Data Structures For Game Programmers

Uh... you sure that was total sales or was that the sales rank?

Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Heh, I don''t think Premier has sold that many books TOTAL, out of every book they''ve ever sold.


Anyhow, Thanks for checking it out. I don''t recall boasting about the book anywhere here though...


My sales rank has stayed pretty well down into the less-than-15,000 range for the past month (usually at 40,000 and above before that though), and my low point was 2,214 for two days =).

When you consider that Al Gore''s Book is $15, and is at 41,768 right now, I''m pretty damn proud =)

Babelfish must have lied then...

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Original post by Mithrandir
I don''t recall boasting about the book anywhere here though...

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I seem to remember it cropped up a lot in your GDC pictures

Roughly people have visited my fantastic website.
Exacly of them have fallen for my evil scheme and given me some money.

Buy an e-shirt from the E-shirt Shop! Each one has e to 15835 decimal places printed on it!

The money from the books isn''t great. I don''t want to go into the details, but it''s definitely not enough to live on. Maybe if I had 5-6 books out there...

It was still worth it though. It makes for a great resume item, and it''s nice to get positive feedback from the readers.

oh! LOL!


I forgot about that, heh.

But Dave''s right; the money isn''t nearly enough to live on, considering the effort we put into them.

For my DS book I was putting in 20 hour days for the last month or so. I must have downed a few dozen gallons of mountain dew.

But damn, what a sense of accomplishment =)

3 reviews on gamedev - 5 stars average.
3 reviews on amazon.com - 5 stars average.
2 reviews on amazon.co.uk - 5 stars average.
1 review on amazon.de - 5 stars
2 more reviews on some UK sites that I lost the links to, 5 stars each.

I haven''t seen a single non-5-star-review yet.

Man, I fucking rule.

(lol)

Yeah, the money isn''t that great, but I figure if I get enough books out there, the profits will just keep increasing...

So, basically, I SHALL TAKE OVER THE WORLD ONE BOOK AT A TIME!

Trent Polack
trent.codershq.com
trent@codershq.com
Author of Focus on 3D Terrain Programming

Hey Mith. The sad thing is that, according to your own stated theory of success, those sales are completely at random - and therefore so would your success be. That must make you more comfortable anyway. After all, you wouldn''t want people to CHOOSE to purchase your book because they want to compensate you for providing something of value, would you? That would be way to close to the evil of capitalism and you would be forced to do pennance. Especially since your WRITING of the book must have been completely random luck and not a product of your efforts... right?

(Don''t MAKE me dig up the link to you stating all this bullshit, either! )

Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Wow... good job, Mith. I was flipping through that book at the bookstore yesterday... it covers alot. Makes me wonder if I should be reading that instead of Intro to Algorithms

Mithrandir, you rule! Remember when you taught me (on #gamedev) about the heap sort? After that I learned all kinds of sorts! Thanks!

mittens, how did you find time, being a teenager, to write a book? And how did you publish your book with that "Game Development Series?"

quote:

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Original post by 63616C68h
mittens, how did you find time, being a teenager, to write a book? And how did you publish your book with that "Game Development Series?"

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I think it has to do with n*rf or something like that.

When you go home
Tell them of us, and say:
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.

quote:

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Original post by InnocuousFox
Hey Mith. The sad thing is that, according to your own stated theory of success, those sales are completely at random - and therefore so would your success be. That must make you more comfortable anyway. After all, you wouldn''t want people to CHOOSE to purchase your book because they want to compensate you for providing something of value, would you? That would be way to close to the evil of capitalism and you would be forced to do pennance. Especially since your WRITING of the book must have been completely random luck and not a product of your efforts... right?

(Don''t MAKE me dig up the link to you stating all this bullshit, either! )

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Actually, you''re mostly correct.

The fact that I got a book deal at all was completely random. I got it purely because I knew someone important.

The fact that the book turned out good was completely chance; the publisher had no idea of my qualifications before I started it.

If I had not written the book, then the publisher would have found someone else, and it may have turned out better, or it may have turned out worse. I just got lucky.

quote:

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Original post by Tron3k
Mithrandir, you rule! Remember when you taught me (on #gamedev) about the heap sort? After that I learned all kinds of sorts! Thanks!

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You''re welcome =)

And some people say we never talk about gamedev in #gamedev... sheesh.

quote:

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Original post by 63616C68h
mittens, how did you find time, being a teenager, to write a book? And how did you publish your book with that "Game Development Series?"

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*shrug* I dunno, I get bored easily, and find things to entertain myself (I once played with a ball of fuzz sticking out of my bed comforter for 2 hours straight), and, so, one day I learned HTML. But, that was too easy, and I really liked video games, so I thought I''d learn how to make one. I did a bunch of research on various web-sites finding out how to get started game programming, picked up a book on C++, and just got started...

Basically, it all boils down to a few key things:
A) Learn to be self-sufficient, don''t rely on other people to solve your problems.
B) Get lots of contacts... Having a good repitoire with Dave, Kevin and NeHe definately helped.
C) Never stop learning, you never know too much.
D) ... Stock tons of caffeine.

Trent Polack
trent.codershq.com
trent@codershq.com
Author of Focus on 3D Terrain Programming

quote:

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Original post by Forcas
Wow... good job, Mith. I was flipping through that book at the bookstore yesterday... it covers alot. Makes me wonder if I should be reading that instead of Intro to Algorithms

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LOL!

Intro to Algorithms (CLRS) is some heavy stuff. I''ve read through 95% of that book, and, for the average game programmer, you don''t need to know all of that.

I mean, the book actually takes quite a number of pages to prove that the Huffman Tree algorithm is optimal. Pretty deep.

My book is more of a practical book; it shows you more on how to use the structures practically. My main problem with CLRS is that you need to have at least 3 years of heavy Theoretical Computer Science experience, and at least 3 years of Advance Mathematics in order to understand what is going on. That''s not a very practical book.

I really appreciated it''s chapters on Flow Networks and Matrix algorithms; things that I don''t cover in mine.

I need three years of theoritcal Computer Science to be reading this book?

Hmm... I seem to be okay so far. (I''m on chapter 6) I''ve taken the AP test and read a book on Discrete Math. I''ve been skipping the starred chapters. I''ll have to pull your book out of the shelves some time and find some good ways to apply this stuff.

quote:

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Original post by Forcas
I need three years of theoritcal Computer Science to be reading this book?

Hmm... I seem to be okay so far. (I''m on chapter 6) I''ve taken the AP test and read a book on Discrete Math. I''ve been skipping the starred chapters. I''ll have to pull your book out of the shelves some time and find some good ways to apply this stuff.

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well, theoretically anyone who can read english can read it =)

However, it takes a lot of math/CS background in order to fully understand what he''s saying. Unless you''re just an uber-smart freak who thinks in terms of mathematical proofs... lol

Mith wrote that book!?!

I had no idea; I was actually just looking at it in Chapters today I passed on it since there''s not a whole lot in there I don''t already know (done a bit of writing on the STL myself ) but it looked like a great source of info for newbs.

Pretty cool

And since the subject is already Mith, I''d just like to say that when I first read the LotR trilogy a few months ago, I kept wondering how a GameDev poster got a part in it

Chris Barry (crbarry at mts.net)
My Personal Programming Depot