
The Game Engine Black Book: Doom - LucidLynx
http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/
======
AJ007
All of the comments so far are about the author’s cut. This is the second book
he’s written, with the same situation. Clearly it’s worth it to him. You
should just consider it a hobby project, and he’s giving readers the option to
get a full color print copy of the book.

The first book, Game Engine Black Book Wolfenstein 3D is fantastic. This goes
back to an era where one person can read the source code for a game and
understand what it actually is doing at the hardware level. It would be
fantastic for an entry level computer science class or someone who just wants
to understand how a game engine works. The exhaustive color illustrations and
images, the reason why the author makes no money, make is so much easier to
grasp the concepts. If you are an experienced developer or someone who can
understand complex topics just by reading text and formulas, the this isn’t
such a big deal.

Can’t wait to read this new book.

~~~
jankins
Such a good writer. His Wolfenstein book had the best explanation I’ve ever
seen for how floating point numbers are encoded, and that explanation is in
the first several pages. If you don’t have an understanding of floating point
encoding, that alone is worth the purchase price.

~~~
D_Guidi
Here the "floating point" excerpt from the book:
[http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/...](http://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/index.php)

~~~
packetpirate
Am I alone in thinking that the sign, exponent and mantissa model makes more
sense, and that (-1)^S * 1.M * 2^(E-127) isn't that hard to understand? Maybe
because I already understand that model, but his explanation just made it more
confusing for me.

------
vahji
Being transparent about pricing is working against you. If I want to pay $54
for a book and I know only $0.77 are going to you, I'm simply not going to buy
it.

The production costs might be reasonable, but $20+ to Amazon just for
existing? Fuck that. I mean I use Amazon when I know their margins are razor
thin (for most things they are), but in this case, big nope here.

~~~
OberstKrueger
The PDF is $10 on Google Play, DRM-free. A quick search shows that Google pays
out about half of the selling price.

Doesn't beat having a paper book though, if that's your thing.

~~~
ekianjo
Funny, it's 2000 JPY in Japan. Which is 17.7 USD. Why the +75% Markup for
Japan on Google Books?

~~~
OberstKrueger
The US store has the normal price at $17 and marked as on sale at $10. So the
normal price matches with conversion about right.

~~~
sharken
The price in Denmark matches the price in Japan, so it looks like pricing is
similar.

Since the book doesn't launch until Monday, there is also a prerelease price
that is a few dollars lower.

~~~
Aissen
The price in France shows the ongoing sale: 10,56€ instead of 15,09€.

------
lostgame
EDIT 2: I sent a direct email to the author asking if he could place a direct
buy link on the page, or if I could directly send him some money for the book.

I’m extremely confused and curious as to why on Earth the author simply didn’t
place a PDF on their site with a PayPal (or less evil alternative) button on
his site.

I personally absolutely refuse to purchase it knowing that Amazon is taking
all of the Author’s money.

I actually think it’s detrimental to display that data - as it seems it’s not
just myself that seems less likely to purchase based off that data.

Instead of many of the comments here being about the staggering loss the
authour is taking by not following this simple route, at $10-20 a PDF we could
all be discussing the contents of the book, instead.

Hopefully the author sees this and can make some sensible decisions for
themselves - from what I hear their last book was fantastic.

EDIT: To the author: if I see a direct buy link on your page I will buy two
copies within the day, as it seems that even $5-10 profit off two sales at
$10-20 would provide you as much as up to 15 sales. I’m in the music business.
I get slim royalties and I get how much effort we put into art.

~~~
fabiensanglard
You can buy the Google Play version for which authors get 55%. The PDF is DRM
free so you can read it anywhere and I don't have to take care of
billing/hosting.

------
dustinmoris
The reality is even worse than what this graph suggests. From the $1.59
royalty only $0.77 stay with the author (the rest is tax), but the $0.77 are
barely any profit if you account for the cost of human labour that went into
writing this book in the first place. Depending on how many copies he'll sell
through Amazon I think it's likely that the time spent on writing this book
could have earned him more by cleaning the floor at McDonalds, which is a
really sad state of affairs.

~~~
Asooka
At this point the ethical thing to do is to pirate the book and donate the
money to the author. Like, if I were him, I would just put the PDF up on the
pirate bay with a link to my patreon.

