11–20 of 64 posts
Not sure what's in them because I can't find their Table of Contents, but if you're looking for other great books on specific games: 1. Masters of Doom 2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
Not sure what's in them because I can't find their Table of Contents, but if you're looking for other great books on specific games: 1. Masters of Doom 2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
I'd temper one's expectations on this one. It's a massive, unwieldy book, mostly speaking to old PC VGA graphics programming techniques, in pages taken verbatim from Abrash's previous Zen of Graphics Programming book.
It definitely isn't focused on a specific game, but it does go a bit into the BSP tree stuff used in Doom, if memory serves.
Maybe it's just because I had already read both his Zen of {Code Optimization, Graphics Programming} books, but I was rather disappointed upon acquiring and skimming the Black Book.
Fabien's deep dives are more interesting IMHO, if looking for stuff about tech in classic id games.
edit: BTW, if old [34]86/pentium-era PC optimization and VGA programming books is what you're after, the aforementioned Abrash books were goldmines at the time, and much more conveniently sized, physically speaking. I don't intend to throw shade on Abrash, it was just the Black Book that disappointed me, largely because of the high expectations set by his previous books. You can still find used copies of the Zen books readily on Amazon...
Not sure what's in them because I can't find their Table of Contents, but if you're looking for other great books on specific games: 1. Masters of Doom 2. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
There is a small part about the departure of ID Software guys from Softdisk that is inaccurate and has been corrected by John Remoro himself when he spoke to the blogger who writes the famous CRPG Addict series (btw, completely out of topic but this blog is EXCELLENT if you want a COMPLETE view of pretty much every RPG out there since the 70s). The correction (as the blogger wrote) was a correction about a mistake he made in writing one of his earlier post about Dark Design, but I think it also corrects the claim made in Master of Doom.
The link to Romero's correction is as following: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/09/game-378-goodcodes-ca...
You will need to scroll down to the second part, or just search "But since I was only able to get 1,200 words out of Goodcode's Cavern" on the page. To simplify things I'm pasting the paragraphs:
>I had consulted several sources to assemble that paragraph, including one that purported to have interviewed both Carmack and Romero in detail, and I was pretty confident in what I had. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when John Romero (who I didn't even know was aware of my blog) invited me to participate in a podcast interview of Stuart Smith. (We're recording in mid-September; I'll let you know when it's out.) I took the opportunity to run the paragraph by him and found out that almost everything I'd written was wrong. To wit:
- I was a year late; 1990 was the year most of this happened. Romero worked at Softdisk prior to Carmack and was actually the one who hired Carmack, not because of Dark Designs but because of a tennis game plus his obvious facility with programming.
- Romero and Carmack loved working at Softdisk and only left because it was the wrong sort of publisher to take advantage of the horizontal scrolling technology that the duo would use in Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM.
- It was actually the president of Softdisk, Al Vekovius, who suggested that Carmack, Romero, and Tom Hall start their own company. There were no lawsuits and no threats; Carmack and Romero kept working for Softdisk for a year to avoid leaving the company in a lurch.
- The reason Carmack and Romero are credited on so many Softdisk titles stretching into the mid-1990s is that those titles used technology and code that Carmack and Romero had created. They otherwise had no involvement in games like Cyberchess and Dangerous Dave Goes Nutz!
I really enjoyed the Spelunky book.
For the link to Boss Fight books: FYI the selector defaults to paperback; ebooks are a very reasonable $5 if anyone prefers digital. They're that price at Amazon for Kindle, too. But IIRC and based on reviews out there, they vary quite a bit in style and quality. Supposedly the Spelunky one is great and written by the creator himself. I bounced off the series because one book was mostly personal anecdotes from the author, a random person who just liked the game, rather than anything about the topic you wouldn't get from playing it or even reading wikipedia. Some of the books do have more research and interviews.
Wolfenstein 3D Black Book: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/
Doom Black Book: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/