This is an excellent starter book for stargazers, and fits into your pocket.

If you are an absolute beginner to programming games in Linux this book might be useful in that it introduces you to some of the main libraries used in Linux game programming but the book lacks any real information. Even if you read it from cover to cover you still won't know enough to make even the simplest game. The best thing you can say about this book is thay it can give you some hints about where you can really learn to do Linux game programming.

This book is a good overview of what gaming libraries are out there for programming in linux and some fundamentals on getting several of those gaming libraries. But that's it...

I've found the book to be extremely lacking in depth or finished code samples. It gives snippets on how to accomplish something then leaves you hanging. Plus there are quite a bit of syntax errors in the code that can leave a beginner quite frustrated. Nothing is worse than cutting and pasting code from a book word for word and not having it compile because of poor book editing.

The author tries to cover everything from sound, to video, to AI, to networking - with several different libraries - in a 300 page book. And a good fifty of those pages are concerning the gpl and other licenses. Knowing about the GPL and about open source is great, but not when I spent money on game programming (video, sound, ai). What this results in is less than 10 pages on one particular topic.

To sum up: browse this book in the bookstore and then keep moving. Buy yourself a better C++ or OpenGL book instead. Or just go online - better information exists out there.

The author knows what he is talking about and you can tell that he has been there himself. The experiences he shares are invaluable - they save you so much time! This book gets you started by answering the really difficult and important questions: What are the best libraries and tools to use, how do you get the major obstacles out of the way and what are the basic principles in modern game programming. If you have ever strived to write top quality software you will appreciate and undertand the advice in this book.
This won't teach you how to program in C/C++, although there is plenty of good general advice. But it will teach you what you need to know to write games in C/C++.
If you are looking for completed source code that you can tweak a bit to have your "own" game, look elsewhere. If you are a C/C++ programmer, but not very familiar with Linux, graphics, sound, or networking - this is for you!
I loved the authors humour, too, by the way. Excellent reading.

I had to return this book for lack of substance. Lots and lots of pages but nothing helpful. If I could give it less than 1 star I would.

agree with one of your other reviewers--a lot of pages, several facsimilies, and the most useful section being the introductory forward by Stephen Raab and the description of paper, ink, etc. What is surprising is the virtual complete lack of mention and certainly no text regarding the founding fathers, signers of the declaration, signers of the constitution, famous historical figures who were not signers such as Revere, John Paul Jones, Arnold, Jay, Marshall etc. Any "advanced" collector immediately comes to grip with these names. Presidents do have a section but it is modest considering the fact that this category is the overwhelmingly most popular collecting topic for most "advanced" collectors with American history, historical authors and composers next in line.

ANyone who does not find this book worth while is crazy! This book is very helpful... and its great for any autograph colector who wants to figure out if his signatures are authentic. This is truely a great source of information. Buy this book!

This is the worst java book I've ever read. The book is unorganized and the content is not suitable for the beginner at all.

The companion CD-ROM is useless.

If the authors would like to publish the new version for JDK 1.2, there will be a lot of works they need to get accomplished.

Simple words from me.... Don't buy this book.

Covers alot of fancy staff but has a great lack of contents. It seems like the author has rushed through the book just to fill it out with the Java 1.1 features and forgot to describe the import basics behind the language. There's now way you're gonna be a Java guru by reading this book!

It is very thorough. Almost everything important about java is in there including JDBC, JNI, Java Beans, Servlets, security management, even the specification of the virtual machine and most is explained well understandble. It is the best java book I ever saw!