Edit: I see it's also on Google Books, which I presume has a more ethical
paying structure. Sadly, that's not available in my corner of the EU yet.

~~~
golergka
This is completely unethical to the entities the author have given the rights
for distribution to.

~~~
dpwm
I really can't tell if this is satire or serious.

On each pirated book, the e-book "distributor" (i.e. google play) is doing
nothing. They won't be doing any marketing, they won't have any distribution
costs: it'll just be as if it were a less popular book than it actually is.

I'm sure the author could have set up such an arrangement for the e-book
himself if he preferred it.

Bear in mind that actually running a payment page results in a whole world of
pain surrounding stolen credit cards, refund requests, compatibility problems
and technical support demands. If you enjoy the _writing_ , you probably don't
want to be doing that.

~~~
golergka
No, I'm completely serious about it.

> On each pirated book, the e-book "distributor" (i.e. google play) is doing
> nothing. They won't be doing any marketing, they won't have any distribution
> costs: it'll just be as if it were a less popular book than it actually is.

The author knew that, and yet he made voluntarily decision of going into an
agreement with them. Disrespecting this agreement is disrespecting this
decision and, therefore, the author himself.

~~~
ouid
Wait, what? Amazon is a monopoly. They aren't charging a fair competitive
price. Your "argument" only works if the author has other options for
distribution. Otherwise it's not a _decision_.

~~~
tzs
Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on physical book production or distribution. As
the author notes in TFA, he looked at other production options and they were
roughly the same as Amazon.

------
Maro
Why doesn't the author just put up the PDF for sale on this site? I'd pay ~$20
with Paypal right now for the PDF, straight to the author.

~~~
dpwm
It's probably something the author has thought of. As soon as you take payment
you enter into a world of pain. Stolen credit cards, suspended Paypal
accounts, technical support, requests for different formats.

Perhaps the author prefers making books to maximizing the amount of money he
makes?

~~~
andrepd
I think you're overestimating the amount of "hassle" that would bring. There
are payment processors that simplify that end, and the difference in profit
would be so massive that I think it would be worth it.

~~~
wolfgke
> I think you're overestimating the amount of "hassle" that would bring. There
> are payment processors that simplify that end, and the difference in profit
> would be so massive that I think it would be worth it.

But do they also accept payment methods that are common on other countries.
For example, in Germany credit cards are often frowned upon and many people
have no credit card; instead SEPA money transfer and SEPA direct debit (the
latter strongly preferred) are the common ways to pay in the internet.

~~~
freeflight
That used to be an issue, but by now PayPal and CC are so common, you can even
use PayPal to pay for gasoline at Shell stations [0].

Overall it's also more of a problem in physical retail, Germans who do a lot
of shopping online usually have no issue at all with paying by CC/PayPal,
often getting a prepaid CC just for that.

But it's not like you are missing out on some massive part of German customer
base because paying online with SEPA is usually more hassle than paying online
with PayPal, so most people prefer the later.

Particularly due to the fact that most "quick" online SEPA payment schemes
involve giving a third party access to your banking account [1]. Which
shouldn't be an issue, as most actions that involve sending money still
require a TAN, but some banks have relaxed these rules, allowing smaller
amounts to be transferred without supplying a TAN [2].

It's not difficult to see the potential problems here: If Sofortüberweisung
ever has a breach, there's the very real possibility that the data could be
used to trigger massive amounts of fraudulent money transfers.

[0]
[https://www.shell.de/autofahrer/smartpay.html](https://www.shell.de/autofahrer/smartpay.html)

[1]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofort%C3%BCberweisung](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofort%C3%BCberweisung)

[2] [https://www.comdirect.de/konto/tan-
freiheit.html](https://www.comdirect.de/konto/tan-freiheit.html)

~~~
wolfgke
> Overall it's also more of a problem in physical retail, Germans who do a lot
> of shopping online usually have no issue at all with paying by CC/PayPal,
> often getting a prepaid CC just for that.

I am living in Germany and I stand by my observation that few people have a
credit card. PayPal luckily offers SEPA direct debit, even though many
consider PayPal for reasons that are off topic here as "workaround".

> Particularly due to the fact that most "quick" online SEPA payment schemes
> involve giving a third party access to your banking account [1].

