Thread: Beginning Game Programming

Originally posted by Silvercord
LaMothe says that "in order to be a true guru you must know how to write a software renderer", which is crap in my opinion because now a days writing a fully-functional software renderer takes up too much time and is pointless because it won't ever be fast enough, unless of course you want to take a job as a device driver writer for ATI or nVidia.

How to code a rasterizer and actually coding one are two different things. You should know the 3D pipeline well enough to program a rasterizer yourself. LaMothe isn't saying for you to go out and program your own, he's just saying that you should be able to. Understanding what you are working with goes a long way towards being able to code efficiently.

he spends probably a third of the entire book teaching you how to write one. In fact he writes one in the beginning, and adds to it later (it progresses first through wireframe, then solid color, then texture mapped).

EDIT: his exact quote:
"Only wimps rely on hardware. A real game programmer can write a 3d engine from scratch with blood pouring out of his eyes, on fire, and with needles in his eardrums, as well as use 3D hardware, if available"

another way to 'really understand the rendering pipeline' is to write a shader system (if you dont' know what a shader is, read through the files in your scripts folder of the quake3 directory).

is absolutely true, if one does not understand and know how to make a software renderer by hand, he will be severely limited in knowledge that could help him hack his way around an APIs limits.

It'd be great to be able to do all of those things but you've got to be able to balance what you'd like to ideally be able to accomplish with what you can actually accomplish...it's the type of thinking that 'oh, I can do everything' that leads to feelings of failure when you find things are more difficult than you imagined, and that your level of motivation wasn't quite up to the task.

Also remember guys like LaMothe have dedicated many years already to studying this stuff before writing the book...I don't even want to become a programmer anymore, lol, it's just a hobby that allows me to apply some otherwise useless complex mathematics

I just got the book and it looks good but the graphics look like NES graphics but with sprites in a black box, not sure about the color since the images in the book are in black and white. I don't think it uses DirectInput also. Not sure if I should read this book or not. I was going to get Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX, the only thing keeping me from buying that book is the fact that it uses 3D and I don't know enough math for that and I want to program 2D games first anyways. I think I may just learn SDL then or OpenGL and when I programmed a few games, get the 2D in Direct3D book since it's all about graphics and not games I won't get it until I know how to program games. I think I might even read Sams Teach Yourself Game Programming in 24 Hours since the graphics are better and it seems it programs a game every almost every chapter.

I look at it some more and I wrongly assumed that the game made in half of the book will use all of what was learned in the earlier chapter. I already decided to learn SDL then OpenGL and Direct3D anyways. Unless I can find a 2D OpenGL or Direct3D Game Programming book.