Book on BMax programming
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Book on BMax programming
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| I was thinking about writting a book about BMax programming. In the book I would cover BRL's take on OOP as I walk the user through the creation of a 2D Sprite module (an extremely awesome sprite module if I do say so myself). The book would cover the module creation process for both PC and Mac. Linux support for BMax is non-realistic at this point, so future volumes may include Linux if BRL ever gets the kinks hammered out of their Linux distribution/installation process. Once the Sprite module is created and installed, the book would also have tutorials on using the various features of the newly created sprite module. Including sample games, and demos. Most importantly, there would be comparisons between BRL OOP and the way other high level languages do OOP. Some of the topics in the book would cover: Polymorphism Inheritance Method Overloading Callbacks and Funcion pointers Does anyone think there would be enough interest in this? |
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| As long as it's in English. :) I would consider to buy it at least, if it gets nice reviews. |
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| I would be interested in reading something like that. |
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| I think it sounds like a fairly good idea but I think if I were to buy a book about programming in Max I'd hope to at least have a game project if not several other areas explained, not just OOP. |
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| I kinda agree with Paul. While any book is certainly better than no book at all the area you're proposing to write about seems a little too narrow or specific to be of general use. Be aware that in the US authors are payed by the page, so you'd want at least 600 pages or so. |
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| If you do end up writing a book, i'd wait quite some time until doing so. Mark has been doing a lot of language over hauls lately, and theres no telling what hes going to do for Max3D. |
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| If you do end up writing a book, i'd wait quite some time until doing so. Mark has been doing a lot of language over hauls lately, and theres no telling what hes going to do for Max3D. Totally agree here - Max is a long way from an established language like Blitz3d is. |
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| You could probably get 500 pages out of explaining how to use the GUI module :-) |
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| I also agree that I should wait just a little. But, I doubt I'll be finishing this thing over night. I'm still doing some research. The book would assume the reader has a knowledge of Blitz Basic. It would walk the reader through the creation of a Sprite Graphics module, so within the first quarter of the book, the user should have a pretty strong understanding of BMax OOP (as well as a pretty kick a$$ sprite module to boot). I've already created this sprite module, and it's quite full of features. The sprite module uses polymorphism to extend some of the inbuilt capabilities of BMax to offer things like Sprite Collision events, Animation and Behavior callbacks, Sprite Groups, World Objects. Following the creation of the sprite module, and incorporating it into BMax (both PC and Mac), there would be several tutorials on using BMax and the new Sprite Module commands by way of creating mini games (Pong, Asteroids, etc). As I said, I'm still doing research, and was hoping for some kind of consensus before I dive head on into the project. It definitely sounds like there would be a good response to such a book. -Jim |
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| I would be interested as well. I have found that as a self taught programmer in many languages, I can usually get the job done, but probably not in the best way. It would be nice to have some instruction in the proper way to do things. |
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| I would suggest you do it as an electronic book. You can control the content without publishers getting in the way. You can also charge less over the net and keep a higher percentage. When you write a book for a publisher, you can expect to receive at most 10% of the cover cost. I've written a game programming book for SAMS before, and can speak from experience. You have to want to do this because you are passionate about the subject, because in most cases authors don't make very much in the end. Many of my friends and myself have made less than minimum wage when you count up the time involved. |
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| My personal opinion is that you are only touching a tip of the iceberg with the topics that you mention. If you were to really write a useful bmax book, you should include much more content such as bitmap fonts, AI, physics, posting high scores to the web, etc. There are too many general books and many 'way over my head' type books out there for other programming languages(which conceptually could apply to max). If you could cover the beginner/intermediate programmer then you will target a much more broad audience. I wouldnt buy your book if its just basic stuff, however if you had some useful info on intermediate/advanced bmax programming, I would buy without thinking twice. |
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| Yeah, I think I agree with lucid. |
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| Yup. Cover for instance an entire network game and the needed steps to get to it :) |
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