> It's not difficult to see the potential problems here: If Sofortüberweisung
> ever has a breach, there's the very real possibility that the data could be
> used to trigger massive amounts of fraudulent money transfers.

Sofortueberweisung is a security nightmare that nobody should use. Just offer
SEPA direct debit.

~~~
freeflight
> I am living in Germany and I stand by my observation that few people have a
> credit card.

That's why I said it's mainly an issue in physical retail due to many
retailers not wanting to go through the hassle of getting a CC system in
addition to their already established SEPA direct debit system, the fees
charged by CC companies is another factor as they are much higher, on a per
transaction basis than what's being charged by SEPA direct debit [0].

But we are talking online here, and in that context, many people do have
PayPal accounts [1], that happened regardless of the massive controversies
which surrounded PayPal a couple of years ago. The ven-diagram here is quite
easy: People who like shopping internationally online are more versed in
online shopping and thus more likely to have a PayPal account exactly for that
reason.

People who don't shop online as much, or not at all, do not and people who
only shop online at domestic companies, make use of the established SEPA
systems.

> Sofortueberweisung is a security nightmare that nobody should use. Just
> offer SEPA direct debit.

SEPA direct debit can be its own security nightmare issue because you are
essentially giving a third party allowance to just charge your account, for
whatever amount. It also does not replace the use-case of Sofortüberweisung
because Sofortüberweisung allows "instant fulfillment", which SEPA direct
debit usually does not.

Because SEPA direct debit requires time for processing, time during which no
product/service will be delivered. That's where Sofortüberweisung comes in: It
allows payment with instant fulfillment because Sofortüberweisung is like the
"man in the middle" who confirms the transaction actually took place, allowing
for fulfillment before the payment actually arrives at the seller.

Note: I'm not saying Sofortüberweisund or PayPal are amazing services, I'm
merely pointing out the difference between Germans shopping online and German
physical retail because it's the latter that suffers from a lack of CC
support. But plenty of Germans are fine taking other, CC-less routes, like
PayPal or Sofortüberweisung, to get their online shopping done.

In that context, you won't be missing out on a massive customer base due to
your lack of SEPA payment options, Germans who want what you sell will
have/find an alternative way to pay for it, without using SEPA.

[0] [https://www.thepaypers.com/expert-opinion/sepa-
directdebit-t...](https://www.thepaypers.com/expert-opinion/sepa-directdebit-
the-true-alternative-to-credit-cards-in-europe/763758)

[1]
[https://www.bundestag.de/blob/434296/5dbc531d88cd738eccbe2e9...](https://www.bundestag.de/blob/434296/5dbc531d88cd738eccbe2e9b8079f1d1/wd-4-059-16-pdf-
data.pdf)

------
0xmohit
Similar story: "My Amazon bestseller made me nothing"

[https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/](https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/hey_amazon_wheres_my_money/)

Authors make little or nothing, but Bezos keeps getting richer :)

~~~
mdpopescu
I have no idea what Amazon has got to do with his money... he didn't self-
publish, he sold through a publisher (though an indie one). What did he
expect? I'm amazed he made as much as he did ($12K).

------
ascavalcante80
I'm quite sure it's a great book. But like I'm really impressed for the first
thing this book has taught me and it's not about games... It's just
unbelievable how much money Amazon makes selling books!

~~~
tanilama
I went on to a publisher site to buy ebook because kindle version is not
available, and during checkout I was thrown out because mysterious error
message.

I do think Amazon is winning for a game reason.

~~~
jammygit
Same happened to me with the Pearson site recently. Customer service took days
to reply and their response was some version 'try writing us back at this
email since they handle your specific problem better than we do.' Its
ridiculous how hard it gets to give people your money

edit: still locked out of my cart on Pearson

------
beezle
I don't know where he is getting his pricing. I can do an 8.5x11 400 page
color perfect bound for a print cost of $16.31. Using a list of $30 and
Amazon/B&N (ie, online retailer) distribution wholesale discount of 30% gives
author $4.69 per copy.

(I have no idea what size author intends, if he has it in 6x9 trade size cost
is even lower)

~~~
llao
And where do you get such price?

~~~
beezle
Not sure if that was directed at me but my estimate is using Lightning Source
as the printer/distributor. The wholesale cut only applies to online (ie,
Amazon, BN.com, etc) distribution and not bricks n mortar (as then the
compensation is much higher and you must take returns).

