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I still have this on my shelf and worked through it cover to cover more than once in middle and high school in the 90's. LaMothe was a massive inspiration and,

I still have this on my shelf and worked through it cover to cover more than once in middle and high school in the 90's. LaMothe was a massive inspiration and, while I'm not totally convinced that these types of project-based instructional books are as relevant in the 2023 world of Github / blogs / etc, I really miss being walked through a complex piece of software from beginning to end with commentary and supporting code in a giant book that you can touch and feel and flip through the pages of. Also very much worth shouting out Mark DeLoura's 'Game Programming Gems' series -- I'm not sure how it even happened, but I got a chapter published in the first volume while being a 17 year old kid who had zero professional experience in any industry of any kind lol (I just replied to a call for submissions on Gamasutra, was told 'ok code it up and write a paper' and I did. And they printed it!)

endgame 3y ago
> I'm not totally convinced that these types of project-based instructional books are as relevant in the 2023 world I got a lot out of Crafting Interpreters, typing in the bytecode VM by hand and working slowly through the book. Stitched a lot of things together in my mind which previously had only been half-understood research papers.
mysterydip 3y ago
I love that gems book! Still on my shelf. Which chapter, if you don't mind my asking?
- kevinsync 3y ago
  "3D Collision Detection" (section 4.5) In hindsight, I really had no idea what I was talking about (especially regarding performance with large amounts of polygons) but the math did end up seeming to be good; I actually went back a couple years ago and took parts of it for some other 3D projection / line-plane intersection thing I made and it still worked. Super cool experience either way being given an opportunity so young and seeing it come to life! I had another idea for a Gems 2 article that never made it in time (using grayscale UV texture maps on a 3D model to distribute a fixed amount of weight across model vertices for use in a physics simulation -- ex. a hammer weighs X but the metal part is much heavier than the wooden handle) but again was literally just making things up out of thin air to have something to contribute LOL
  - mysterydip 3y ago
    That's great, thanks for sharing!

endgame 3y ago

> I'm not totally convinced that these types of project-based instructional books are as relevant in the 2023 world I got a lot out of Crafting Interpreters, typing in the bytecode VM by hand and working slowly through the book. Stitched a lot of things together in my mind which previously had only been half-understood research papers.

mysterydip 3y ago

I love that gems book! Still on my shelf. Which chapter, if you don't mind my asking?

kevinsync 3y ago
"3D Collision Detection" (section 4.5) In hindsight, I really had no idea what I was talking about (especially regarding performance with large amounts of polygons) but the math did end up seeming to be good; I actually went back a couple years ago and took parts of it for some other 3D projection / line-plane intersection thing I made and it still worked. Super cool experience either way being given an opportunity so young and seeing it come to life! I had another idea for a Gems 2 article that never made it in time (using grayscale UV texture maps on a 3D model to distribute a fixed amount of weight across model vertices for use in a physics simulation -- ex. a hammer weighs X but the metal part is much heavier than the wooden handle) but again was literally just making things up out of thin air to have something to contribute LOL
- mysterydip 3y ago
  That's great, thanks for sharing!