SDL Game Development

Shaun Mitchell

Jan 2013 · Packt Publishing Ltd

About this ebook

Written as a practical and engaging tutorial, SDL Game Development guides you through developing your own framework and the creation of two engaging games.If you know C]+ and you're looking to make great games from the ground up, then this book is perfect for you.

Ratings and reviews

Before I start, I would note that the preview now includes the first two chapters. The other criticism about SDL being too Windows focused is false: SDL is very cross-platform these days with support for Unix, iOS, and even Android. But I digress. The real problem with this book is that it lacks detail. Code snippets are provided in the text, but there are many holes left for the reader to figure out for his or herself. The source code from the official website, which is freely available, sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. Often, it doesn't match the files described in the book. Although the book states it is for beginning to intermediate programmers, the lack of clarity and detail is probably better suited to someone with a stronger grasp of C++. I took three semesters of C++ including OOD, classes, pointers, templates, and bitwise operators, and I often find myself lost as to what the writer is doing or how to modify his code so that it will actually compile. The parts he omits cause fatal errors. At the end of the day, you're probably better off using the free documentation available online for SDL. Even 5 bucks seems too high for this book. You'll spend more time trying to figure out why Mr. Mitchell's code examples don't work than learning how to use SDL or C++.

So much microsoft dependancies, Not only visual studio but on their Xinput format. The outcome of the game really isn't worth the effort. DIsappointed in the lack of cross platform code. Would love to make games for Linux and android, and various other platforms, but this book won't teach you how to use something made for this task to do this task. Just something XNA does with half the effort. Granted SDL on its own is impressive incomparison but for what? There is no point in how the author intends to use it. BIG HUGE MASSIVE STEPS MISSING, Errors caused by book you won't directly find, first of off SDL will not build in x86 properly so don't do it just keep it 32bit. Second you will need to update your cvres C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin located there. You will need to update it to any version of it older than 2011. Which means you may have to install a newer visual studio on top of it.

The Preview is useless. Previewing the table of contents helps me in no way what so ever to determine if I want to purchase this book.

About the author

Shaun Mitchell is a developer at a high profi le online gaming company.He holds a BSc in Game Programming and Development from Qantm College / SAE Institute London. Shaun is also a moderator and active member of the programming community.