Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D Kindle Edition

I've long been a fan of Fabien's work over on his website (google his name, Amazon doesn't allow external links...), and have been eagerly awaiting this book since he first announced he was going to write it three years ago. Wolfenstein was the first 3D game I ever played, way back on my parents' 586 clone and it's fantastic to see the internals of how it all worked laid out so clearly and concisely. I've made a couple of attempts at deciphering the original Id source code, but wound up stymied trying to piece it together - code dealing with the vagaries of raw VGA graphics, 16-bit memory models, inline assembly, and low-level audio programming was just a little too much for me to bite off. Now armed with this guide, I feel like I have a handle on how it all worked.

The book is also beautiful - all too often, books on game engines and graphics programming are all in black and white, or at best have a handful of pages of color plates that you have to flip back and forth to. Not this book, which abounds in full color diagrams and screenshots.

I'm so glad that this project made its way into print. Hopefully there will be more entries in the series in the years to come

Awesome book! I purchased this thinking it would only cover the implementation details of Wolf3D; but it has so much more interesting information. It really combines Hardware, Team, and Software. Hardware -- a great review of the state and limitations of development during the 386/DOS era. Team -- history of early id Software, a nice companion to Masters of Doom. Software -- the technical details of the Wolfenstein 3D game engine.
The best parts of the book are the author's technical explanations. Topics like floating and fixed point operations, VGA banking, raycasting, and others are presented in the most amazingly intuitive ways. Seriously, great. I could have saved soooo much frustration if I had been able to read this book when I was younger.

I really enjoyed this book. I have a vivid memory of first seeing Wolfenstein 3D at a "computer show" (remember those?) in 1992 when I was only 11 and quickly buying the shareware disks. This game, Doom, and the Quakes were a big part of what got me excited as a kid about programming and the endless possibilities computers offered.

So it is extremely satisfying to finally understand the intricacies, hacks, and genius behind the Wolf3D engine. I admittedly never attempted to read the source prior to this book, but a big reason for that (beyond lack of time) was that so much context is necessary to make sense of the code. Fabien's book provides a huge amount of necessary context for understanding both what the engine is doing and more importantly, WHY it is doing it. The book explains DOS memory limitations, the insane complexity of VGA graphics programming, and fixed point computations (which were necessary due to lack of floating point units), among many other things. Without all this background, the source code would not make much sense at all. As John Carmack has said about this book, it is a great piece of software archeology.

I came away from this book with all the more appreciation for the brilliance of the hacks that were used to get the game running at a reasonable framerate on the 386'es (and even 286'es!) of the early '90s. For example, Sanglard explains how Wolf3D draws walls one column at a time: the engine actually dynamically generates assembly routines that shrink or expand a wall texture to an exact number of vertical pixels (the height of the wall on the screen). Each of these routines contains only the assembly instructions necessary for this wall height and no loops.

It's really cool to read about this stuff and renews my enthusiasm for programming, finding creating solutions, and trying to make machines do what seems impossible. Though I wouldn't recommend this book for someone who isn't a programmer, Sanglard takes his role as software archaeologist seriously and provides tons of asides and anecdotes about the history of computing, the personalities behind id Software, and little details about things like map design. For example, he includes an architectural diagram of the house the team worked in. This is pointless from a technical perspective, but I greatly enjoyed all of these details. The book is also full of full-color (and large!) screenshots and illustrations.

My only criticism of this book is that it is a bit rough around the edges, particularly with regard to typos, of which there are many. In a way this adds to the book's charm, however. It isn't trying to be super polished, and you can tell that it was (lovingly) laid out and organized by one person, the author. It reads more like a hacker manifesto than a textbook, and I love it for that.

Read through the entire book in one sitting on the day I got it. Complex topics are presented with remarkably easy to understand visuals and explanations. Lots of references to supplemental material. The staggering number of clever tricks, hacks, and things that would probably get you fired if you tried them in most modern software development environments defies reason. It feels like as much passion that went into creating Wolfenstein 3D went into writing this book.

Fabien Sanglard is the only author that I have found that makes detailed reviews of game engine source code. He has been writing these reviews for years now and knows how to translate complicated concepts with ease... and with lots of pictures (go check his website: you will not be disappointed - he also has great book recommendations).

This book is quite simply a more in depth review than what Fabien's articles offer with a bit of history thrown in for good measure. Even if I am a novice programmer, I find that the book is very approachable, motivational and, dare I say it, fun to read. A unique and great book that is worth your time.

Good book. Good balance between technical details (texture mapping, ray casting, various tricks to make it run fast on computers of the era) and the anecdotes around the game development (formation of id Software, John Carmack and team, Wolfenstein's effect on the game industry, and many more).

Taking one star off since (for the price paid - just over 30 USD) I expected more in-depth source code overview and technical details, that one could use while studying the code hands on.

The print itself has a very pleasant-to-the-touch finished cover.