Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus
From DoomWiki.org
Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus is a book written by André LaMothe, John Ratcliff, Mark Seminatore, and Denise Tyler, and published by Sams Publishing in July 1994. It is a 746-page introduction to game programming focused on C- and x86 assembly-language coding for PCs running MS-DOS. It is notable due to its strong focus on Doom as a design reference, being prominently billed as a gateway to creating one's own "Doom-like" games. André LaMothe was later the lead programmer of the Rex Blade series of Doom clones by his company Xtreme Games.
Contents
Synopsis[edit]
Contents[edit]
- Introduction
- A Video Game Primer
- Assembly Language Basics
- Input Device Basics
- The Mechanics of Two-Dimensional Graphics
- The Mysteries of the VGA Card
- The Third Dimension
- Advanced Bit-Mapped Graphics and Special FX
- High-Speed 3-D Sprites
- Sound FX and Music
- Implementing Computer Game Music
- Video Game Algorithms, Data Structures, and Methodologies
- Surreal Time, Interrupts, and Multitasking
- Synthetic Intelligence
- Linking Up
- The Toolchest
- Creating Art for Your Game
- Parallax Scrolling Techniques
- Optimization Techniques
- Warlock
- Index
The book also contains a "Color Gallery" with sixteen pages of images which fall between pages 398 and 399.
CD-ROM[edit]
The book includes a CD-ROM with the following contents:
- Warlock 3D adventure framework
- Source code, libraries, utilities, and support files as detailed in the book
- Shareware games: Doom v1.2, Wolfenstein 3D, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Traffic Department 2192, and Epic Pinball (Super Android)
- DigiPak and MidiPak libraries
Catalog[edit]
| Identifier | Data |
|---|---|
| Dewey Decimal | 794.8/15265 |
| ISBN-10 | ISBN 0672305070 |
| ISBN-13 | ISBN 978-0672305078 |
| Library of Congress Classification | QA76.6.T74 1994 |
| Library of Congress Control Number | 9466272 |
| Open Library ID | OL11078685M |
Translated editions[edit]
| Language | Title | Co-author(s) / translation | Publisher | Year | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russian | Секреты программирования игр (Sekrety programmirovaniya igr) | S. Sokornova, A. Yevdokimov, M. Pogrebnyak | Питер / Sams Publishing | 1995 | ISBN 5887820373 |
Analysis[edit]
The book is primarily organized around an example program called Warlock and its corresponding WAREDIT editor tool, which are developed along with the reader in a piece-wise fashion when the book is followed front to back. This example game is similar to Wolfenstein 3D in technology.
Though Doom is prominently mentioned as a point of reference throughout the book, several key deficiencies exist in its content which place it well behind what was then the state of the art represented by Doom:
- The book focuses exclusively on real mode 16-bit addressing with access to 640 KB of segmented RAM, whereas Doom ran in 32-bit protected mode with linear access to 4 MB or more of memory.
- Approaches suggested for lighting and light diminishing suggest per-pixel calculation of color values instead of something similar to Doom's pre-computed COLORMAP.
- Hidden surface removal is limited to the ray casting algorithm as used by Wolfenstein 3D. BSP trees are not suggested or detailed to any extent.
- Only VGA graphics Mode 13h is detailed. VGA tweaking approaches similar to those expounded by Michael Abrash and used extensively by John Carmack are neglected. This precludes any discussion of hardware page flipping or scrolling. Deficiencies in the implementation due to this factor are only given the suggested solution of extensively rewriting the C code as assembly, whereas Doom itself used very little assembly language.
Gallery[edit]
Back cover.
Spine, featuring prominent mention of Doom.
External links[edit]
- CD image on the Internet Archive
- Digital borrowable copy of the book on the Internet Archive
