My Book is Finished
I forgot to post here that I finished all of the writing on the book a few weeks ago. The publisher also finished all of their work last Monday (6th), so at this point the book is in production and will be delivered to those of you who pre-ordered it very soon, as far as I know. For those who didn’t pre-order the book, it is available at:
https://www.packtpub.com/3d-graphics-with-xna-game-studio-4-0/book
It will also be available at other stores, including Amazon:
Hopefully I’ll be receiving my copy by the end of the week! When will the tutorials begin again?
Any idea when packtpub will have the digital copy available?
Really annoying thing is that if you check your orders on packtpub it says that the eta is 14th (today), then if you find the book on the website and click on the e-book it says it is available now. If that is so we do we not already have it, that is the point of pre-ordering. To get it as soon as it is released!
Hopefully it will be soon!
E-book pre-orders are now available for download!
w00t I downloaded my e-book copy and my book is being delivered tomorrow! I already started adding the camera and terrain classes to my game engine!
So, the code download doesn’t work O_O. It’s a corrupt zip file every time I download it.
Hi Sean, I’m having problems with the code download too, although I’m not even sure it is the code download. I had to go to the support pages for the book to find it and there’s a 0.0kb link and then a 240mb link, but the 240mb link keeps dropping out and when I finally did download it it was corrupt as with Joe, any idea what’s going on here and when we’ll be able to get the code to go with the book?
I e-mailed packtpub 2 days ago, I haven’t received a reply back from them yet. As soon as I get a reply e-mail, I’ll post the results up on here and let everyone know.
PacktPub seam to be very slow at responding. The reason I could not download the ebook was due to a error on their end. I contacted them several times and explained the problems several times before any luck. I was going to tell sean about the code issues here because I was hoping he would be quicker to fix it than them, perhaps host it here on this site somewhere.
I want the code because I want the models and textures, not for the code. I plan on writing all the code myself!
Grr! :@
I sent the publisher an email, and have not yet heard a response. I also asked if I would be allowed to host the code or models/textures online but have not heard back yet. I’ll let you all know when I hear back, or hopefully they will reply to one of you. A storm knocked out my internet connection and stuck me at home due to fallen trees and power lines however, so it may be slow going until they fix the internet and I can get out…
Ok, I got an e-mail back and they were not helpful at all. They blamed my internet for the corrupted zip file. I e-mailed them again saying it’s not the download, it is the zip file itself, so let’s see what they do.
Well I downloaded the corrupt zip file and then used a recovery tool to recover as much of the content as possible. I was able to get all of it except the last folder. So I can at least get all the content up to about 90% of the book.
There are tons of trial/free zip recovery tools available to download online, take a pick and try it. I am sorry but I do not remember the name of the one I used, but I am sure any will do. Just read the trial info to make sure that it actually saves the files, some may just load them into memory and then just simply list all the files it would recovery without recovering them for you.
Good luck, maybe packtpub will get their butts into gear and fix it. They seem to always think it is our fault and not their own. Took a lot to show them they were the problems for my account issues! lol
PS: Similar models and textures can be found on the creators xna site, perhaps those looking for the content rather than code and made do with those instead.
w00t awesome Shane thanks! I used DiskInternals zip recovery tool and it worked like a charm. Those models are finally mine! lol
Well anyways, hopefully these tutorials will start flowing again soon! Sean, have you figured out how you’re going to re-order the tutorials now that the book is done?
Just wanted to post up my 2 cents about the rest of the layout for the engine. Obviously, the 3D stuff is all done and I would say it’s all extremely easy for us to implement into the engine ourselves, even some of the advanced effects and lighting are done in the book. The only stuff left are the Physics, Advanced Features, Scripting, and the Editor. Of course, you could always show us how you would implement the 3D stuff into the engine
Anyways, thanks so much for all of these tutorials, and hopefully, you’re making some good money off of this book of yours because it’s awesome!
Joe – Glad that you managed to recover the models yourself. Thinking back I could have emailed you the models, however because I do not own them I did not feel right giving them away to others.
I found the name of the tool I used, and surprisingly I also used ‘DiskInternals zip recovery tool’.
I Second This!
For those wondering, I got an e-mail from packtpub saying that the zip file has been fixed! I downloaded to confirm.
