I'm looking for an introductory book on writing a 3D engine, one that details and explains various options. It doesn't need to explain collision or physics, although it should touch on how those interact with everything else; I've got a different thread for a book on collision and physics.
Alternately, a good place to sort through those books and find good ones would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Looking for a good book on writing a 3D engine
If your looking for a book, DON'T care about all the fancy stuff these books like to fish with.. "Real Time Shadows & Reflections", "Water Effects", "Fire".. blah blah blah... All this you can find here on GameDev, DirectX/nVidia SDK or the Rest of the internet.
LOOK FOR the stuff you won't be seeing on the screen! Keywords like: Space Partitioning, Memory Management, Frustum Culling, (Scripting), etc... All the things that make an Engine go Faster/Efficient, Modular/easy to maintain...
It's not that hard to make a basic Engine to look as good as modern Shooters. The hard part comes from making it run at 30FPS+.
But I can't emphasize enough: DON'T buy a book that has 10 Chapters on "How to Render a Triangle" -> "How to make Fire" and only 1 Chapter dedicated to the really interesting parts.
To put it short, from all the books I've bought so far, none has met the above criterias. All of them merely focus on generating pretty scenes. I'd go for the "Learning by doing" approach :)
LOOK FOR the stuff you won't be seeing on the screen! Keywords like: Space Partitioning, Memory Management, Frustum Culling, (Scripting), etc... All the things that make an Engine go Faster/Efficient, Modular/easy to maintain...
It's not that hard to make a basic Engine to look as good as modern Shooters. The hard part comes from making it run at 30FPS+.
But I can't emphasize enough: DON'T buy a book that has 10 Chapters on "How to Render a Triangle" -> "How to make Fire" and only 1 Chapter dedicated to the really interesting parts.
To put it short, from all the books I've bought so far, none has met the above criterias. All of them merely focus on generating pretty scenes. I'd go for the "Learning by doing" approach :)
Author
Quote:Original post by m1o1d1
If your looking for a book, DON'T care about all the fancy stuff these books like to fish with.. "Real Time Shadows & Reflections", "Water Effects", "Fire".. blah blah blah... All this you can find here on GameDev, DirectX/nVidia SDK or the Rest of the internet.
LOOK FOR the stuff you won't be seeing on the screen! Keywords like: Space Partitioning, Memory Management, Frustum Culling, (Scripting), etc... All the things that make an Engine go Faster/Efficient, Modular/easy to maintain...
It's not that hard to make a basic Engine to look as good as modern Shooters. The hard part comes from making it run at 30FPS+.
But I can't emphasize enough: DON'T buy a book that has 10 Chapters on "How to Render a Triangle" -> "How to make Fire" and only 1 Chapter dedicated to the really interesting parts.
To put it short, from all the books I've bought so far, none has met the above criterias. All of them merely focus on generating pretty scenes. I'd go for the "Learning by doing" approach :)
Thanks - Sounds like someone should write one of those. OTOH, all the people who know how to do that well probably have jobs.
Author
Quote:Original post by Saruman
Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory
Why do you recommend this book and what in it did you find most useful?
Quote:Original post by Narf the MouseQuote:Original post by Saruman
Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory
Why do you recommend this book and what in it did you find most useful?
Seconded. It's the definitive work if you ask me (but, like m1o1d1 said, there's no replacement for hands-on experience and forum-prowling).
I rented it from our library and will be purchasing it shortly...it's just a great read. You need to get the "bigger picture" of an engine before you start designing, otherwise you'll end up with lots of disconnected components that just don't mesh. By priming yourself with this book, you'll have a lot more direction in designing your engine, and will have enough knowledge to be confident that you aren't just crafting an ugly, fragmented library of engine components.
At the same time, Gregory covers a lot of in-depth, nitty-gritty stuff. I found the chapter on memory management to be particularly inspiring.
Of course, the "Game Programming Gems" series is a must-have. I haven't checked out the "Game Engine Gems" series yet, but that certainly sounds promising.
Author
Quote:Original post by XeonXT
Seconded. It's the definitive work if you ask me (but, like m1o1d1 said, there's no replacement for hands-on experience and forum-prowling).
I rented it from our library and will be purchasing it shortly...it's just a great read. You need to get the "bigger picture" of an engine before you start designing, otherwise you'll end up with lots of disconnected components that just don't mesh. By priming yourself with this book, you'll have a lot more direction in designing your engine, and will have enough knowledge to be confident that you aren't just crafting an ugly, fragmented library of engine components.
At the same time, Gregory covers a lot of in-depth, nitty-gritty stuff. I found the chapter on memory management to be particularly inspiring.
Of course, the "Game Programming Gems" series is a must-have. I haven't checked out the "Game Engine Gems" series yet, but that certainly sounds promising.
Thanks - I'll add it to the list.
Gregory's book is a must have. The guy knows his stuff and each story has lots of examples from his past projects - "we had problem x on game y, and we solved it by doing this" kind of stuff. No fluff.
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