John Hall’s Programming Linux Games for Download
October 21st, 2002 by JudeccaWily Yuen sent in word that John Hall’s book Programming Linux Games has been made available for download in LaTeX and PDF on his site.
From the Readme:
This is the complete LaTeX source for the book Programming LinuxGames, published in 2001 by No Starch Press in cooperation with LokiSoftware, Inc. Although the text is copyrighted by the trustees ofthe now-defunct Loki Software, I received permission to release thissource before the company tanked.
You can find the LaTeX source and PDFs at: http://www.overcode.net/~overcode/writing/plg/
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
keep in mind that the license is NOT FDL free (yet), so don’t go redistributing it.
ashridah
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Never thought there was a linuxgames effect. I’m getting like 100 bytes a sec from his site.
BTW, Excellent Book! I would love to see it updated for a more recent version of SDL.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Ah well, i couldn’t stand reading a book from a PC-monitor anyway… It’s a _very_ good book nevertheless, and anyone considering programming games in Linux should get it, one way or the other.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
That’s correct. Please don’t mirror it just yet until it officially goes GNU FDL license. Right now just download it for your personal use, as the author stated in the readme.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I would like to ask the author of this book to upload it to a mirror site before it’s too late.
I have a feeling that /. will notice this soon. :>
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
That’s right.
Maybe I should go email the author right away. Stay tuned.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Feel free to mirror it temporarily. If you do, please send me a link. My server is starting to get a little warm. :)
-John
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Thank you John, this is really courteous and noble of you to do so. :-)
As for others this is truly a reply from John, I received an email reply of him confirming the same answer as he posted here.So, feel free to mirror it; but I would suggest please host the readme.txt next to the download link if you choose to mirror only the PDF version of it.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I bought this book the day it “hit the shelves” so to speak. Great material here. I do think it would be nice to see the code listings updated to reflect the current version of OpenAL for linux though. Currently they won’t even compile without a few minor change, and even then…things are…a bit funky with sound.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I bought the paper copy. It does a good job of teaching you enough SDL etc. to get you up and coding actual games. The only downside is that it isn’t much of a reference (it covers the basics thoroughly, but the advanced material not at all), so once you’ve absorbed what it has to say you’ll never really need to look at it again.
I’m glad it’s going FDL, though. It’d be a shame to see it become obsolete because of changes to SDL etc. and no corporate entity maintaining it.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Just want to report that the mirrors are online from the original link.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Every budding game programmer should own this book.
If you like it, you should buy a copy.
Here’s a link.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1886411492/qid=1035253284/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-6896157-0224667?v=glance
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I guess there will be a few more who thinks of making it’s own game, I hope that those ideas won’t just stay on paper but make it to at least a “playble” demo.
Thanks John and Loki for this great gift.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
This will kill WineX! How can you all be so cheery at a time like this??
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I don’t have enough time to be a good beta tester. But I’m sure as hell buying the game when it comes out. ;)