Game Programming for Teens, 3rd Edition

I have read the book and found it to be extremely useful. I am not a teenager (I'm much older) and still found it an excellent introduction to blitzbasic. It also covered some intermediate to advanced topics with easy to understand code. The source code was well-written and excessively commented (a plus). This is a practical book that discusses an introduction to a subject then dives right in to the code (another plus). This book is recommended for adults as well. The text is written at a comfortable level that won't insult anyone's intelligence. Browse through it at a nearby bookstore if that's possible, and I'm sure that you'll see that it is well worth the cost. When I finished reading the book I came away with a feeling of "I can do that". 5 stars. We've been needing this book. Also, BlitzBasic has been upgraded to BlitzPlus. This book applies to BlitzPlus as well. To answer the inevitable question: yes, BlitzBasic has been used to develop many commercial games.

The book itself appears to be decently written, and progresses in an orderly fashion. The problem I had was with the software. I installed BlitzMax from the disk. It stated it had a 30-day trial period. I opened the first program, changed the player's speed and pressed save, but the software wouldn't allow the program to save and stated that the trial period had ended. I guess they meant a 30-second trial period. No hope reopening BlitzMax with the expired trial period.I then tried to use Blitz Plus, but this has a slightly different coding standard and wouldn't run the programs on the disk. Not that it mattered, as soon as I tried to save anything it also immediately terminated the trial period.What I did see during the few minutes I managed to actually see BlitzMax is a half-baked development environment that probably isn't worth the price for the full-up version. Of course, given the quality issues I experienced with their trial version, purchasing a permanent license is clearly out of the question.I would suggest, as others have posted, that teens looking to learn programming download Microsoft Visual Basic Express for free. It isn't a hybrid Basic/C language, but a real language that is actually used in industry. It can perform all the same functions as those discussed in this book, is pretty easy to learn, and has a much more refined development environment that actually works.

I find some of the reviews quite interesting, since they judge the book based on their opinion of BlitzBasic. Firstly, let me assure you that I have learned a "real" language - I've been a professional software developer for 12 years (C/C++/Delphi/C#).As far as the book goes it is very well written and is aimed at the beginner programmer using BlitzBasic (not Blitz3D but you can still use it). That's it, that's all there is to the book. I still found it useful, however, in quickly picking up BlitzBasic (mostly the language) which allowed me to write 2D games after a day (okay, I've been doing that for years with DX/OpenGL but I'm still impressed that I can write Pong in less than 10 minutes).Why would I use Blitz instead of DirectX/Direct3D/OpenGL? Actually, I use DirectX - I mainly use Blitz for prototyping but I'm finding that for simple to fairly sophisticated things it's all that is needed. For hobbiests and shareware/single member teams Blitz is an ideal way to actually finish something.So, before you knock the book or Blitz - read the book from cover to cover and learn Blitz inside and out, you may be surprised at how much you can do with it. Oh, and get a good IDE - I personally like Protean.

I bought this book for my 10 year old son, so we could work together to learn game programing. I know very little about this process. Took me a couple hours to figure out how to start using the "BlitzMax" program. First, I bought the program for $80. The demo is just for 30 days, and it will take us longer than that. Second, the demo didn't work. I needed the latest update which was only available (as far as I could tell) if I purchased BlitzMax. Third, I also needed to download "Xcode" from the Mac app store for $4.99. This huge file took about 10 hours to download. So, to summarize: (1) Download Xcode for $4.99 be prepared to spend 10 hours downloading. (2) Spend $80 for BlitzMax. (3) This BlitzMax didn't work (Ugh), but once I had an account, I could go to my "account" and "product updates" to download the latest BlitzMax and this one worked. (4) The CD that comes with the book has a file called "Source" this contains all the demos the author mentions in his chapters. Drag this file to your BlitzMax folder (which you should put in Applications). Now I think we are ready to go. "Hello, World!"