   Need Advice on Two books I bought for game development
  I just bought 2 semi older books:Programming Role playing games with directxand Multiplayer game programmingI got em for low price and code in them looks goodI know some if it needs to be updated when i go to code i am sophisticated enough to probabl weed out what Directx has deprecated but.....Could anyone give me any adice if i used the code in the books as a base would it be fine for a BASIC MMO..I am not trying to be a WOW killer.. if i can get a reasonable game up and running that is wow like id be happy. I dont care if it takes 2-3 years....its all for fun now to learn.These books were published in 2001 and 2002 about the time WOW was being designed so i assume the code in them is similar to the code WOW probably used/use.My goal is to make a basic MMO wow like stylized graphics so it doesnt have to be photorealistic etc.But im worried about the NETWORK code in this book if it would be good enough or should i look for other books/articles on gamedev.net?are these books too far out of date to be useful?Thanks   
Quote:Original post by GamewizI am not trying to be a WOW killer.. if i can get a reasonable game up and running that is wow like id be happy. I dont care if it takes 2-3 years....its all for fun now to learn.I don't think *any* book could live up to those goals.  Books typically go over a wide variety of topics so that you get some general ideas about how things are done, so they never really focus on one aspect enough to be thorough.  Usually the example code is not comprehensive enough to use in a serious project.   ;  The books you have should be fine.Forget about the "massive" part for the moment. It's impossible without a large team and lots of money for advertising, servers and support. It's also not fun at all, especially if *you* are the developer.1. Build a game.2. Build a multiplayer game.3. Build a multiplayer game with a persistent world.4. Profit.5. If you still want to do this, use your profits and your newly-gained knowledge to start working on a MMO. (Either try to get a job on an existing team or create your own company. Just remember that 9 out of 10 MMO projects fail without producing a result. The rest fail after producing a result, which is even worse)."Plain" multiplayer games are much more fun to create than MMOs. Also who said that something line 50 or 100 online players isn't a great achievement? It's not "massive" by any stretch of the word (I don't think anything with less than 1000 players can really be considered a MMO) but it's pretty darn impressive nonetheless.That's my take on the matter, at least. Create games, have fun and the rest will fall into place in due time.   