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Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

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Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#21

Post by richardjam73 »

ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #15

Is this book still applicable? Anybody have some other good computer graphics textbooks to recommend?

If you want to make a game in 2023 you should just use an off the shelf game engine. If you want to understand how older 3D games were made then this will help. If you are writing a game in DOSBox with an old C compiler then it would be useful. Some of the book will deal with issues that machines of the time had and no longer exist so you probably would need to discount those for modern machines even if you wanted to write a software renderer.

Examples of the stuff that doesn't apply today are

* Graphics using VGA

* fixed point math for speed

* input output routines under DOS (keyboard, joystick, mouse)

* Sound under DOS

* Networking under DOS (null-modem)

* DOS interrupts

* 32bit stuff

* 80387 floating point

The parts of the book that discuss the maths are quite good.

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#22

Post by mysterydip »

creeble wrote: post #2

Andre LaMothe, my counterpart writer for Waite Group Press. I wrote “The Black Art of Windows Game Programming” in 1994. Mitch (Waite) loved those “Black Art” titles. Edits for spelling and year, which I’m still not sure about.

Thanks for giving me (and others) such a great/fun resource! I recall at least in LaMothe's at the end there was a contest to make the best mod/improvement off of the book's engine. Do you know if those actually happened and if the winners are accessible anywhere?

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#23

Post by massifist »

This brings back some fond memories. I still have a copy of the book "Tips and Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", though it's not in very decent condition. It has this ray traced image on the front cover (with a crazy monster) that is very characteristic of the early 90s. Though, I could never help but notice what appeared to be an error on the staircase banister where it looked like the normals were facing the wrong way. So it looked hollow. Or maybe the (object's) matrix was wrong. Anyway. The book really had me hyped up to create some virtual worlds. Like DOOM.

I learned a lot from the book but some of the topics where a little too advanced for me at the time, as I was still learning C and grappling with x86 assembly language.

However, I rediscovered the book several years ago and implemented something similar to the ray caster (which had really impressed me at the time) in DOSBox. I tried to optimize the algorithm and add a few enhancements. It was lots of fun! A genuine (early 90s) retro experience! I think I even had to fire up Turbo Debugger to solve a few problems.

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#24

Post by endgame »

kevinsync wrote: post #11

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…

> 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.

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#25

Post by felipebueno »

b3d wrote: post #4
creeble wrote: post #2

Andre LaMothe, my counterpart writer for Waite Group Press. I wrote “The Black Art of Windows Game Programming” in 1994. Mitch (Waite) loved those “Black Art” titles. Edits for spelling and year, which I’m still not sure about.

Not to speak ill in any way of your guys’ works, I really enjoy these books for their nostalgic qualities - both LaMothe, yours, as well as a few other ones like the RTS Game Programming (1997?) from one of the AoE developers. I have a physical collection of majority of the “greatest hits” from 90s and early/mid 2000s - mostly Engine/Graphics type stuff. It’s nice to read and see how people solved issues having fewer…

> I have a physical collection of majority of the “greatest hits” from 90s and early/mid 2000s

Would you mind listing your collection? I'd love to add some (many) titles to my (small) collection of old programming books.

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#27

Post by ack_complete »

massifist wrote: post #23

This brings back some fond memories. I still have a copy of the book "Tips and Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", though it's not in very decent condition. It has this ray traced image on the front cover (with a crazy monster) that is very characteristic of the early 90s. Though, I could never help but notice what appeared to be an error on the staircase banister where it looked like the normals were facing the w…

Game Programming Gurus was a good book, but I had some gripes about it after later learning 3D graphics. The book prominently touted teaching you how to made a Doom-like clone, but instead taught you how to make a Wolfenstein 3D type ray casting engine on a regular grid. Its ray casting engine was also flawed in casting rays with at equally spaced angle steps rather than distance on the projection plane. It was good enough visually with spherical distortion / fisheye correction, but it's not the same as a proper projection.

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#29

Post by mysterydip »

kevinsync wrote: post #11

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…

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

Re: Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)

#30

Post by mysterydip »

richardjam73 wrote: post #21
ImPleadThe5th wrote: post #15

Is this book still applicable? Anybody have some other good computer graphics textbooks to recommend?

If you want to make a game in 2023 you should just use an off the shelf game engine. If you want to understand how older 3D games were made then this will help. If you are writing a game in DOSBox with an old C compiler then it would be useful. Some of the book will deal with issues that machines of the time had and no longer exist so you probably would need to discount those for modern machines even if you wanted to…

While none of that stuff is relevant to modern PCs, I used most of it when making a responsive GUI for a microcontroller application.
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