Beginning C++ Game Programming: Learn C++ from scratch by building fun games 3rd ed. Edition

This is a great book for people wanting to get into game development. Experience with C/C++ is definitely helpful, although not mandatory for the book to be useful.The book walks you through several basic 2D game builds. Instructions in the book are well-defined, and explained. The book doesn't just tell you to "write this code here", but it tells you WHY you write that code there, and what that code does.The sample programs in the book are easy to follow. The instructions make it easy to hack the code yourself and make personal modifications, seeing how they alter the performance and functionality.If I were to give any gripe or critique to the book, it would be that the book focuses on MS Visual Studio. That being said, the instructions are written in such a way, that you can definitely use the book with Linux, but you just need to know the steps to setting up the libraries and dependencies in your IDE or Makefile.

So far so good learn a game from scratch no engine

I found this explained things well for me. It was much easier to understand what I was getting into with this.

First things first--If you want to follow along with this book you MUST use version 2.6.0 of SFML. I tried the most recent version of SFML and the RenderWindow class didn't understand the arguments I was sending to it. This isn't really the Author's fault, I'm just mentioning it here as a PSA. With that out of the way, let's talk about the book.The good:This is not like copying code from a 1980's computer magazine. Here, the Author does a very good job of explaining the code and providing as many opportunities as possible to run the incomplete game at various stages to see the progress. Whenever a new concept is introduced, the Author presents simplified theory on the concept before implementing it in the game code. Also, there is a lot of additional information provided that is interesting but not directly related to the code. Lots of links provided. To get the most out of this book, I recommend taking the time to review and really understand the code every step of the way before moving on.The bad:The errors in the code. There are a number of places where the actual code is commented out as if it is a part of a previous comment (preceded by a // symbol). This would be bad enough if it happened a few hundred pages in, but is particularly egregious considering it happens throughout the very first chapter! I imagine a complete beginner to c++ would be very confused by this. Also, a major line of code missing on page 514. Strangely, the code in the download bundle does not have these errors. The Pong game has some rather major bugs, but if you understand the code, they're not hard to fix.The ugly:In the Zombie Shooter game, the hitboxes on the zombies and player character are bigger than they should be. So unless you want to take take damage within smelling distance of a zombie, I recommend getting a png image editor and cropping the extra space around the characters before starting.

This book is really good for people who want to learn C++/Game Development as it's title suggests, the explanations in the book are very well done, abstracting subjects so that the beginner can gradually learn harder concepts, I will definitely recommend this book if you're a beginner.

Right from the start there are crippling typos and omissions in the example code. I'm already familiar with coding in general so I was able to catch these without too much struggle, but this must be confusing for a complete beginner. A couple examples:Page 73: If one follows the instructions ("Delete the entire contents of the code window and add the following code"), they'll be left with code that doesn't compile because it's missing int main(). This is literally the FIRST code example in the book, and it's wrong.Page 77: Again, more code to enter which is missing a critical line because it's commented out. A comment says "// Create a video mode object VideoMode vm (1920, 1080);" but VideoMode vm(1920, 1080); needs to be on its own line and not commented out.I'm still early on in the book and will bump up my rating if things improve, but this is a pretty sloppy way to start a book aimed at novice coders.