Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book but not for the timid programmer, April 17, 2002
You need to be an avid programmer to appreciate the way the code is organized into C++ objects. This is an older book and all the examples are in DOS until the last example which is in Windows (fun little game). The 3D engine renders to a block of memory so it makes no real difference where the example renders. Unlike books about DirectX or OpenGL, this teaches you the "Under the hood" mechanics of 3D. Keep in mind, DirectX and OpenGL are interfaces and what you are learning is how to talk to DirectX or OpenGL. That doesn't mean you will understand the "Under the hood" mechanics of 3D because there are a lot of math algorithms being used. If you want to understand, or at least try to understand 3D on it's lowest level, you will need to read this book many times over. 3D is just that hard unless your a math wizard. The biggest plus to this book is that you have a full 3D, texture mapping, light shading, 4 point polygon rendering engine to play with. There are no libraries here, it's all in C++ for you to see. I have taken the engine and expanded on it and made a tool for applying textures to polygons and animating the polygon objects for my own projects. That's not to say I completely understand everything in the book because 3D math is that hard. You will gain the most knowledge by trying to use and expand the code for your own use. This is not something you will accomplish over a few week ends. Understand this book, then go to DirectX and/or OpenGL and you will have a far better understanding of 3D and what's really happening. ...
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
3D Game Programming Starter, May 15, 1999
By A Customer
I am a self taught C++ programmer, and read this book over, and at first was excited at the information it presented, however the complicated mathematics of matrices, and the very simple explination left me in the dark. I decided to go and write my own 3D engine, after many tedious hours of developing the 3D conversion code, I decided to pick the book up again, everything seemed so much clearer now, the information is very concise, and to the point. However the source code, only compiled on my Borland C++ 4.5 compiler, with some of the functions rewritten to handle the code without an assembler. This book is a must have for learning, but don't expect to get a fully working engine, without some work on your side. I felt the work on my side, only helped my growing interest in programming. ENJOY!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
CODE to the chin, July 20, 1999
3D game programming is about concepts and applications rather than code and code. The modules that form part of the engine that half the book is dedicated to seem to come from nowhere, at least if you're reading about 3D game programming for the first time. No-one likes reading code that comes from some mysterious library. Therefore it is not an opening text on 3D game programming. But if you are an experienced programmer, reading lines and lines of code that WAS meant for beginners would seem redundant to me. Maybe computer science lecturers and game debuggers will find it helpful.
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