Correction, the title is "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" by Andre Lamothe. It's all MS Visual C++ 6.0, and for all my efforts, I haven't been able to duplicate anything in the book. It's not that the code doesn't work, it's that the graphics engine is provided with the book and used as a "black box". The reason is that most games are console programs, and the console application that you can make with MS VC++ 6.0 doesn't support graphics, only text. So theoretically the author did us all a favor and provided a graphics console, ready made.
The code is exhaustive. Games are composed of nested loops, similar to multithreading, which allow many processes to be executed simultaneously (not simultaneous, but as far as the human eye can detect, it is simultaneous). Did I mention the code is exhausting? The book is over 1000 pages... suggest a handheld scanner and character recognition software if you have any hope of ever actually getting these programs typed into your computer. BTW, character recognition is a form of pattern recognition!
You don't do this whole book for a thesis. The author states that you should set aside two years for this subject. So I'd pick something that you can do for sure, or at least get a jump on, and make that your thesis. Don't do it because the terminology "sounds cool". For example "genetic algorithms".... whatever that means. Or some abstract method that claims to solve an np-complete problem. Guaranteed bullshit. Or it might not be, but still turn out to be a complete waste of time (polynomial-time?).
