31–40 of 54 posts
What book would be relevant today for a high school student?
It might not be the super low level stuff like the 90's books but you're making a more complicated and complete game using a higher level language and all the libraries etc that really didn't exist back then (at least like they do now)
Andre LaMothe's prior book, Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus, was literally life changing for me. I was in my late junior or early senior year of high school when it came out. My stepfather had a 386/20 and then later a 486/33, a Borland C compiler, and a generic 700 page "Learn C" book at home, and I had worked all the way through the book. But I couldn't for the life of me figure how in the world to bridge the…
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?
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love that gems book! Still on my shelf. Which chapter, if you don't mind my asking?
"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 s…
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…
Is this book still applicable? Anybody have some other good computer graphics textbooks to recommend?
The first book covers the mathematics needed, the second is on Rendering and is when it starts to get into real graphics applications. Third and Fourth are slated to be Models/Materials and Physics respectively, but neither have been released yet.
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.
What book would be relevant today for a high school student?