Books for Game Developers
mrelusive.com
Books for Game Developers
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Re: Books for Game Developers
#2Missing any Game Design books so my picks:
Game Feel - Steve Swink - 2008
The Art of Game Design a Deck of Lenses - Jesse Schell - 2014
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - Matthew Frederick - 2007
Writing for Games: Theory & Practice - Hannah Nicklin - 2022
Procedural Generation in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2017
Procedural Storytelling in Game Design - Tanya Short/Tarn Adams - 2019
A Theory of Fun - Raph Koster - 2013
Re: Books for Game Developers
#3Good selection of older books.
I didn't see [1] Game Programming Patterns.
Re: Books for Game Developers
#4Circa 90s and early 2000s.
I like how there's a whole book on quaternions. I've never understood them and I'm convinced every definition I've read was written by someone who also didn't understand them. I might try to find a copy if I ever dabble in 3d again
Edit: To clarify, I understand the need for quaternions (to avoid gimbal lock), just not how to use them manually. Euler angles are simple enough, I can change whichever axis by some degrees or radians. But with quaternions I never understood what was going on under the hood
Re: Books for Game Developers
#5Do magazines count?
Re: Books for Game Developers
#6Circa 90s and early 2000s. I like how there's a whole book on quaternions. I've never understood them and I'm convinced every definition I've read was written by someone who also didn't understand them. I might try to find a copy if I ever dabble in 3d again Edit: To clarify, I understand the need for quaternions (to avoid gimbal lock), just not how to use them manually. Euler angles are simple enough, I can change w…
Whilst a lot of those books are old, some are covering subjects like Quaternions that have been well understood for hundreds of years if not much longer. They're not necessarily lacking in value. There's a lot there that's pretty evergreen.
Re: Books for Game Developers
#7Circa 90s and early 2000s. I like how there's a whole book on quaternions. I've never understood them and I'm convinced every definition I've read was written by someone who also didn't understand them. I might try to find a copy if I ever dabble in 3d again Edit: To clarify, I understand the need for quaternions (to avoid gimbal lock), just not how to use them manually. Euler angles are simple enough, I can change w…
> quaternions
Instead of representing a rotation by roll, pitch, and yaw... you represent rotations by a 4x4 matrix. As this is a 3-dimension problem being represented in a 4-dimensional matrix, you have some weirdness to the math (IE: you need an additional constraint) but otherwise things get easier.
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"Why is it easier?" Because roll / pitch / yaw systems have Gimbal Lock.
That's... pretty much all you need to know as far as I'm concerned. Its a different system of representing rotations for reasons that the "classic" system messes up in.
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The math for quaternions is hard, but... who uses math these days? Just go into Blender, click the Quaternion button, and click the up/down buttons on the Quaternion matrix to see how the different values rotate the object.
Once you practice both "classic" (pitch/yaw/roll) vs "quaternions" for... I dunno... 10 minutes? It becomes blatantly obvious that quaternions are easier to use. Its not even close. And I'm not sure if anyone has to implement the math of them anymore in any circumstances, so its just a matter of practicing them inside a 3d modeling program to see how to use it.
After you've learned how to use quaternions, then you go back and learn the math behind it. If you care to. Or don't, its not like you need to know what the matrix represents exactly...
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EDIT: Consider animation. If you've got an object that's rotating from (roll: 90-degrees, pitch: 90-degrees, yaw: 0-degrees), into (roll: 0-degrees, pitch: 180-degrees, yaw: 90-degrees), and you change this by going...
(90, 90, 0)
(89, 91, 1)
(88, 92, 2)
...
(2, 178, 88)
(1, 179, 89)
(0, 180, 90)
Did the object rotate and "look" correct in all frames?
Now do the same with the 4x4 matrix quaternion. This is all just a simple click in Blender + animation keyframes. Does the object look better?
Weird crap happens in the roll/pitch/yaw form. Weird in ways that's difficult to describe in words, but easy as crap to see in 30-seconds of Blender. So just pull out a 3d modeling program and look at the damn thing, its really obvious.
Re: Books for Game Developers
#8Circa 90s and early 2000s. I like how there's a whole book on quaternions. I've never understood them and I'm convinced every definition I've read was written by someone who also didn't understand them. I might try to find a copy if I ever dabble in 3d again Edit: To clarify, I understand the need for quaternions (to avoid gimbal lock), just not how to use them manually. Euler angles are simple enough, I can change w…
Sounds like they're the gamedev equivalent of a Monad? Which I only vaguely understand as a result of a poster on this forum's "Everyone explains it wrong" style post. Hoping you get a similar response with this.
Re: Books for Game Developers
#9Huh - went to the main page to see who "Mr Elusive" was and found out that he was a Doom programmer and authored a lot of papers.
https://mrelusive.com/publications/pubs_bytype.html
His ACM contributions: https://dl.acm.org/profile/81504687994
And he died in 2017 :( "Carmack paid tribute to him with the comment that he was "the best developer I ever worked with, my right hand, and a good friend. It was an honor.""
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/obituary-jan-paul-...
Re: Books for Game Developers
#10Circa 90s and early 2000s. I like how there's a whole book on quaternions. I've never understood them and I'm convinced every definition I've read was written by someone who also didn't understand them. I might try to find a copy if I ever dabble in 3d again Edit: To clarify, I understand the need for quaternions (to avoid gimbal lock), just not how to use them manually. Euler angles are simple enough, I can change w…
Instead of Euler angles, you use one axis and one angle, because the former has a limitation named as "gimbal lock".