game development pro
This is the second book in the new game engine development series by acclaimed author and engine developer, Eric Lengyel. Though it is not strictly necessary to read in order, it is basically one book cut into sections, so you may want to get the first one, as well as the upcoming continuations of the series, to get the most out of it.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is a blockbuster tour through WebGL, with many performance optimizations and considerations not commonly found in other texts. Like typical gems collections, each chapter is written by a different author and focuses on one aspect of WebGL coding. There is a lot of coverage here, and I found the authors’ expertise to be second to
Of the top WebGL books I’ve read so far, I think I can say this one is the best. Not only is it well written, but it includes lots of detail about how rendering APIs work, 3d math, lighting concepts, and even some performance considerations at the end. It’s not a very long book, but it covers the fundamentals well. I also enjoyed
Understanding ECMAScript 6 delivers exactly what the subtitle proclaims, the definitive guide for JavaScript developers. While I have been working with Javascript for years now (and particularly ECMAScript when I was developing for Flash) I hadn’t really kept up with the recent developments. JavaScript always seemed to be missing important OOP concepts like classes or inheritance, and the ways to “fake” them with
WebGL Programming Guide is the first WebGL book that I can fully recommend. The authors stick to straight WebGL code (no libraries like Three.js) and explain everything in full detail. Since they focus more on the API than anything else, most of the samples are simple things like colored triangles or spinning cubes, but that is fine to learn the basics. I liked
WebGL: Up and Running by Tony Parisi is a competent first introduction to 3d on the web, and the author does seem to know what he’s talking about. The book is not long, but manages to cover a variety of topics, even the source code for a complete game (simple as it may be). The chapters include: introduction to the WebGL API, setting
I’m a bit conflicted about this book. While there is a lot of good material here, I feel like there were many inconsistencies with the coding style and some errors or confusing explanations that deter from the gems inside. It’s also heavily geared toward complete beginners, making it somewhat of a numbing read for intermediate to advanced programmers. But I still found some
So, as of this writing, I have read all 5 books available on Amazon on the Vulkan API and I would say that Vulkan Cookbook is one of the better resources out there. The format of the book is similar to other “cookbooks” you may have seen, with each recipe essentially describing one technique in a stand-alone fashion. Meaning the steps for each
Introduction to Computer Graphics and the Vulkan API by Kenwright is exactly what the title implies, an approachable introduction to the Vulkan API and graphics programming in general. This book succeeds in the places where some other books on the market fail, by showing straight-forward code examples, explaining graphics concepts simply, and not assuming you are already a graphics guru. While the quality of
Game Engine Gems 2 is the second book in a series from editor Eric Lengyel, one of the premiere game engine developers in the scene. I read the first book and I will say this second volume is even better in my opinion. There are a vast number of topics covered, and I found the depth in most of them to be thorough,
