From: yorka AT dlc DOT fi (Atte Koivula)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Books, any of 'em good?
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 11:35:55 GMT
Organization: DLC Data Link Connections
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Hey all,

Now that I have finally managed to sum up a decent amount of cash to
buy a cpl more books to my collection, I'd like to know if you have
any experience or ideas concerning certain titles.

 I'd like to learn about general hardware stuff, ie. DMA, IRQ and PIT,
and I'd like to get a firm grasp on DPMI. Any suggestions?

Furthermore, does anyone have experiences of André LaMothe's book,
"Black art of 3-D Game Programming". I've read Tricks of the Game
Programming Gurus and Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 days, and
I gotta admit, I like André's style. Tricks claimed to go about as far
as DOOM, but really went about as far as Wolf 3D. Black Art claims it
goes about as far as Descent, so does that mean it goes about as far
as DOOM? =)

Now, some of you are probably gonna recommend Zen of Graphics
Proogramming 2nd Ed, or Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, of
which I have a few things to say: 

Zen is a nice book with great explanations and good readability, but
it's fairly out-dated, including stuff such as 386-optimizing or
Hi-Res VGA-modes or even EGA bank switching. It IS one of the books
every graphics programmer should have on his/her bookshelf, but it has
it's bad sides as well, and I've read it, and would like to try
something new.

Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice is based on old SIGGRAPH
proceedings, so there's no guarantees about the speed of the code. It
doesn't really teach anything practical being extremely cheap on
actual code. It sometimes uses cryptic equations to explain things
(I'm not really a math-person), and furthermore tries to be platform
independent, which means you have to figure out the DOS-specific stuff
yourself. It's academic and dry way of describing things make it very
hard-going. Furthermore, it's encyclopedic structure doesn't really
make it a tutorial-type book, but more like a reference. I'd like to
LEARN something.

Are there really no other readable books on 3D?


-- Atte "Yorka" Koivula --