Welcome, Guest. Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email?

Author Topic: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!  (Read 45937 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« on: October 25, 2012, 01:01:47 pm »
Hi

Today I was contacted by Packt Publishing. They'd like to publish a book on SFML, and are looking for someone to write it. Since I'm overloaded with work I can't do it myself, so I ask here in case someone is interested.

The book would be based on SFML 2.0, which will hopefully be out before the book ;D

I know some experienced programmers here who would be able to write such a book, it would be awesome if someone was actually interested. It would be amazing for SFML and its community :)
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer

Haikarainen

  • Guest
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2012, 01:23:42 pm »
It would be nice to know some details.. Like the size of the book, how much they pay you, how much you'd pay the authors. etc.

Tank

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1486
    • View Profile
    • Blog
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2012, 01:31:20 pm »
I'd also like to see some more details. :)

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2012, 01:34:52 pm »
I know more details, but I first need to ask them if they allow me to post that on a public forum.

If someone is interested, I hope that money won't be its main motivation... :P
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer

Tank

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1486
    • View Profile
    • Blog
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2012, 01:40:03 pm »
Quote
If someone is interested, I hope that money won't be its main motivation...
I'm sure both Haikarainen and me are talking about an appropriate reward only. ;)

A fun fact is that I had already started an SFML book 2 years ago, and since then there has been a big item in my GTD section "Sometime" called "Write book". ;)

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #5 on: October 25, 2012, 01:42:37 pm »
Quote
A fun fact is that I had already started an SFML book 2 years ago
That's good to know. How far did you go?
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer

Tank

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1486
    • View Profile
    • Blog
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #6 on: October 25, 2012, 01:47:06 pm »
Not very far. It had an introduction chapter with basic information. Also it was about SFML 1.6 -- not very useful for a SFML 2.0 book I suppose.

Edit: And it was German, btw. ;-)

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #7 on: October 25, 2012, 01:51:34 pm »
I just got a reply from them, they allow me to show you what they said to me.

In fact they even have a public portal for authors, where you may find answers to your questions:
http://authors.packtpub.com

Details about royalties:
http://authors.packtpub.com/content/royalties

Regarding the book itself, here are the interesting parts:
Quote
Packt is planning to publish a book on SFML, titled SFML Game Development . This book will be showing people how to use this emerging API to make their game programming easier so that they can focus on gameplay, and creating projects they can use in a portfolio or just show to other people
Quote
Internally, we’ve ‘committed’ to publishing a book on SFML. This means that we’re actively looking for authors, and whilst we have a general ‘scope’ of what we’d like to accomplish with the book (something along the lines of developing a few games people can then modify expand upon themselves after reading the book), we have not set any chapters in stone. We’re looking for a potential author willing to work with us on this project in order to construct a more definitive outline, and hopefully to also move forward and write the book.
Quote
All Packt books have a deadline of six months for first drafts. After this, we have some additional time for rewrites, but after this we spend 1 month preparing the book for publication.
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer

eXpl0it3r

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10801
    • View Profile
    • development blog
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2012, 02:31:34 pm »
This sounds really great and I think it's something the SFML community has been waiting for quite a while. :)

As a matter of fact I amplaning on working on a set of tutorials which would slowly progress in difficulty and complexity and which should empower readers to create their own nice game at the end. When you have such a thing in mind the idea of publishing the tutorials in book-form isn't that far away and seeing that topic here now, seems like a very interesting coincidence.

BUT as much as I like to write down and pass on knowledge, I somehow don't feel like that I'm best suited for this task. Since my native language is not English, I make quite a lot of mistakes and to me the whole phrasing seems often to be repetitive and artificial. Furthermore my knowledge on SFML doesn't go into all modules, e.g. I've nearly no idea how to work with the networking part and have never really experimented with the audio module. And then there are the usual factor like time, etc...
I'd gladly team up with someone or contribute in other ways to such a book, but don't see me as the author of the very first official SFML book. ;)

That said I'm probably gonna keep working on my tutorials (for now), which don't require to be as correct and nicely written as a book and if someone wants to team up, I'd be here to help out.
Official FAQ: https://www.sfml-dev.org/faq.php
Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/nr4X7Fh
——————————————————————
Dev Blog: https://duerrenberger.dev/blog/

Groogy

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1469
    • MSN Messenger - groogy@groogy.se
    • View Profile
    • http://www.groogy.se
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2012, 02:59:18 pm »
I got a mail from them today from like nowhere. I was kind of chocked and thought it was a scam at first. But when I realaized it was legit I jumped on it and said I was very interested and enthuiastic about it :D

They even referred to my CV on my website which was an extra nice suprise :)
Anyway I am interested in any info I can get. I want to of course write articles on more advanced topics like shaders and dynamic shadow casting in 2D but I will understand if that won't be possible though :/
Developer and Maker of rbSFML and Programmer at Paradox Development Studio

eXpl0it3r

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10801
    • View Profile
    • development blog
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #10 on: October 25, 2012, 03:02:12 pm »
I got a mail from them today from like nowhere. I was kind of chocked and thought it was a scam at first. But when I realaized it was legit I jumped on it and said I was very interested and enthuiastic about it :D
So would that now be one book or two books (one 'from' Laurent and one from you)? ???
Official FAQ: https://www.sfml-dev.org/faq.php
Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/nr4X7Fh
——————————————————————
Dev Blog: https://duerrenberger.dev/blog/

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #11 on: October 25, 2012, 03:05:42 pm »
Quote
So would that now be one book or two books (one 'from' Laurent and one from you)?
No, I think they just contacted everyone they could find who is "involved" in SFML. Finding me was straight-forward, but I have no idea how they found other people, and how many they have contacted.
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer

Groogy

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1469
    • MSN Messenger - groogy@groogy.se
    • View Profile
    • http://www.groogy.se
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #12 on: October 25, 2012, 03:06:19 pm »
These kind of books usually have several authors where each author write about a set of topics. Read Real-Time Rendering and you'll see what I mean, each topic/chapter starts with the names of the developers that wrote that part.
Developer and Maker of rbSFML and Programmer at Paradox Development Studio

Haikarainen

  • Guest
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #13 on: October 25, 2012, 03:13:27 pm »
I was wondering about a reward simply to know how much time I can invest in contributing to it.

Sounds like a load of fun, I remember started writing a gametutorial with SFML2 (when it was still 1.99 though), didnt come too far with it though. I will see if I can find it. I am interested in contributing anyhow :)

Laurent

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 32504
    • View Profile
    • SFML's website
    • Email
Re: A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!
« Reply #14 on: October 25, 2012, 03:18:24 pm »
Maybe a book written by multiple authors could be a good solution. It seems more realistic, since nobody seems to have the time and/or skills (including english skills) to write the full book :)
Laurent Gomila - SFML developer