Second Chapter Up

I've put up the second chapter of the book here. This actually has some code in it. I've also just about finalised the table of contents. This has taken ages, because I have to figure out how much time to spend on different topics and the overall slant of the book. I'm going for "Learn to program properly and have fun writing games while you do it" as an approach. If you can already code you might find it boring, but I'm hoping that you'll stick around for the ride.

Another thing that has taken ages is getting the tone and voice of the book sorted. This sounds silly, but I've written loads of pages trying to find a good "sound" to the material. I'm sure that people who actually know English (for whom I have more and more respect every day) probably have a proper way of describing what I'm doing at this point. I'm relying on editorial people (and you,dear reader) to give me guidance on this.

Anyhoo, the chapter is up and the contents are coming. Let me know what you think.

Comments

[Mark C]

Hi Rob,

I noticed a minor grammar bug on page 2 of chapter 2. "Computers Programs" should probably be "Computer programs".

I very much like the style of these chapters, they're very easy to read through. It was a fun read. The "great programmer" bits were entertaining, and I think they do provide good insight into how good code should be written.

I think that the amount of depth you go into on programming is just about perfect, because I've seen far too many game programming books gloss over important programming concepts, and they just end up leaving a new programmer extremely confused. The only thing I'd be worried about is that someone brand new to programming might be a little scared off by the complexity of things, before seeing the power of what they are learning. I didn't read ch. 1 in as much depth as I read ch. 2, but I don't know if there's enough there to get a brand new programmer excited about writing code. At the same time though, anyone who would pick up your book probably already knows how powerful programming can be, so you might not need to sell them on it very much.

Anyways, what I've seen so far is great, seems like a really good introduction to game programming and c# in general. Just out of curiosity, how advanced will this book end up getting? because I really enjoy your writing style, but I'd be reluctant to pick up your book if it only goes into the basics. I'd be very interested in reading about some more advanced topics in game programming though. Things look great so far, good luck with the rest of the book!

- Mark

[Rob]

Glad you like it up until now. I'm going to go as far as I can with the programming side, including classes, inheritance, interfaces and test driven development. I should have a proper table of contents up at some point, as soon as I can decide on the sequencing...