internet games

A must not buy. Perfect example of juggling between poor dictating and bad spelling. Combined, it makes it almost impossible to understand what he means or figure out where you misspelled the non working scripts provided by the book.
Went halfway through it and knew I couldn't return it because of it's discount.
257 pages, binding included. Weights about 300 grams. It's printing process must have been way more exciting then it's content is.

0 ou of 10
#1 Hall of Shame

After trying to cope with this chapter on collision detection for over two weeks, I have decided that this book needs to be revised immensely. On page 47 you give a chunk of code to "Define the ball". The chunk of code you give lacks any commenting whatsoever, and worse yet, when I turned to page 48 I was given ONE SENTANCE to explain SEVEN FUNCTIONS. The sentance wasn't even helpful. "The instnace of the ball mocie clip moves down the stage to collide with the rectangle movie clip". Great, I have no idea which one of these functions does each. I know JS and C++ but AS is still new to me so wading through it is a bloody chore. Later on page 48 you have a chunk of code, this time with a comment. More helpful indeed, I understood this chunk, but you told me to insert it into line 19. That did all of nothing. A friend and senior programmer had to look at my code, and implement it much farther down, more like line 39 if I recall, plus change some of the code. That is rediculous. 48 goes on more. Defining boundries. You give me this line of code:

gBallBaseLoc[200,300];
gGameRect = [0,0,400,500];
gHMax = pGameRect[2] - 5;

You then explain gGameRect, the easies of all the variables to figure out, and omit to tell me the other two descriptions. I assume that BallBaseLoc is where the ball starts on screen and gHMax is the ceiling, but assuming isn't much good for me. Once again this code doens't work at the place you indstructed to put it in either.

What I'm trying to say is I got burned badly by this book. I am a college student, paying my tuition, transportation, and books on my own minimum wage part time job. I parted with my FIFTY DOLLARS [which is a LOT of money to me] for your book, and it hads caused me nothing but headaches. If this is only chapter four, I can't imagine what else lies in wait for me.

I'd think that I could solve my problems by looking at your downloadable source, but the truth is that this particular movie isnt even in your source. There are several games like pacman that you don't even mention in this chapter, but somehow the source is included, yet not this. I am upset.

The purpose of this email is to let you know that your integrity is comming into question from the poor work you have released. I recommend you revise this book ASAP, because your work is a reflection of you, and it isn't looking great to me. You did not respond to my earlier email, which is fine. I wanted to let you know that I am copying this email and putting it in every review of your book online that I can find, just to warn off other people in my situation. I hope you seriously consider the points I have brought up. Thanks,

-Zach Atkinson

If you learn by following examples, this book is not for you. The author's enthusiasm for the topic seems genuine, but his instructions are haphazard. Unless you're two steps ahead of him (which, if you were, you probably wouldn't be interested in buying his book), you're going to have a hard time learning anything. Not surprisingly, there's a disclaimer in the front of the book that reads, "...the publisher and author...make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book..." Definitely not a user-friendly experience.