A little rain. A very good read.

Finally, a book that treats game development with the care it deserves.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with game development.

Useful in parts. Fine as a reference, less so as a cover-to-cover read.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. I found myself making notes in the margins, which is always a good sign. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

Some sections were excellent and others felt like filler.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The chapters on game development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.