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Summary: I Know It Is GooooooooooooooD
Review: You might be wondering for why I rate this book 5 while I did not even read it, or yet to be delivered to me.André is a killing author, and sure a killing programmer. I do really like his style in explaining, writing, finishing the code, in which I followed since the first C/C++ program I wrote. He added a massive knowledge into my little brain when I first bought the legendary earlier book 'Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus' and then nothing happened after that but more and more great books every now and then. I really can't wait until opening the first page of 'Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus-Advanced 3D Graphics and Rasterization', not only to see and follow what he say, but also to enjoy reading his funny jokes and comments. Thanks André, Sams and whomever contributed in bringing this baby to life, and wish you all the best in your upcoming books.
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Summary: If books had a killer app this would be it
Review: this book is the coolest thing I have ever seen. i am a HARD CORE warez webmaster and i rarely buy anything, but lamothe always delivers and this new book is without a doubt his best. i don't know how he does this, the book is actually not 1760 pages, its more like 2000 since the appendices are on the CD, i can't write 10 pages, he's a machine. as far as the book goes, i have written emulators, mame ports, and more, but i am weak in 3d, this is my new bible, its in my backpack, and where i go, it goes -- my only complaint is that why can't books be color now? with digital printing technology, i would think it could be done, the screen shots arent done justice in grayshade -- its a game book you would think the publisher could find a way to make it color on the inside?
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Summary: HUGE info!
Review: Can't tell you how packed this book is--- this book has more game programming info than I could believe anyone could write about! Great demos too. Lamothe went deep into creating an entire 3D game engine from scratch, very cool! If you want a complete behind-the-scenes game dev book, unlike those shallow game books loaded with DirectX API calls, this is the one.
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Summary: MOST IMPRESSIVE --
Review: I am a professional game developers working on smartphones, PPC, and Palm OS platforms. Previously, I have developed for PCs at Activision, and EA years ago. My latest games are using the Xforge 3D engine (which is another story). But, when I developed in the mid 90's I can tell you that I wrote more than one 3D engine myself, but always simple flat shaded, 8-bit stuff. Trying to get a 16-bit colored software engine with texturing is VERY difficult. I just got this book and ran the demos, and I am amazed at the speed of the code. The code is not even optimized (the author writes the code for readability), but still I am amazed at it's speed. This is definitely an attestment to the skill of the author as a programmer, to write code that out of the box is this optimal and still is readable is amazing to me. I can truthfully say, I think of myself as being pretty knowledgable at computer graphics, but I could never get a full 6 DOF 3D engine working with all the features that this educational engine has outlined in the book. The bottom line is that if you want to learn how to REALLY make a 3D engine then this is going to show you how -- but be warned this is not easy material, and will take you a while to understand -- my goal is to sit down with this book and write a complete RGB, textured, 3D engine with lighting for the PPC. And I am already on my way, the authors code is pretty clean (I wish he used C++ though), and compiles nicely, so I am going to port almost directly and then optimize it -- this is a great resource, thanks Mr. Lamothe.
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Summary: Teacher gives good grade to Lamothe's latest work
Review: I am an instructor at a junior college and I teach game programming, multimedia, and computer graphics. I have used Lamothe's books in the past, especially his dummies and TYGP in 21 days work years ago myself. The students love his writing and examples. This year I am attempting a course on 3D graphics a theoretical basis, but my students are not advanced enough to absorb the standard math bases academic texts. TRicks of the 3D game programming Gurus, is "exactly" what I have been looking, and its been released at the perfect time for winter semester. As a teacher, I can tell you that after reading the first 3 chapters, I am very impressed with the book and where it's going. And Lamothe has obviously spent a huge effort explaning things and then creating demos of everything. This book is not going to teach you bleeding edge shader programming, but if you are looking for a text to learn advanced rendering and software techniques, I highly recommend this.
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Summary: the best thing i've bought all year
Review: I've always wanted a book that would help me with some of the more advanced complications with programming sophisticated 3d algorithms and now I have my bible. There is nothing more I can say accept that I am beyond satisfied with this masterpiece. This is an extremely useful tool for learning and referencing secrets to creating what could be the most state of the art 3d games around. Of course that all depends on YOUR imagination, which no book can give you. Still, this book is all one needs if game programming is your thing. It would probably help to have Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Guru's (second edition) as well, which has been recently updated I think, if you're completely new to game development.
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Summary: THANK GOD ITS BETTER THAN I COULD HAVE IMAGINED
Review: WOW. I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW GREAT THIS BOOK IS. Have you ever bought a book on 3d modeling or algorithms and found out how much it sucked? I was sceptical about this one... but was I ever wrong. This has got to be the greatest 3d game programming book on the market to day, if not just for the fact that it's practical and well written, and vrey very easy to understand. I wish all tech books were this great. It was a great refresher on some 3d rendering techniques, and I learned SO much new stuff that I found myself pleased WAY beyond my expectations. BUY IT!
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Summary: A Great place to start
Review: I just finished chapter one of Tricks of the 3D game programming gurus and I knew NOTHING about 3D graphics, but now I feel confident I finally am going to be able to understand all of the concepts. The author starts off by starting from nothing, but the perspective equations and a little about 3D space and in no time has you writing a complete game that fits on a few pages of code -- Raiders 3D. This little game is amazing. I can't think of any other book that delivers like this, and I am only on chapter 2 now! I have bought numerous 3D books like Principles of interactive computer graphics, and they are defintiely thorough, but they are just too hard to follow, if I wanted to read a math book they would be great, but maybe the authors think readers are just too smart -- I am a little slower and need to be shown how to do it. This is a GREAT book, but I had some trouble running some of the demos on my slow machine (only 700 mhz). I know the book recommends a 1-2 ghz machine, so I am not upset, but it would have been nice if they ran faster on my slow machine!
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Summary: OH MY GOD TRICKS II ROCKS!
Review: I just got my copy of Tricks II and I have been playing with the demos non-stop, recompiling them, and moding them. This book is the COOLEST thing I have ever seen about computer graphics. I used to be a DOS programmer way back when and actually read "tricks and tips of the game programming gurus", but got out of it when DirectX and windows got involved. I finally bit the bullet and learned windows and directX from lamoths other book Tricks I. Also, he seems to be like a really cool guy, I emailed him about a problem and he literally responded in minutes..My own friends don't email me back that fast -- Tricks II is definitely fills the bill as the ultimate on software rasterization -- now all I have to do is actually read the whole thing!
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Summary: The cover of the book alone speaks for itself...
Review: I am not a hard core game programmer, I get in and out of it when cool things come up, but I am sick of 3D acceleration and shader programming, I feel like I don't do anything, but make API calls. My friend told me about this new book and it covers how to make a realtime 3D engine in software, so I thought I would check it out. I have a MS in computer science, so I know my way around 3d graphics, but frankly I have never implemented a realtime 3d engine -- that's really serious stuff. But, reading thru the book (I have only read the first 10-20 pages of each chapter so far), I can tell you, this book is going to do the job. The demos are friggin amazing for software, I have never seen anything like it. I mean he even did a demo of realtime multipass rendering, I can't believe it! So if you're looking to understand 3d graphics then I highly recommened this. My only gripe is that the book is very long, maybe he should have broke it into 3 volumes?
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