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Book for christmas!

Started by DanielH Dec 7, 2006 at 5:38 AM 9 replies 1.9k views
Original Post
DanielH
DanielH
Hello everyone! First I like to apologize if this thread is posted in the wrong forum. I couldn't find any more appropriate than this one, and it seemed to me the "Book Discussion" forum wasn't really a forum where you could post threads. So if it's posted wrong, please move it. :) Now to my question. Soon it's christmas and I have thought about wishing myself a game development book. I'm not quite sure what book I should buy though. I already know languages and 3D APIs good enought, what I need to learn is some deeper understanding of how to organize a real game - how to make a game engine. I've noticed that "3D Game Engine Architecture" (Eberly, David) have gotten good reviews, so I'm thinking about going for that. Do you guys think that is a good choice or is there any better or newer books to buy? Is a game development book from 2004 still up to date? My main language at the moment is C# together with Direct3D, is the book still good for me? I'd love to get other tips of good game programming books aswell. Thanks! :)
Defrag
Defrag
Be careful when looking for a book on game engine design, as a lot of them are marketed as "omg make a fully functional game engine using our book" type things, whereas in reality the book just contains a collection of unrelated algorithms for solving common problems.

I.e. rather than learning how to understand & implement scene graphs, resource managers, handle the grouping of render states and so on, you end up with ... a book full of separate topics that tell you how to do perform a ray intersection with a bounding box or make terrain using a heightmap.

I've had a look at the Eberly book and, assuming it's the same one you mentioned, I don't think much of it. It's good if you just want a reference book that tells you how to do specific things, but if you actually want to understand how things fit together and then develop your own 3d engine, I'd give it a miss.

I've yet to see a good game engine design book. I'd be interested in one that actually brings it all together, too.
Christer Ericson
Christer Ericson
Quote:
Original post by Defrag
I've had a look at the Eberly book and, assuming it's the same one you mentioned, I don't think much of it. It's good if you just want a reference book that tells you how to do specific things, but if you actually want to understand how things fit together and then develop your own 3d engine, I'd give it a miss.
On the contrary, Dave's books are top-notch, and contain stuff that real commercial games are made of. Like my own, they can be read both as a text book as well as a reference book. Dave has two books that are relevant for overarching games design:

3D Game Engine Architecture, and
3D Game Engine Design (2nd Edition)

Both are solid offerings, but they are not for "newbie" programmers. They expect you to have skills roughly comparable to a first-year college/university student (in terms of math, data structures and algorithms, and similar).

If ones skills are at the level of taking snippets of pieces from the internet and pasting them together without really knowing what they're doing, then they might be a somewhat tough read -- but very rewarding once one gets through them.



Defrag
Defrag
Quote:
On the contrary, Dave's books are top-notch, and contain stuff that real commercial games are made of. Like my own, they can be read both as a text book as well as a reference book. Dave has two books that are relevant for overarching games design:

3D Game Engine Architecture, and
3D Game Engine Design (2nd Edition)

Both are solid offerings, but they are not for "newbie" programmers. They expect you to have skills roughly comparable to a first-year college/university student (in terms of math, data structures and algorithms, and similar).

If ones skills are at the level of taking snippets of pieces from the internet and pasting them together without really knowing what they're doing, then they might be a somewhat tough read -- but very rewarding once one gets through them.


I'm not saying the book (3d Game Engine Design) is useless, far from it; I'm saying that it's not really a book that will help you piece everything together and build your own engine. It is a book full of material that can help solve particular problems you encounter when creating engines. When I checked out that book I expected a book on designing game engines and the interaction of each underlying system, not a collection of algorithms to solve general problems. I've already got & understand books that deal with most of the stuff he talks about -- it's available in countless other books -- hence I found it a rather redundant read.

When I see a book with the title "3d game engine design" I immediately think of the engine as a whole, not just disconnected sections.

*edit - looking at the Amazon customer reviews, it would seem I'm not alone in my thinking.
Wasting Time
Wasting Time
Quote:
Original post by Defrag
*edit - looking at the Amazon customer reviews, it would seem I'm not alone in my thinking.


Those reviews are about the 1st edition of 3DGED. The 2nd edition just appeared in November 2006. That's the problem with Amazon reviews when a book has multiple editions. Are your opinions about 3DGED1 or 3DGED2?
DanielH
DanielH
So it seems it is a good book then. I will order it soon :)
Defrag
Defrag
If the second edition was released in November, then I would've been reading the first edition.
Ravuya
Ravuya
I'm a fan of Game Coding Complete, although he is often too light on some important technical topics.
Kuhsum
Kuhsum
Quote:
Original post by DanielH
Hello everyone!

First I like to apologize if this thread is posted in the wrong forum. I couldn't find any more appropriate than this one, and it seemed to me the "Book Discussion" forum wasn't really a forum where you could post threads. So if it's posted wrong, please move it. :)

Now to my question. Soon it's christmas and I have thought about wishing myself a game development book. I'm not quite sure what book I should buy though. I already know languages and 3D APIs good enought, what I need to learn is some deeper understanding of how to organize a real game - how to make a game engine. I've noticed that "3D Game Engine Architecture" (Eberly, David) have gotten good reviews, so I'm thinking about going for that. Do you guys think that is a good choice or is there any better or newer books to buy? Is a game development book from 2004 still up to date? My main language at the moment is C# together with Direct3D, is the book still good for me?

I'd love to get other tips of good game programming books aswell. Thanks! :)



I am getting a Game programming book aswell! Well let me sat Books
I can't wait!

CTar
CTar
EDIT: Apparently there are major changes between the first and second version of 3D GED, so ignore my comparison since it was based on the first version.

I don't have the newest version of the 3D Game Engine Design book, but judging from the old one I would say 3D Game Engine Architecture is better if you actually want to know how subsystems interact, their high-level structure, etc. 3D Game Engine Design seems much more like a collection of very useful techniques.

Of course you could also consider other books, IMO one of the best books is Christer Ericson's Real Time Collision Detection book. When I first read it I particularly found the last 3 chapters to be great (numerical robustness, geometrical robustness and optimization). But I really enjoy every single chapter. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it contained too much code in the book.

Game Coding Complete, is also a decent book, but mostly aimed at inexperienced programmers. It doesn't have anywhere close to the depth of Eberly's books.

[Edited by - CTar on December 8, 2006 4:10:40 PM]
Wasting Time
Wasting Time
Quote:
Original post by CTar
I don't have the newest version of the 3D Game Engine Design book, but judging from the old one I would say 3D Game Engine Architecture is better if you actually want to know how subsystems interact, their high-level structure, etc. 3D Game Engine Design seems much more like a collection of very useful techniques.


The 2nd edition of 3D Game Engine Design is different from the 1st edition. It is a blend of the collection-oriented approach from the 1st edition and the subsystem discussion in 3D Game Engine Architecture. Instead of speculating about how the 2nd edition might be similar in structure to the 1st edition, go visit the author's book pages and make a direct comparison. The table of contents for the 2nd edition is listed. The book is twice as long as the 1st edition. There is a lot about the rendering subsystem and how it supports shader programming. The 1st edition suffered from having too few pictures and too many equations. The 2nd edition appears to have fixed that.

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