Game Programming Gems 5 (Game Programming Gems (W/CD)) (v. 5) [Hardcover]

Kim Pallister (Author)

Book Description

Series: Game Programming Gems (W/CD) | Publication Date: February 2005

With every new volume, the Game Programming Gems series continues to provide a road map through the vast array of development challenges facing today's game programmers. With the wisdom of many industry experts, Gems 5 includes 62 newly unearthed gems that were polished up for your reading pleasure. These gems are filled with practical insights and techniques that will solve your current problems and help inspire future games. You and your team need to develop for today's platforms, while preparing for the new technology looming on the horizon and with the tools provided here, you can! So dig into this new collection and put it to work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kim Pallister is a Technical Marketing Manager and Processor Evangelist with Intel's Software and Solutions Group. He is currently focused on realtime 3D graphics technologies and game development. He has contributed many articles to the series and was the Programming section editor in Volume 3.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 791 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584503521
• ISBN-13: 978-1584503521
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #657,968 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I went to school there and got my first real industry job there at Matrox Graphics, where i managed a developer relations team through the first era of "3D on the PC". After 5+ years at Matrox, I left to take a position at Intel, which took me to Portland Oregon, where I spent 7 years. In 2005 I moved to Bellevue, WA, to take a position with Microsoft working on casual games.

I'm married and have a set of energetic two year old twins.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 62 Hints & Tips for the Intermediate/Advanced Programmer, March 10, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Game Programming Gems 5 (Game Programming Gems (W/CD)) (v. 5) (Hardcover)

Intended for the intermediate to advanced game programmer, this is a book that will literally have something for everyone. It contains sixty-two 'gems' that is, articles on how to some particular aspect of game programming. Sophisticated game programming is probably the most complex programming there is. And this book goes into some pretty sophisticated programming details.

For instance:
4.2 Dynamic Grass Simulation - Just how does grass move when the wind is blowing
5.7 Rendering Gemstones - you can see through them, you can see highlights
5.2 Let it Snow - And how does the appearance of snow change if you are moving through it.

There is no question that the main driving force for faster computers is to make for more realistic gaming. And the faster computers allow more sophisticated programming to be done to make the grass wave realistically.

This is probably not a book you're going to sit down and read from cover to cover. You'll probably scan through and read the ones that are applicable to just what you need to do next. But then in a couple of weeks, in a couple of months....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Satisfied with this Purchase, February 27, 2009

By 

J. Wood - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Game Programming Gems 5 (Game Programming Gems (W/CD)) (v. 5) (Hardcover)

I originally purchased this book to gain insight into solving a specific issue I was having after fruitlessly combing the internet for answers.

While the article I originally purchased the book for didn't really help me as much as I had hoped, there is nonetheless a wealth of other information in this book that may prove to be useful to the budding game developer.

Most of the info in this book could probably be obtained by searching the internet, but it's nice to have it all in one package.

Also note that since this book was published in '05, some of the info may already be somewhat outdated, especially those articles pertaining to graphics hardware techniques, which a significant portion of the book is devoted to.