The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming 1st Edition

The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming by Brian Beuken is an awesome book and one I personally have been looking for for some time. Back in the day I have read through other game development books but this is the first one that truly provides real world useful info to help one get started with cross development on a Single Board Computer such as the Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black. This is more than just a game development book, it is a great introduction to OpenGL ES development which can be applied to UI development for small devices that support OpenGL ES. The companion website is a very cool compliment to the book and a place where the author Brian is quite active. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in game development on small devices but also folks that are interested in creating User Interfaces for mobile and other hand held devices.The book is not without its blemishes, but Brian covers much of that on the companion site.I'm looking forward to any follow up book that Brian creates.

Fascinating book. Takes you just outside your comfort zone and pushes you to learn new things. Brian's writing style is casual and does not hold your hand. There is not a lot of fluff. Prepare to push your self, but you will learn a lot in the process.

This is for OpenGLES 2I bought this book because I wanted to learn about graphics on embedded devices. In the first pages a lot of source code is dumped on you, and good luck to you, but in later chapters does the correct thing and only includes necessary code referring everything else to the website. Interesting art visuals (I attached my favorite!) and good first projects, even 3D. The author chose an excellent route of giving bare code, optimizing and improving is left to you.But the book has couple of issues. First, the first chapters are big hurdles in 2023. A lot has changed since then and therefor I highly recommend using an RPI 1/2/3 instead of the 4. Mainly the GPU specifics which are important in earlier chapters where you write out the skeleton for displaying images. Second, lord help you if you are just getting started in C++. The code examples are explained, but the style is inconsistent and it's clear you need to be up to speed with pointers, classes, and have practical understanding of function pointers. Or you will be frustrated. Last, there are bits and pieces of grammar mistakes (not major, and far and few between) and code formatting is messed up. Mainly the naming is not consistent and sometimes braces don't align.This is a good book regardless and gets you up to speed, but it has issues that I hope will be resolved in future editions. I'd be excited for OpenGLES 3.2 or 3.1.

For learning C / C++ games programming fundamentals, it is a good book - the only problem is some of the software whilst free for 30 days jumps the 100's or 1000's of pounds if you need it longer.