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Start Your Engines: Developing Driving and Racing Games | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Parker
Publisher: Paraglyph Press
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy Used: $14.99
You Save: $25.00 (63%)
New (19) Used (10) from $14.99
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 1283764
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Pages: 600
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7 x 1.2
ISBN: 1933097019
Dewey Decimal Number: 004
EAN: 9781933097015
ASIN: 1933097019
Publication Date: July 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Publishers Overstock; New Book With Light Shelf Wear & Remainder Marks on Bottom of Exterior Pages, A57075
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Product Description
Start Your Engines: Developing Driving and Racing Games is a unique book that will teach readers everything they need to set up different types of road conditions, create opponents, set up road hazards, generate weather conditions, manage collisions, and much more. Not only will readers end up with the knowledge and tools they need to create driving and racing games, they get a full-featured, playable racing game that they can expand and customize with the skills learned in the book. The book shows readers how to develop live-action, interactive racing games with a unique three-tiered approach. Readers will start off by learning how to build a model for a racing game and then apply the physics to create a simple 2D (flat) game while learning how to create a variety of vehicles, race opponents, and terrain. In tier two, readers learn how to go from 2D to 3D with the same game concepts illustrating how to take the same basic idea for a game (and gameplay) and use modeling tips and tricks to begin customizing features. In the final tier, the author takes the concepts of 3D driving games to Mars with data modeled from real Mars terrain. Readers will create a dune buggy race on the planet of Mars and learn to create cool racing action at a bizarre and treacherous location.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Perhaps for an absolute beginner February 8, 2008
Guillaume Uys (TX USA)
As an avid hobby game programmer I bought this book in the hope of finding detailed descriptions of some concepts and ideas that go into development of racing games.
Reading through the description and even index of the book, I was excited about the topics that were covered in the book. I actually went as far as having the book overnighted as I was in the middle of development of a game and was at the point where I needed to refine thing such as AI, (pathfinding, collision avoidance, overtaking, etc.) and implement more realism in areas of map-model or model-model collision response, for example. I was hoping this book would shed some light on some techniques used in the field to implement items such as these efficiently.
The book also has a section on generating terrains, which I hoped would teach me some new ideas for creating game maps / tracks.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed at each turn. Reading through the chapter title and then the contents, left me disappointed at first, but eventually almost astonished, that the author could claim that the chapter teaches what the chapter title seems to imply. I was left with a feeling that the author introduces each concept to an absolute beginner, but never graduates into more advanced discussions that the advanced or even intermediate developer will be interested in.
I was vaguely interested in the short section on waypoints (pathfinding) but I had already implemented a more visually appealing method in my game based on the same principles, without this prior knowledge.
If you have any experience whatsoever in developing racing games, you will probably not find much content in this book that you couldn't figure out for yourself, or that is readily available elsewhere (for free).
I am bitterly disappointed and I don't recommend it.
Not worth the money. July 7, 2006
Peter Pettersson (Sweden)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have to agree with the first poster. This is not a good book.
It might have some useful information for complete beginners, but the quality of the code is quite simply bad and extremely amateurish.
Peter
 Don't waste your money on this one! October 20, 2005
A C++/C# programer (CA)
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
There is nothing to offer from this book. The codes which you have to spend hours to download from the author website are so buggy and slow. This book is simply one of those that should not have been published.
 FIRST ACROSS THE FINISH LINE August 27, 2005
John R. Vacca (Pomeroy, Ohio)
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
You've bought the right book if you are interested in learning how to design and program driving or racing games. Author Jim Parker has done an outstanding job of putting together a book for anyone who wants to learn how driving and racing games are put together.
Parker begins by introducing you to the basic features of driving and racing games. Next, the author looks at the architectural components of driving and racing games--the graphics system that presents the virtual universe, the audio system, the user interface, the scheduler, and the artificial intelligence system. Then, he focuses on the basic graphics techniques you'll need to master so that you can create driving and racing games. The author continues by developing a 3D version of Gopher-it. In addition, the author next deals with collision detection because of its importance. He also shows you how to incorporate intelligent opponents. The author next begins the trek into the unknown world of computer audio. Next, the author explores another option for using vehicles in games--a practice called generating--ambient traffic. Then, he guides you through the physics that are needed for driving and racing games. The author then explores the use of continuos time by using the GLUT interface. Next, he shows you how many different types of cameras can be used in a game to improve play. Then, he focuses on the basic techniques of creating terrains. The author continues by designing a Manic Mars Racer game. He next codes and implements the Manic Mars Racer game. Finally, he presents a complete driving game in C++ that uses DirectX, that was developed by some of his students.
With the preceding in mind, the author has done an excellent job of writing a book that provides you with hands-on programming that shows you how to build and customize driving and racing games. At the end of the day, you'll find that taking a detailed look at a driving game in this book really teaches you all about games.
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