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Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

orangetide.com

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Re: Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

#3

Post by laichzeit0 »

Ah man this brings back memories. I have the book + cdrom sitting here on my bookshelf. I was 14 and just started learning to program with Turbo Pascal and assembler by reading Denthor's Tutorials on how to program Demos. My dad happened to be going on a business trip to the U.S. (we didn't have nice books like that in South Africa) and when he asked what I wanted I said "the Graphics Programming Black Book" not knowing how big and heavy that thing was and he had to lug it around with him.

At the time I didn't understand much of it but I remember the evolution of him optimizing Boyer Moore string search left quite an impact. That and the anecdotes of him working with John Carmack at the time they were coding Quake I. Just browsing through the chapters makes me want to read the whole thing again.

Re: Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

#6

Post by Who828 »

melling wrote: post #5

This was referenced in a HN article that I read in the past day. I checked out reviews and it seems like it's a bit dated. Many chapters are done in assembler, for example. Any recommendations on great books that cover OpenGL and game programming?

While I agree it's dated in lot of ways but it is still a great read. I am not a game dev but I love to write performant code, it's just a personal satisfaction when I know my code is making the best use of the hardware.

I think you should read the first chapter at least, on how he approaches code optimization, first by design and then by code.

This book teaches you to think like a performance programmer like no other. In the first chapter he challenges assumptions, for example how lib C code is not really optimally written (its written for portability and general purposes) and you can easily write more efficient algorithm to do the same.

The mindset of not being at mercy of the library is a powerful one, it inspires you to dig deeper and find out how things really work. Thus, you make the best choices for the problem in hand.

Re: Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

#7

Post by 0x0 »

melling wrote: post #5

This was referenced in a HN article that I read in the past day. I checked out reviews and it seems like it's a bit dated. Many chapters are done in assembler, for example. Any recommendations on great books that cover OpenGL and game programming?

Not just a little dated, a lot of the examples are targeting 8086, 286, 386 or 486 CPUs, and EGA or Standard-VGA graphics cards (you know, those with 0.2MB ram) running on 16-bit MS-DOS. :)

Back then this was a goldmine of tricks.

But I'm sure the algorithm parts are still relevant.

Re: Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book

#8

Post by raverbashing »

0x0 wrote: post #7
melling wrote: post #5

This was referenced in a HN article that I read in the past day. I checked out reviews and it seems like it's a bit dated. Many chapters are done in assembler, for example. Any recommendations on great books that cover OpenGL and game programming?

Not just a little dated, a lot of the examples are targeting 8086, 286, 386 or 486 CPUs, and EGA or Standard-VGA graphics cards (you know, those with 0.2MB ram) running on 16-bit MS-DOS. :) Back then this was a goldmine of tricks. But I'm sure the algorithm parts are still relevant.

Yes, it's still worth a read, the assembly parts have become somewhat historic but it's a nice explanation of the "way of thinking" that's still valid today if you need to optimise in assembly (of course, targeting it for the modern archs).

Apart from that it's a nice read and some of the outdated parts might be skipped.

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