A book on SFML -- looking for author(s)!

[Grimshaw]

Hey!! Sorry, been busy, sign me up! I'm short on time for three days but then fully available!

Anything I am at artturmoreira@gmail.com, can be found on skype as well most times!

As soon as the schedule clears up I can be on IRC most of the time too!

Just a question, Groogy, and sorry to ask this now, but:

"We pay an advance against future royalties. This guarantees that you won’t be left out of pocket during the writing process, and that you’ll still make money from the book even if it fails to sell."

Is this real, what are we expecting? Just asking to know how I will plan my time, so I don't go out of business too soon hehe

[Groogy]

"We pay an advance against future royalties. This guarantees that you won’t be left out of pocket during the writing process, and that you’ll still make money from the book even if it fails to sell."

Is this real, what are we expecting? Just asking to know how I will plan my time, so I don't go out of business too soon hehe

I have no idea about that. We probably will get more information when the paperwork is done. You might be able to ask them yourself as soon as the paperwork is sorted out.

Anyway hopefully Laurent will have added you to the forum Just fill out the contact information and then spew out your ideas. I've also added you to the document folder on my google drive.

[Grimshaw]

Thank you kind sir! I will do my best

[greeniekin]

Man this sounds awesome. I would love to do this. Though at the moment there is already a lot of people. I have the time but I think too many people are involved. Well it is hardly like I can not do anything else. I got my android port sitting here.

If the target is people who have written console text games and never done graphical games. I would dumb it down a lot. Threading will not be needed.

Something I remember Making as one of my first games a long time ago was a bad ass asteroids game. It was simple and looked good.

Advantages are you do not need a scene graph just a list of entities and everything is on screen.
All collisions cause destruction. No need to work out point of intersect. With a platformer you need to worry about if you collide where should you be.

I used circular collision.  It's simple to understand and matches well to asteroids.

You can expand on it easily with black holes(with gravity pull), and picking up resources for points easily.

Multi-player real-time games are always complicated. I have spent ages studying about all the networking models. It is not simple at all to do networking suitable for the net.
For something like chess the networking with sfml would be very easy.

On some more thought I suppose I am underestimating the size of the book. 440 pages is a pretty big book.

I have an old beginning openGL book that is 260 pages and goes from setting up your window to shadow maps and vbo's.

I wish I could be involved in your discussions. Though I am sure everyone would and everyone would have access to the book before it was published. No need to buy it.

[FRex]

I wish I could be involved in your discussions. Though I am sure everyone would and everyone would have access to the book before it was published. No need to buy it.

If someone is that into sfml already that they don't just listen but get involved they won't need the book either way.

[The Terminator]

Sounds like a totally awesome idea. If this was to follow through I would defiantly buy it

[eigenbom]

Very interesting, I'll definitely buy it if it gets published!

And not to be a downer, but from the few people I know who've published technical books, writing books is one of the WORSE experiences you can have. But educational I'm sure. Even publishing a book containing chapters written by different people can take years, so don't join this project lightly.

[Halsys]

I wouldn't mind having a copy... as long as it has tons of examples and resources to pull from it.
Then I might consider a hard copy for my fancy on desk book shelf, for quick references.

[ljrobison]

Just gotta say, I'm new to SFML and I am looking forward to the release of this book.  Will definitely be picking up a hard copy.  The outline seemed to cover a lot of my questions.

[Groogy]

Just a little update. We are putting up a build-system using Cmake to build the source code for the book for any users. We are also adding final finishing touches to the outline and will hand it in to the publisher this Sunday and hope they like it

Also waiting for Laurents input on the outline.

[Groogy]

Also I would like to get some input on beginners on what they would like in a book. I'll be visiting a university where they use SFML pretty soon as well so I can ask students new to the concept there as well. But would be nice to get some from the users on the forum as well

The publishers work iteratively and agile so the book is always open to changes.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dERsdmNZTTM5dU4zLTdpQ2RmekJ0V2c6MQ#gid=0
To make it easier I have a form here that you can write your answers on.

[Hiura]

Ho god ! I forgot to say it : Good Luck !! I'm thrilled to see the book 

[slotdev]

Probably already been stated, but be wary of these kind of things.

You get given $x upfront and if you don't hit the deadlines, or the publisher doesn't accept the manuscripts, you have to pay it back - usually with (a lot of) interest. Result? Most books never get finished, and the publishers make a profit for doing nothing.

Get someone with PROPER commercial skills to look at this before you commit. I note that in some cases, 85% of the revenue is taken by the publisher. That's an awful deal.

EDIT: You guys might want to do some work with Google first.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/adult-career-continuing-education/david-barnes/david-barnes-blogger-of-packt-25df2.htm

[Tank]

Packt doesn't seem to have a high reputation. Isn't it possible to write the book without signing any contracts and when you're done contacting publishers or even publishing it yourself? Personally I don't see any benefit of accepting the pressure before anything is actually done.

[Groogy]

Well that guy is an idiot and probably exagerating because of something his own fault. What he is conplaining about is actually part of the sample contract. And clearly he didn't read neither the sample or the live contract. The publisher always reserve things to protect themselves.One of those things are from an incompetent author. If he fails to deliver on mutual agreed deadlines. Packt "wins" the rights and the money. If they cancel the project for any other reason the Author gets everything. Keep the money and the rights to the book. That guy just seems mad at his own failure.

I am of course interested in any information like this but that guy is not credible at all as everything pointed out that it were correctly handled.