Using a firm like Lightning Source requires a little more upfront legwork than
Amazon, but not substantially so and really is appropriate if author plans to
publish again.

------
kmlx
wait, how can the distributor take 40% and production 57%?

why isn't there a competitor that takes a lower percentage? say 10% for both.

are the economics of book selling so atrocious for the authors in general? how
can one accept .77ct profit on $54 of sale?

it's probably just me not being accustomed to the book selling ripoff, but
still feels like a monumental, epic-level ripoff.

~~~
detaro
> _say 10% for both._

Why do you think you could print a 400 page full-color book for $5 and make a
profit, especially at lowest volumes/print on demand? That stuff isn't just
expensive because printing companies are evil.

~~~
WalterBright
I discovered that the economics of having things printed are surprising. It
costs about the same to print one copy as it does to print a thousand copies.
Nearly all the expense is in the setup, the marginal cost of paper is pretty
small.

The trick is to correctly guess how many you'll need.

~~~
ithkuil
Digital print has changed this balance a bit. With offset printing tech there
are huge one-time costs

------
tekkk
I am baffled at the amount how much the author makes from each book. 31$
production costs seem high but since it's 427 full-colored pages it seems
reasonable. However, how come Amazon takes 22$ dollars on top of that? There
is no way it's that expensive to distribute the book, there must be some other
services involved?

Although the pricing seems weird, the pie chart shown on the page is even more
so. How it's possible that Amazon is most of the pie with 40% percentage?

~~~
hjek
Confusing pie chart indeed.

------
LeonM
> The result is $1.59 royalty and $0.77 profit per book sold.

That's brutal. I mean I get it that production and distribution is costly
(books are heavy), but only taking a 77 cent profit on one year of work seems
insane.

What does the breakdown usually look like for e-books?

~~~
seanwilson
>Here are all the numbers. When I upload the PDF on Amazon, a minimal price is
automatically calculated. In the case of the DOOM, Amazon sets the minimal
price at $51.35. There is a slider which authors can use in order to add their
"share" on top of Amazon price. I have added $3.88 which Amazon also takes a
cut on. The result is $1.59 royalty and $0.77 profit per book sold.

I didn't understand this part either. Wouldn't charging $59.99 sustainably
increase the author's profit?

~~~
shakna
Only if the book would sustainable sell volume at that price point.

------
whatever_dude
(Changing the subject away from the cut)

I applaud Fabiens' work. I have been following since his blog days on the
source code analysis of games and I'm so happy he's writing books on the
matter. I will fully support him going forward.

However, the first edition of the Wolfenstein Black Book left me a bit miffed.
It had many grammatical errors and even some layout awkwardness that would not
pass an editor's review. I understand the reasons: English is not his first
language, this was a work of passion, etc. But it still mars the experience. I
assume the second edition fixed those; I wish I had waited.

I've been eagerly waiting for his book on Doom. But I recommend waiting for
the second edition, once he had time to take the readers' feedback into
account.

------
mentos
What do you guys think of a kickstarter for his next book?

He sets a funding goal that achieves profit for him and then people can pledge
$10 for an e-book, $25 for b&w or $50 for color.

This way he gets to hold onto the intellectual property until he has cleared
his goal and make the prints of the books a limited time offer which could
drive up their demand.

~~~
derangedHorse
This doesn’t seem like a bad idea! This way he can gauge demand and proceed
working accordingly. The price could also be set at something reasonable which
makes it available to the casual reader and not at a $99 price tag that would
probably only be purchased by die hard fans.

------
izacus
Wow, not a single comment about contents or quality of the book.

~~~
simplicio
It's a 400 page book that came out a few hours ago. I doubt anyone unconnected
to the author is in a position to comment on its contents.

(But plenty of people have noted the previous volume was worthwhile).

------
neogenix
You can upload it to peecho.com, according to their website printing and
shipping would be about 50USD in full color. So setting the same 55USD as
Amazon would give you a 5USD profit (instead of the 77cents).

------
zorked
Very happy to see this published. I bought the book on Wolfenstein 3D and read
every single word of it even though I don't much care for Wolf3D - the book is
inherently interesting.

