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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
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Title:
Programming Linux Games
Author:
Loki Software
ISBN:
1 886411 49 2
Publisher:
No Starch Press
Pages:
424pp
Price:
$39.95/£29-
Reviewer:
Paul F. Johnson
Subject:
Linux; games
Appeared in:
16-5
This is a very good book that has one downfall; it uses code snippets rather than proper code examples. It feels more of a "proof of concept" book.

The other problem is that the book needs some minor updates - the main one being the coverage of the OpenAL code. While not a major problem (it's quite easy to fix the code by looking at just the header), having code that does not just compile out of the box can cause problems for those new into the games programming arena.

Most of the main aspects of game programming are covered - scripting, SDL, sound (compressed and uncompress - encouragingly, it demonstrates how to use vorbis files) and event handling. Game timing is the only part that perhaps is not covered quite as much as it should be. While keeping a baseline of update every 1/30th of a second will work, it is perhaps not the best way of ensuring everything keeps moving.

I did enjoy the games engine code and description. I have read many books dedicated to the subject and to be honest, this holds its own to them.

Had there been someway of getting hold of updates with the OpenAL code fixed, this would have gained a highly recommended. Unfortunately, it does not so, only achieves a recommended.