Black Art of 3D Game Programming [With CDROM]

This is a great book; clear and concise all the way from basic 2D graphics to 3D rotations! This book is good on theory - the thing that is found sadly lacking in a good deal of other related books. If you're a serious video game programmer, you owe it to yourself to BUY THIS BOOK!

If you want to be a game programmer you need this book. Some old info, ok. But all the concepts(e.g math), are always the same. Discover how your computer works, make drivers. Fantastic book. After buying this, you'll need Tricks of Windows Game Programming Gurus.

first: this is not outdated---you MUST know how to make the games and understand the concepts introduced in this book before you can make anything better... second: half the book is not wasted on 2D...1/2 the book is dedicated to developing a standard VGA library that will be used when the 3D engine is create---this is absolutely necessary to make sure that the reader is on the same level as the author in terms of code... third: every point made is throughouly followed with examples AND code fourth: if DOS were dead windows 95 would not run true, directx is advancing and will undoubtedly be the future of games on the windows platform, but you still need to know these basic principles when making any game... fifth: if you cant handle assembly then drop game programming... sixth: buy this book

Imagine discovering this gem back in early 1996: before the deluge of 3Dfx, RIVA, nVidia, Creative, or any other 3D accelerator card became "big business." Shortly after the public release of Windows 95, before DirectX, Direct3D, Glide, or OpenGL...indeed, before the Nintendo 64...there was this book "Black Art of 3D..." I loved it! It is based entirely on DOS programming...but what better platform for beginners to start from? The Windows API is freighteningly complicated. Andre's code is elegant. A bit out of date, of course, but highly effective for learning, or even creating a game. I have ported his 3D code into my Visual Basic programs. But I must admit, the first half of the book was most enjoyable. His treatment of the "rest of the book," covering 3D, seemed a bit of an afterthought, and was clearly an addition. The "Black Art" library was for a long time an essential part of my game programming toolkit, before I moved into Windows programming. After discovering Andre's 32-bit Watcom library on the Waite web site, I quickly purchased the compiler and began writing 32-bit extended DOS programs. What a blast! I look forward to him tackling the "Black Art of DirectX Game Programming." How about it, Andre'?