Okay, thanks. I feel that you are right on that, although even I never stayed with DirectDraw7 after reading the books. I carried on the theory etc. which was really just my plan in the first place. I believe it's enough for teaching purposes, but I would suggest moving into Direct3D/OpenGL after having a solid understanding from his books. Even Tricks II ends with migrating you to Direct3D. Ever managed to get there?
Obviously, you wouldn't release a commercial product using a deprecated API, but if a good book uses it for teaching purposes, who cares. It doesn't end at the API as most inexperienced developers tend to believe. When I started out, I thought the API was everything. It turned out that math & practical 3D theory was. The worst thing that can happen is you'll have a better understanding of graphics theory, not just an understanding of what Microsoft's latest XNA Framework can do for you
This goes to the beginners:
Learn to write it yourself first as much as artists learn to draw before doing it on the computer. The artists tend to know more of what they're doing instead of first opening a program and say, "make me a beautiful 3D scene." They are much more effective if they learned to draw first. They have a better understanding of what happens and why things appear the way they do. I think in this day of age, artists are much more up to the task starting from the ground up (much more natural in doing this) than the average beginning graphics programmer these days because the beginner is too energized about making his first game, not to mention their first 3D MMORPG as I've come across a million times. Programmers are less artistic and innovated than artists these days, and we should learn to be like artists again before we start letting the computer/software do it for us. We're dealing with graphics too. If you learn to write it yourself, you'll be like the artist that you'll want to hire later. Yes, I think artists know what it takes more than this generation of graphics programmers. Too much is being done for them. This should be obvious with the XNA framework currently. I consider them more as gamers than programmers too since they want to get a game up on the screen rather than learning how the graphics get to their screen. Anyway, learn to write it yourself by keyboard before you let the API do the work for you. You will be less dependent on API calls, etc. Learn to be like the artist more. Drawing graphics with software rasterization is a fine way of starting out as much as it is for an artist to hand-draw first.
If there was a Direct3D/OpenGL book that gave such an in-depth learning experience on graphics and building up things yourself for learning purposes, I would suggest that instead. There just isn't any book like this right now for this specific target of people. I have enjoyed working with OpenGL since there is a lot of that "write it yourself" stuff and thus more control. It's fun to learn how it works, much like learning Win32 before C# and yet can still pinvoke Win32 functions. More control, less foreign, more innovated, more creative, etc. is what I became. Indeed, I have less time learning and more time getting things done at work, but what I learned before jumping into a 3D API has helped me in the long run. Think about every elder you know right now in the game industry. Why is it that today's generation can't seem to compare and be just as innovating? Everyone seems to be just followers these days, they never take the lead and make the impossible possible anymore. Just learn a thing or two from elders, at the least. It will help in the long run in small and big ways. Tricks is definitely one of these for the above reasons. See you on another book thread!
