Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #802599 in Books
• Published on: 1994-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 768 pages

Synopsis
This book explains the concepts and ideas behind the development of a flight simulator, a 3-dimensional walk-through game, and the utilities used to manipulate video, audio and input devices.

Customer Reviews

Superb.
Although dated now, this book is still one of the books I love the most in my collection.

Lamothe starts in each chapter with a new topic and gradually solves the problems as they arise with summaries and other notes. A basic knowledge of C and how to work computers obviously will stand you in good stead but even an amature, with determination can pick this book up and really learn from it. Lamothe tends to spring little details on you at the last moment so be sure to read every chapter at least twice.

As I said it is a bit old but helps you understand the basics of the VGA card mode 13h, yadda yadda.... Graphics and all other games aspects are covered, even 3D has a little coverage.

The Video Games Industry is an impossible thing to follow as advances are every where and a new book is an old book overnight but Lamothe has made a brilliant stab at this.... and succeeded.

A little out of date, but worthwhile anyway...
I first read this book a few years ago, soon after it was published. It was a good read, explaining the concepts of game programming in a clear and concise way. The sections on DOS programming are largely obsolete, although the concepts will certainly usefull if you intend to program for DirectX, as the methods used are similar.

The ray-casting engine is quite simple, and not enough detail is provided for you to write a complete game. I felt that this section of the book is too specific, and doesn't give much information on expanding this basic engine, although it would provide a good grounding for moving onto more advanced books on 3D programming.

Overall, an enjoyable read, but some of the detail leaves a little to be desired.

Great material
I've found a lot of interesting material in this book. It's a great resource for C/C++ programmers. And I don't consider it's out of date. There are still a lot of DOS-based games out there (and they work under Win95 & WinNT).