Direct 3D Books

[petrus]

I want some tips about game programming with Direct 3D books, they should include:

*Collision detection
*Making 3D worlds, loading maps etc.
*Animating characters, making their arms point in certain directions etc.
*GUI, menues and such.

I want to know where I can buy these books too, and please don't say The Zen of Direct 3D Game Programming or Special Effects Game Programming with Direct X, because I already have them.

[CornedBee]

Was about to say that

For much about collision detection and optimizing collision detection get the Game Programming Gems. All of them.
There are lots of other valuable things in there.
You'll find a little bit about maps too.

For GUI/Menus, there is a description of how to do 2D with DX8 in the Special Effects, writing a menu isn't that hard.

Or if the menu should be real 3d, there is an example that comes with the DX9 SDK that shows you how to do raycasting to find out the polygon at which the mouse points.

For animation, read up on forward kinematics. The ID3DXMatrixStack interface might come in handy.

[petrus]

Isn't the gem books about Open GL?

[CornedBee]

The Gem books are written in a generic fashion. Collision detection hasn't got anything to do with a 3D API.

When it's about drawing the books indeed use OpenGL, but most of it is about pathfinding, collision, AI and so on, where no 3D functions are used.