Linux Game Programming W/CD [With CD-ROM]

The author knows what he is talking about and you can tell that he has been there himself. The experiences he shares are invaluable - they save you so much time! This book gets you started by answering the really difficult and important questions: What are the best libraries and tools to use, how do you get the major obstacles out of the way and what are the basic principles in modern game programming. If you have ever strived to write top quality software you will appreciate and undertand the advice in this book.This won't teach you how to program in C/C++, although there is plenty of good general advice. But it will teach you what you need to know to write games in C/C++.If you are looking for completed source code that you can tweak a bit to have your "own" game, look elsewhere. If you are a C/C++ programmer, but not very familiar with Linux, graphics, sound, or networking - this is for you!I loved the authors humour, too, by the way. Excellent reading.

I'm about 4 chapters into Linux Game Programming right now and so far it has been quite interesting and easy to grasp. The problem I have encountered so far is some mildy annoying code flaws, variables that are either not initialized or change case half way through ex:int I = 0;...i = 2(wow.. when did C become case insensitive?)Also, things like calling atexit() without mentioning that you need to include stdlib.h , I'm sure a more advanced programmer would have caught that flaw immediately, but it gave me problems for several hours. I'm in partial agreement with the other review, This is a great book, and its concepts a easy enough to grasp, but the buggy example code may give problems to those who havent programmed extensively before. If you are an intermediate newbie like me, be sure to take a look at the documentation ... and various example programs around the net.