4.0 out of 5 based on 3 reviews. – Customer review on 29/04/2009

I must admit that when I started reading this book from my local library, I had a small amount of prior knowledge in C++, but I had not used the language in so long that I decided to start again from the beginning. Dawson starts the user off nice and slowly, and explains all of the concepts in an easy-to-understand way. After presenting many of the more basic concepts, Dawson speeds up, providing more code than explanations (the explanations are still there and mostly sufficient, though) in a way though could potentially leave some readers behind. This happens around chapter 4 (of 10).

One thing to note is that although the examples are game-oriented, that's about as far as the book gets into game programming, but as stated in the other review, only command-line output is covered, and so I feel there is not much more he could have covered. Do not, however, expect this book to explain anything about the design-side of games. I recommend this book to mast people, but be warned that Dawson does not hold your hand through the entire book, something that may be problematic for people who are less computer-literate or not from a programming background.

4.0 out of 5 based on 3 reviews. – Customer review on 21/09/2007

A fairly good book, it helps you learn some nice basics of C++ but does it in a way that can teach you how to make a game. It doesn't get in to graphical programming at all. It's all commandline, it's the real basics, the stuff that you absolutely must know before you move on to anything harder. If you're interested in learning how to program in C++ and to carry on to be able to make your own games, then this is the book for you. It won't help you to be able to build a first person shooter, or an RPG, though you might be able to make a nice text adventure game by the end. This is the first book that you should read if you want to one day be able to program your own computer games. It has a few mistakes, but anyone with enough brains to be looking in to programming in the first place, is going to be able to fix that themselves. I recommend this book, though there may be some others that might be a bit better. Still though, this book has helped me.

4.0 out of 5 based on 3 reviews. – Customer review on 29/04/2009

I must admit that when I started reading this book from my local library, I had a small amount of prior knowledge in C++, but I had not used the language in so long that I decided to start again from the beginning. Dawson starts the user off nice and slowly, and explains all of the concepts in an easy-to-understand way. After presenting many of the more basic concepts, Dawson speeds up, providing more code than explanations (the explanations are still there and mostly sufficient, though) in a way though could potentially leave some readers behind. This happens around chapter 4 (of 10). I still found the book useful enough to purchase it though.

One thing to note is that although the examples are game-oriented, that's about as far as the book gets into game programming, but as stated in the other review, only command-line output is covered, and so I feel there is not much more he could have covered. Do not, however, expect this book to explain anything about the design-side of games. I recommend this book to mast people, but be warned that Dawson does not hold your hand through the entire book, something that may be problematic for people who are less computer-literate or not from a programming background.