Question

Just curious to know if anyone has ever used gametutorials.com products for learning directX. I was debating on whether I should buy it or not. I read online that most of his tutorials were written in the source code. It’s nice to heavily comment your code but if most of the tutorial is in his code then I don’t think that is necessarily the best way to do a tutorial. But anyhow, I am not sure about that, I am just checking for clarification. and checking to see if it would be a good investment.

Answer 1

The problem is that the site is trying to teach you C++ and game programming at the same time. I think trying to do both at the same time is a terrible idea. Game programming is tough, and if you don’t know C++ you’re just setting yourself up to either fail, or get by with sloppy (and sometimes downright awful) code. So don’t do both at the same time: you must learn C++ first, then get into making games. And GameTutorials isn’t a resource to help you do that.*

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If you don’t know C++ yet, do not learn it from any online resource. Books are always a better choice here. I recommend C++ Primer or Accelerated C++. There’s a more complete list here.

Both of those costs half as much, and give you a full fleshed-out C++ learning experience. The site I can’t speak for, but it doesn’t appear to give too fleshed out a tutorial, partly because it keeps mixing it with gaming stuff. You’re better off getting tried-and-true books.

If you know C++, then you’d be wasting money on stuff you already know. Get a good Direct3D book. I don’t have any modern books on me to recommend, but here’s a big list. 🙂 The two (one for DX10, one for DX9) by Luna seem to be good looking, but I don’t really know. In any case, a bit more research will tell you what Direct3D book to buy.

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_{*I don’t like to speak against things that mean well, but I think the site is really just in a poor position. Teaching C++ and Game Programming shouldn’t go hand-in-hand.}