This or Keith Finney's

#1 Hi 540,
I have all three books, and they're all extremely useful. I find Finney's book to be a little more polished in terms of references, but the applied exercises in Maurina's book are excellent examples that I found more helpful in learning the material.

Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you what's covered in one that's missing from the other, but I can say that I've relied on both resources frequently.

-- John

#2 I have this book and it made learning torque script easy. I dont have the other books.

#3 @John

thanks a lot, thats the kind of info I was after, many thanks

#4 I have all three books [both of Finney's, and this one]. I find this one a lot more palatable, personally; 3dgpaio just uses too many words and adds too much fluff not directly associated with writing code, which is what interests me.

If you have windows available [I don't], and don't know how to create art/sound assets [I know how to, and have established long ago that I'm simply not capable of creating art/sound that doesn't suck], then 3dgpaio is probably a better choice.

I feel bad compartmentalising the books, though. They're all really good, and if money isn't a problem, pick up all of them :-)

Gary (-;

#5 @gary

dont feel bad about compartmentalising the books.

I was just after an honest opinion if it was worth getting maurina's book if I had both of finney's - and thats what you gave me.

money isnt a problem, so I think I'll get it anyway

#6 Ken Finney's book was published first, but I think Ed Maurina's book is more carefully written.

Some of Finney's code is buggy (in print, not necessarily on CD) and you do a lot of learning about Torque by debugging his code.

Finney's book really is about making a 3D game "all in one," so he delves into artwork, sound, EVERYTHING. Maurina's book is more a "guide to Torque" than an all-in-one game creation book.

I find them both essential, though as my experience increases I rely more on GPGT and less on 3DGPAiO. If they had been published at the same time and I'd been further along the learning curve, I probably would have bought just the GPGT.

Every time I get tempted to buy Finney's second book, I read the reviews on Amazon.com and decide not to.

#7 That's a surprise -- I've found the 2nd book to be far more valuable than the first. The first is more of a beginner's guide to Torque, in my opinion -- modding, basic modelling, terrain editing, etc. The 2nd one gets into heavier scripting and AI, and that's the juicy content I've referred back to again and again.

#8 I'm the same as you John, out of both of Finney's book I found the 2nd book more valuable than the first.

#9 Okay, that's two positive reviews for Finney II. I guess I'll have to reconsider.

@John, @540: would you be willing to post reviews on amazon.com and bn.com?

#10 No, not really... No considderation neccessariry.

Finney has osoo many spelng smtakess and vwlaws that I found it useles.
I have it for over a jear now and stil doesn't removeed the CD from the back of cover book.
"To load the car, set shape file to ~/data/weapons/crossbow.dts "
"4 - 4 = 4 so now that you know the answer is 0..."

The guy didn't bother to proof read his own book. Why should we have to buy something the author himself couldn't even bother to read?

Apart from the AI scripts I found 100% no value in either of his books. I bought the Advanced, found it so useless I downloaded the first. I got it free and didn't even find it worth saving. Since this is the only thing available on Torque, one can understand why the Torque community is so in awe of this material.

When Maurina's book was released I didn't want to get it out of fear of wasting my money again. After many months of eye balling it I bought it out of desperation. P.s. Listen carefully... I read both books and was still desperate to learn how to use Torque script. I actually bought this book because I thought it dealt with C++ coding of the engine. When I found it was script only I wanted to return the book, but after I read it, I found this book essential.

I cannot express how far I have come since reading that book. Get it, don't think twice, burn the other ones and put this book on it's own shelf.

Just to give you an idea of how the two compares:
problem: I wanted to learn how to do keyDown and keyUp functionality with key bindings.

Finney:
Here I learnt that keys are bound via bind or bindcmd
Answered my question: 0%

Maurina:
Here I learnt that keys bound with bind are sent a 1 on key press and a 0 on key up so by saying inside a function:

if (val) {}
else {}

This is the same as saying onKeyDown and onKeyUp. Also keys bound by bindCmd take two functions and the two functions are called onKeyDown and onKeyUp which is called respectively.

Answered my question: 200%

Which one do you think is worth the money?