Game Animation Programming

Not quite what I expected from the description, but there is material here.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The chapters on game development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. Fine, but there are stronger books on the same subject if you look around.

It does the job, though it took some patience to get through.

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

A superb guide. The examples are small but complete.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. The author avoids over-explaining, which keeps the pace up but means you need to pay attention. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with game development.