I downloaded it today and the 240mb file was corrupt. I somehow think their idea of fixed isn’t the same as mine.
So umm … shouldn’t there be a mirror to the download on some other site?
Just received an e-mail 10 mins ago saying that they re-uploaded the code… again. Re-downloading to confirm… If I don’t post that means it’s another failure.
100% confirmed download/unzip/tested code and images… All works!
Yes the zip was corrupt but has now been uploaded again and is now good, however….
The downloadable source code is still in error as you appear to used the pre release version of XNA 4.0 to create the source. As a result most of the examples will not load and run in a released version of XNA 4.0 and results in an error such as “Cannot find impoter “FbxImporter”, or any other reference used. This is a well know bug in XNA 4.0. when using source code created by pre release version in the release version. You will see all bad references marked with exclamation mark. The solution is to delete all marked references and add them again in every example. This error is likely to be picked up by a professional programmer but may hinder early users of your otherwise excellent book and source.
Sean,
please, please, please update the downloadable source. i am one of those early users. removing references and adding them does not resolve every problem. (like in 041OT_Code\Code Bundle041_05_revised code\5 Water)
thx in advance – martin.
I purchased your book and have read through (and followed along) with all of the material contained therein.
Your knowledge of the material seems very extensive; you really know a lot about 3D graphics, HLSL, model animations and more.
However, my ability to follow along with the book was greatly hampered by inconsistencies in the examples (a variable named one thing at declaration and another at the time of use); programming errors (transforming a camera with its UP vector pointed down), as well as poor guidance when it came to “what changes need to be made in what class file, effect file, or even project.)
I found myself, far too often, having to flip from the book to the downloaded code and back to try to figure out what change (and where) the example in the book was trying to implement.
I appreciate your experience with the subject matter, but, frankly, feel like I wasted my money on a book when I could have had the same level of frustration by Googling terms like “HLSL examples” “HLSL Tuturials” or “XNA Animation”
Next book, it would be a good idea to hire a reviewer who actually intends on learning something from the book so that these kinds of inconsistencies and frustrations get ironed out before a customer drops cash on it.
Hi,
I just received my copy of your book from Amazon and browsed through it. I’ve read a lot of books on XNA and quite a few on 3D graphics and just wanted to say, that your book looks really promising. Granted, that a lot of the contents is already online in the form of various tutorials, but your writing style and the amount of explanations you have included makes this book a real must have for anyone hoping to improve their skills on 3D game programming.
Thanks for your effort, really appreciated it
Hi, just bought the E-Book from Packt’s website. Brilliant so far, perhaps a tad expensive compared to others, but well worth it. Cheers for the read
.
Hi Sean,
I got your book for my birthday and I must say, it is the best book I have seen for working with graphics on XNA. It is going to be a huge help with the projects I am working on.
Now I can’t wait for the game engine 2.0 series to start back. There’s a lot on that ‘roadmap’ I can’t wait to dive into.
Sean… Come back to us and update!! lol
I’ll be back soon! I promise! I’m still taking a bit of a break after working on the book for almost nine months… I’m also working a bit on the website to make it better before I start using it all the time
Sounds good. I knew you were alive! lol
I second this,i only stumbled upon this tutorial today but i have already gotten to the last tut in the game engine 2.0 series ,i would like to continue them:)
awesome tuts and site so far!
Just wanted to let you know I’ve reading a free copy of your book online, well not free, but on Books24x7 which I have free access to through my work. Im only on chapter 1, but I have to say after scouring for tutorials for true beginners to 3d, even Reimers, this is the best I have come across! Now, back to chapter 1!! Thanks!
Hey Sean,
The Engine 2.0 tutorials are awesome and give great depth into the structure of an engine, although I am still a bit foggy about how to add more support to different parts of the engine such as shadows etc. Any idea if you will be continuing the tutorials or if they are dead??
Thanks
I recently purchased your book on 3D graphics with XNA. I downloaded the code from Packt when I try to build and run the code I get error messages say certain importers don’t exist. Please help.
I don’t know if I need to download something else before the code runs. I am using XNA 4.0 and visual studio 2010. All XNA code I have downloaded from Microsoft App Hub works.
Thanks in advance.
Michael