieces of vb.net that didn't fit into game programming like exception handling, serialization, garbage collection, etc…
Finally, this book ships with an Appendix that is actually useful. I am talking about the POV-RAY quick tutorial. It'll get you started on this magical and complicated graphics tool
Just so that you know, you won't learn how to write next Duke Nukem, but you'll learn VB.NET. All in all, an entertaining read, you'll play plenty of games as you go along, probably create one of your own.