\Managed DirectX Books
Release date: July 1st
Written by Stephen Cawood and Pat McGee who I have to admit are unknowns to me in the XNA world. Stephen has several books published and is a former Program Manager in the office team. Right now he's an enthusiastic amateur game developer like many of us. Pat teaches game development at BCIT and self published a book called 'Games Programming in C++ and DirectX: 3D Graphics, Animation, Modeling, and Audio' (no longer available).
Buy from Amazon through the link - you know you want to!
New release date: July 30th 2007
Joseph has confirmed the book is in post production and so the new July 30th date is looking good
You can read more from Joseph on his blog - Cornflower Too
As always, if you were going to buy from amazon anyway I'd love you to follow the above link and help support TheZBuffer
Another book due in December 2007. This one is written by José Antonio Leal de Farias, Bruno Pereira Evangelista and Alexandre Santos Lobao (Author). Alexandre has been involved in other managed gaming books and the other names feel very familiar to me but all my google searches are finding Portuguese language sites that I can't read.
Like what you see on this website? Give back by buying a book through Amazon
The author of this book should come as no surprise Riemer Grootjans from Riemers.net one of the best XNA and Managed DirectX tutorial sites out there. This one is due on December 17th.
If you love The Zman - buy a book from Amazon and make him smile :-)
The new XNA books continue to show up on Amazon. This one due November 15th written by Jack Brzezinski
According to Amazon:
"Jack Brzezinski holds a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence. He is one of the founders of the Game Development degree program at DePaul University, where he teaches game development courses that involve programming and level design. He is currently teaching a game software engineering course using XNA Game Studio Express. His research areas include game design and artificial intelligence."
Sounds like a quailified guy to write a book and in general Charles River do release good books
Support your favourite XNA community site and buy the book through the amazon link above...
Release date changed to November 9th
Seems the date has slipped out a couple of months to November the 9th. I never did hear from any of the authors and no sign of any blog or information on the book.
I've not heard of either author within the XNA scene, but David Franson has authored several books on game art including a favourite of mine The Dark Side of Game Texturing and it looks like Joshua Smith has authored a couple of Dark Basic books. I can't find out too much about the authors otherwise so guys if you want to let me know more about the books then drop me an email.
Remember - buying the book through the above link helps keep TheZMan in Ramen noodles
Now available on safari
The second of the new XNA books that have just been announced - this one due a little earlier than the others - July 18th. However if you like ebooks you can get it now on Safari.
Chad has been around since the Managed DirectX days, though you may know him as 'kewlniss'
The book has a forward by Tom Miller and was tech reviewed by Shawn Hargreaves - both from the XNA Framework team. So if names count for anything it should be a good book. It looks like the early e-release has caught Chad unawares - the books website http://www.xnaessentials.com/ isn't working at the moment. Hopefully Chad will fix that soon.
This month is 'Save the Zman' month - so buy your books through the Amazon link and send me some love
Scott worked (as a contractor) with the XNA team for a year. I'm not 100% sure what he did but he's obviously had some good face time with the team and the technology. The book is not due out until November 19th which makes it quite a long wait
You can read more about the book and Scot on his blog - 90 Percent
4/25/06: Book is here !!!
Written by Benjamin Nitschke who is responsible for the great looking XNA Racer starter kit as well as being one of the few people to ever get a managed game published.
The postman left a nice gift for me this morning, a copy of Ben's book. I've had a grand total of about 30 minutes to look at it so don't consider this a full review.... Firstly you can get the code for the book included versions of XNA Racer and XNA Shooter from the Wrox website. The XNA Racer and XNA Shooter sites are not up yet but Rocket Commander has been up for quite a while. I have no idea if the Racer game is identical to what was supposed to show up on the creators club site or a different version, but looks like the book version is available first.
Nice size book - 450 pages... Chapter 1 is a basic GSE intro, Chapter 2 starts with Pong just like all game books should! Chapter 3 Adds some helper classes and turns Pong into Breakout - nice slow progression. Chapter introduces game components and Tetris. So far everything is in 2d but chapters 5-3 take a rapid leap into 3d engine development including shaders, normal mapping and post processing effects. These chapters use Rocket Commander as the example. Chapters 9-11 introduce XACT, Input and UI techniques and produce the XNA Shooter game. Finally 12-14 use the game engine to produce XNA Racer including landscape and physics. WOW that's quite a ride - Pong to XNA Racer in 450 pages and 6 complete games. My guess is that the book deals with the important parts of each game and you are going to have to do a lot of self review of the code. If you are expecting a book that walks you through every line of code you would probably be better waiting for one of the other XNA books this one is after all called 'Professional'.
Thats it for now... watch for a full review in the next couple of days... and enjoy playing XNA Racer on that big HD TV. If you normally buy your books through amazon then I would love you to follow the link on this page - I don't ask for any payment for The ZBuffer but some Amazon referrals help me buy the occasional book or Xbox controller.
As David has mentioned on his blog he is currently writing a book about XNA. However its not showing up in Amazon yet and I know nothing about the details. But We know David has had successful Managed Gaming books published before so that counts for something. Watch this space for more details.
Written by Tom Miller from the managed DirectX team.
Updated source code available on The ZBuffer downloads. (note: this contains the modified files only, you need to purchase the book to get the original source)
Tom's second book is now available. Though the title doesn't explicitly call it out the entire book is Managed DirectX
You can read a sample chapter and see the table of contents at the home page on Sams website.
Updated source code available on The ZBuffer downloads. (note: this contains the modified files only, you need to purchase the book to get the original source)
Written by David Weller and others.
David has made the source (C#/VB) available and fixed it to work with the latest version of DirectX. If its useful don't forget to buy the book
Written by Lynn Harrison
Original Code download and support forum
Updated souce code availalbe on The ZBuffer downloads. (note: this contains only the code, you need to download the original source to get all the media files)
4/12/06: Added note regarding delay of publication
Originally planned to be Tom Miller's third book, authorship was passed over to Rick Hoskinson.
Though a publication date of April 11th 2006 is widely referenced on Amazon and other sites the book is currently on hold awaiting the future plans of Managed DirectX and the XNA framework - see Tom's blog. So don't pre-order this unless you are a very patient person.
Firstly, just to be clear, Game Engine Toolset Development is not a book *about* Managed DirectX like the others on this page. But it is a book that uses Managed DirectX in some of it's chapters and it's also all about using C# and .Net for game development tools. The author, Graham Wihlidal, is a regular on gamedev.net. The book releases at the GDC2006 but you can, of course, pre-order it from Amazon, though ignore the editorial on Amazon as it's very old. Instead check out the book's website where you can also see the table of contents.
I don't actually own a copy of this book so I can't give you an opinion other than I have seen it recommended several times and Frank is a very active author who maintains and answers questions about the book on his website. I wish all authors cared this much about the people who buy their books
David Goben did a port of this book for an early version of Managed DirectX and I recently updated this source so that it compiles against the newer versions. As always, if the source is useful to you please consider buying the book.
According to the books website the latest version of the book source code includes a managed port.
The download requires a password from the book and the original source code from the CD, totally reasonable in my opinion, which means I've not had a chance to look at it yet. However the book is on its way to me as I type this so I will have an update for you soon.
Thanks Greg and Mykre
