serious developer question

[suchiaruzu]

Have a look at this

[randall]

I was just reading through "Pocket PC Game programming using the Windows CE Game API". Did anyone else notice the reference to pocketQuake?<br><br>Page 268 snippet:<br><br>Quake for Pocket PC?<br>Quake has also recently been ported to PocketPC, and from what I have seen so far, it looks awesome. The first port was targete for the iPAQ and the StrongARM processor, but additional builds will be forthcoming to support other PocketPCs.<br><br>I assume this is the "LaMothe book" you guys were discussng earlier- it is written by Jonathan S Harbour and edited by LaMothe. Is this a decent book or is it completely worthless?<br><br>Anyway, just thought I'd mention the reference to PQ (it doesn't say anything about Dan East unfortunaely )

[Digby]

Randall,<br><br>Yes, that's the book I have and the one which spurned my previous comments.  I too saw the blurb about PocketQuake.  Did he even mention the website?  I don't remember.<br><br>It's not a horrible book but it's written for someone who has done little if any Windows programming.  It's another in a long list of books lately that fill a majority of the pages by documenting their own class library then teaching you how to use it.  All told the useful info in the book could have been presented in about 50 pages, including sample code.<br><br>There are mistakes in some of the screen addressing routines.  He didn't even mention native landscape displays (a la iPaq) and how to optimize your blit routines for such.  I was disappointed he didn't go into the waveOut audio APIs, which is the only thing you use if you want to dynamically mix multi-channel audio.<br><br>I don't know what Lamothe's contribution was to the book.  Probably lines like (I'm paraphrasing here) <br><br>"This routine certainly isn't optimal by any means but I'll leave that up to you!"<br><br>Why do you think people are buying your book, you sap?  How about a list of hints on how to optimize?  You don't have to actually provide source code (although you do for almost everything else).<br><br>But the most annoying thing about the book was finding far too many exclamation marks littering the text.  Is is just me, or does anyone else find a plethora of exclamation marks in technical documentation out of place?  Perhaps that was Lamothe's contribution?  I could just see him showing up for an editorial review wearing that dork-a-matic Blade-wannabe outfit complaining about there not being enough exclamation marks.<br><br>How much money do these clowns get for writing a book anyway?<br><br><br>

[randall]

No, there was no reference to PocketMatrix or the pocketQuake webpages. <br><br>I was fairly impressed that the book seemed up-to-date... it showed screenshots of Metallion and a gazillion other JimmySoftware games. Even talked about the Doom ports (and I think Hexen/Herectic).<br><br>I'm more of a reference-book kind of guy, I want to have direct info at my fingertips with no extra bulllshit, no speculation and no jokes. Those how-to books like "C++ in 60 seconds" or "VB for Complete Blithering Morons" seem to just ramble on-and-on... similar to my typical postings here on PocketMatrix.<br><br>Although I do have to say that Michael Abrash's books are cool, even though he always adds side notes and goes off on some sort of story-telling spree to get his point across. Someone buy that guy a PocketPC so he'll start writing PPC books.<br><br>To me, stating in a book "This routine certainly isn't optimal by any means but I'll leave that up to you!" sounds like a cop out. Like he has no idea how to optimise it, and doesn't want to display the failed and futile attempts for the world to criticise.<br><br>Abrash is always good at showing you EXACTLY how to optimise code. Hell, he'll do it for you.<br><br>Exclamation marks? I'm thinking that they get paid per "!". Oviously that must be a VERY important comment and worthy of extra payment.  <br><br><br><br><br>

[PsychoStorm]

I was reading through the book some more, and I have to agree with Digby on all counts.  No mention of the native addressing for the IPAQ, and the space he spends on some hare-brained "priority wave playing" scheme could have covered waveOutAPI two times over.<br><br>Abrash is cool - he'll start with "One time, Me and my girlfriend were making out, hot and heavy, when suddenly her Dad came out with a gun and started chasing me and firing at me... this is very much like rapid search optimization where the fastest way to do it is to... yadda yadda yadda"<br><br>I am in the process of debugging a mixing waveOutAPI right now.  Once I get this thing to sing for me, I'll share for everyone.

[randall]

LOL... actually that is a story DIRECTLY out of one of Abrash's books.

[jongjungbu]

Excellent, Richard.<br>That would save me much trouble and time if I could learn how to really work the waveOut's from someone. It'd be nice to put some music in with the SFX in my latest works.