4 ms·

What about all the game dev books by Andre LaMothe? I recycled my collection... I should check to see if I kept the included CD-ROMs.

bvan 3y ago
Those were great books. Also, the regular column on math/physics in the Game Developer magazine - forget the name of the author.
- pistachiopro 3y ago
  Chris Hecker and Jon Blow (among others) wrote good math and physics content for Game Developer Magazine, but the one I most associate with it is Jeff Lander. He's got copies of the articles he wrote throughout the years hosted on his website here: http://www.darwin3d.com/gamedev.htm http://www.darwin3d.com/gamedev.htm
yayitswei 3y ago
Just posted and saw your comment. This was a classic: https://archive.org/details/BlackArt3DEBook https://archive.org/details/BlackArt3DEBook Loved the games and the "opening a gateway to cyberspace" premise.
- em3rgent0rdr 3y ago
  I had that one in like 9th-grade as a hand-me-down from my brother. Learned so much, from 3D transformation matrices to how to make an 8-bit audio DAC.
pjmlp 3y ago
Books and game consoles as well.
tibbon 3y ago
I hate trash talking someone's hard work, but Andre's books actively set me back as a programmer and made me feel stupid. I'm glad they worked for some people, but they really shouldn't have sold themselves as for anyone, but rather for people who already knew C/C++ rather well > This book is for anyone remotely interested in game programming, from the arcade junkie wanting to test his programming skills to current game program- mers looking for new ways to market their games. This book uses a unique day-by-day approach to teach major concepts, industry terms, and little-known secrets about game programming. I said more about it in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367507
badsectoracula 3y ago
I have Andre LaMothe's "Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus", which in recent years i've been using as a height lift for stuff (like a CRT in this photo[0]) as it is massive :-P The book is nice but LaMothe needed an editor badly, not only there are endless reams of source code in the book (despite coming with a CD-ROM), he was also often incredibly verbose to the point where by the time i finished some section i forgot how it all began. IIRC the book was so big that it couldn't all be put in print and the last chapter (or chapters) were on CD-ROM. And the parts that were printed were still so physically big that i had a hard time reading it. Also i think his focus was a bit too lopsided, he spent way too much on some things but barely on others. For example he spent a lot of time for various ways to do slightly different rasterizations (e.g. bilinear filtering - which, ok, it is the only gamedev related book or tutorial i know that mixed software rendering and bilinear filtering) but on the part about optimizing the renderer to not render invisible stuff (which at least IMO would be more important than doing bilinear filtering for a software rendering engine) he largely handwaved things. [0] https://i.imgur.com/RlGm2X7.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RlGm2X7.jpg

bvan 3y ago

Those were great books. Also, the regular column on math/physics in the Game Developer magazine - forget the name of the author.

pistachiopro 3y ago
Chris Hecker and Jon Blow (among others) wrote good math and physics content for Game Developer Magazine, but the one I most associate with it is Jeff Lander. He's got copies of the articles he wrote throughout the years hosted on his website here: http://www.darwin3d.com/gamedev.htm http://www.darwin3d.com/gamedev.htm

yayitswei 3y ago

Just posted and saw your comment. This was a classic: https://archive.org/details/BlackArt3DEBook https://archive.org/details/BlackArt3DEBook Loved the games and the "opening a gateway to cyberspace" premise.

em3rgent0rdr 3y ago
I had that one in like 9th-grade as a hand-me-down from my brother. Learned so much, from 3D transformation matrices to how to make an 8-bit audio DAC.

pjmlp 3y ago

Books and game consoles as well.

tibbon 3y ago

I hate trash talking someone's hard work, but Andre's books actively set me back as a programmer and made me feel stupid. I'm glad they worked for some people, but they really shouldn't have sold themselves as for anyone, but rather for people who already knew C/C++ rather well > This book is for anyone remotely interested in game programming, from the arcade junkie wanting to test his programming skills to current game program- mers looking for new ways to market their games. This book uses a unique day-by-day approach to teach major concepts, industry terms, and little-known secrets about game programming. I said more about it in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367507

badsectoracula 3y ago

I have Andre LaMothe's "Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus", which in recent years i've been using as a height lift for stuff (like a CRT in this photo[0]) as it is massive :-P The book is nice but LaMothe needed an editor badly, not only there are endless reams of source code in the book (despite coming with a CD-ROM), he was also often incredibly verbose to the point where by the time i finished some section i forgot how it all began. IIRC the book was so big that it couldn't all be put in print and the last chapter (or chapters) were on CD-ROM. And the parts that were printed were still so physically big that i had a hard time reading it. Also i think his focus was a bit too lopsided, he spent way too much on some things but barely on others. For example he spent a lot of time for various ways to do slightly different rasterizations (e.g. bilinear filtering - which, ok, it is the only gamedev related book or tutorial i know that mixed software rendering and bilinear filtering) but on the part about optimizing the renderer to not render invisible stuff (which at least IMO would be more important than doing bilinear filtering for a software rendering engine) he largely handwaved things. [0] https://i.imgur.com/RlGm2X7.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RlGm2X7.jpg