Roadmap for SDL

To save some money, I bought the title as an eBook directly from the publisher for $ 33. The publisher, however, the amount debited twice and could not be induced to make a declaration of the withdrawals, I have saved so nothing. This does not affect the review of the content, only to warn others of what can happen when you buy directly from this publisher.

Who wants to write games with SDL, perhaps as I asked, where to begin and how to do best to incorporate gradually in SDL and the programming of simple games per se. As a guide for this purpose, the book is suitable.

What personally on the book very bothers me: The author selects an example operating systems Windows and Linux, and as a programming language C / C ++. But obviously he has neither Windows nor Linux, even of C ++ overly much about. What he describes is sometimes in this regard partly unnecessarily complicated or just plain wrong. Examples:

* "By Including the SDL.h file, you made your program dependent on the SDL.dll file."
Is not so, integration of the header makes its declarations available. Depending on the library only arises through the use of SDL symbols and the Left against the DLL.
* "In Windows, thesis [.dll] files must be present in the same directory as the program for the program to run."
As it turns out later, the author has ever heard of the PATH environment variable, but do not know anything concrete about it.
* "SETTING UP ON Linux (Ubuntu 4.12)"
An incredible complication of the matter, the author uses 2 different package managers and a number of steps to reach the goal. A package manager and a single step would have been enough.
* "Tip:. Linux is known to have issues When it comes to supporting different hardware and programs coded in SDL Even though this is rare, just keep it in mind."
Without further explanation as a "tip" absolutely worthless.
* "First, open the Ubuntu Software Center. This program can be found in the launcher to the right (see Figure 1.26)."
1:26 Picture shows the launcher left.
* Int main (int argc, char * args []) {
if (SDL_Init (SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING) printf ("SDL failed to initialize! ');
SDL_Quit ();
return 0;
}
return 1;
} "
0 for failure and 1 for success would have been right for the VMS operating system. In the Windows and Linux used by the author it is the other way around.
* "Providing a screenshot of it is unnecessary since it would just look like a black rectangle."
Needless are also many other screenshots in the book. Here it is probably more likely that the author has no idea how to make a screenshot of an application in full-screen mode, and does not want to admit, and even came up with the idea to create a black rectangle in a different way and insert.
* "This function takes only one argument, and it is a string. It will load an image with the same name as the string provided."
The words "file" and "filename" did not come to the authors in mind.
* "Note That the location of the image is relative to the location of the program"
Mischief. Relative to the current directory of the process that can be quite another.
* "The final argument Defines the destination of the data thatwill be copied. Setting it to NULL copies the Entire surface"
Where then? Description does not make sense.
* "This function can load different file formats, color: such as WAV, OGG, MIDI and. MP3 is probably the most fitting format Because Music files can take up a lot of space, and the MP3 format compresses the data while Maintaining decent quality."
Author impressively demonstrates to know nothing about audio data formats. What he cites, is true also for ogg. In addition, the sample sound file has obviously been originally generated from MIDI. Also known as mp3 they can then no longer be compressed than the original MIDI file.

From here I then stopped to record error. Each book has technical error. Why bother me with this book so much? Before buying I have read the Preface. There describes a supposedly experienced game developers as he discovered the author, encouraged and accompanied him while writing the book, and the reader will be overwhelmed by the mediated in the book method and insight. And then happened something? Did this patron the book actually read before posting? Were there no other sample reader?

What I instead think that is in the hands is a book that presents aspects of SDL game programming in a very nice order. The author has only just enough of the fundamentals he figured used to reach his goal, and partly is the image that he has made, totally wrong or false. And there was the publisher no one who has noticed this.