The Game Programming Starter Kit was software that was released in 6 different versions by 2 different publishers (Sams and then McMillan). It was one of the best ways for new developers to learn game development with industry standard technologies. It is one of the few products that could almost guarantee to put students on the right path for the games industry.
It also claims to have a full 2D DOS game engine on the CDs but we don’t know much information about it.
The Third version was released in 1999 by Macmillan Digital Publishing and consisted of 3 CDs and the full physical copy of Game Design Secrets of the Sages!
It also includes the DirectX 6.1 SDK and an SDK called Genesis 3D but only included the Introductory Edition of Visual C++ 6.0. Genesis 3D did come with its own level editor which supported Direct3D and 3Dfx Glide drivers.
This time it contained three ebooks on the Disks:
You can download the contents of the three CDs on Archive.org
On those 2 CDs was the same Introductory Edition of Visual C++ 6.0 as the previous version and version 3.1 of the Genesis 3D SDK. The DirectX SDK was updated to version 7.0 and it came with a new 3D animation tool called Shadow Realm Model Animator.
This time it only contained two ebooks but they were arguably better for game development as it now includes DirectX:
The physical book that was included this time was the Second Edition of Game Design Secrets of the Sages by Marc Saltzman which is a really interesting book published by BradyGames.
We know that one of the eBooks included on the CDs was:
We do know however that the physical book that was included this time was the Third Edition of Game Design Secrets of the Sages by Marc Saltzman. This books seems to be rather rare as I have never seen it for sale outside of this bundle.
The mythical sixth version may have released in 2002 but there is no photos of it existing at all online. One source claims it included DarkBASIC SE which is a large departure from the standard Visual C++ and DirectX combo of the previous versions.
Did it include a Fourth edition of Game Design Secrets of the Sages? Who Knows?