I immediately ordered the physical version. It's a pity that the profit is so
incredibly low. I'd consider just selling it for $69 or $99 or whatever. I'm
not sure it would make such a difference in term of sales - the people who can
read this book are in a very nice industry after all. The PDF can be sold at a
much higher margin for accessibility for those who really can't pay for the
physical book.

------
rhardih
I wonder how much Google Books takes compared to Amazon and if Fabien
considered other publishing platforms, with less egregious profit cuts.

~~~
sharken
Google Books seem to pay 55% for each sale (Source:
[https://www.quora.com/For-an-ebook-sold-on-Google-Books-
how-...](https://www.quora.com/For-an-ebook-sold-on-Google-Books-how-much-do-
authors-receive-in-royalties))

The book is being sold from the 10th on my local Google Books store for around
USD 19.

------
cafebabbe
If you're outraged at the author's cut, then i have some bad news for you,
you'll need to stop buying food and clothes.

------
gigatexal
Damn shame the author only gets 77 cents per copy. No wonder Amazon started as
a book seller.

------
dirktheman
Apparently the Amazon low margin strategy doesn't count for their book
sales... that is absolutely brutal! Wouldn't it make more sense for the author
to sell the book directly on his website as well?

------
segmondy
Publish the screenshots & drawings as a separate book in color. Sell it as an
optional bundle for those who want it in published form. For those who don't
care, Publish the book in black and white, with a QR code to open links to a
web page with the screenshot & drawings. There's no way in hell I'm going to
put in all that effort to earn 77cents :-( when other's are profiting much
more. I'll rather give away the book for free. I can't believe in 2018 folks
are still getting gouged to publish.

------
jokoon
Could be nice to have a list of chapters.

------
kumarvvr
Is this book relevant in the current scenario of game development tools?

Just curious.

~~~
sbarre
I am sure there are interesting insights and lessons and details if you're
into game development, but the book is about a game engine - and underlying
hardware of the same era - that is 25 years old.. So, caveat emptor?

~~~
kumarvvr
I read a similar book a few years back. I think it was called "Game
programming bible" or something. While the techniques were interesting, more
interesting was the way developers solved critical problems (like large scale
collision detection).

However, in this day and age, almost all low level problems have been
extracted away by game engines such as Unity / Unreal, etc. The relevancy of
the book as a manual to learn seem limited, looks more of an interesting read
than a helpful resource.

------
panzagl
Amazing how many people think they know better than the author on print and
distribution- like a guy who spends years researching and writing a work like
this is some sort of rube taken by the first huckster he runs across. There
are several well known options in POD, he went with Amazon, maybe he knows
something we don't.

------
vasili111
$0.77 from $54 for the author is a disaster.

------
TomGullen
It's a niche book, why not sell it for $60? That's 10% more for the buyer, and
380% more for the author.

The optimal price might even be higher than that if you're looking to maximize
author profit.

~~~
simplicio
Yea, at least part of the reason the authors cut is so small is that he priced
it so that his share is minimal. Even a small increase would double his per-
book earnings. Presumably he doesn't care too much about maximizing his income
from this, and just wants to have the book be as widespread as possible.

------
qd6pwu4
It seems that book authors make almost no money across the world in this era
(especially they put a lot of efforts into writing a book), I feel pathetic

------
jere
Is this a historical piece or is there enough detail on how you would recreate
your own version of Doom? If not, is there anything like the latter?

~~~
Jach
It's like the previous book on Wolf3D, "an engineering book", so there ought
to be enough detail to recreate your own version of Doom. Furthermore, your
own version of Doom _on the original hardware it was made for_. For Wolf3D,
that would be the 386. Of course you're more likely interested in recreating
for modern hardware, in which case the book should still be applicable, but
some things they had to do will be different, and some things you'd have to do
would also be different -- probably less work for you to get to the same
place.

[https://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/](https://jonathanwhiting.com/games/knossu/)
is an example of "What can you do with a Doom style raycasting engine if
you're tired of realism and shooting things?" I don't know where the author
would have learned about Doom's techniques (perhaps just looking at it,
perhaps the source code, perhaps .plan archives, or perhaps Fabien's earlier
review here with included further reading at the end:
[http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php)
) but there's definitely other resources out there. I'd recommend the book
though just from having read the previous one.

------
msh
Wierd, I can get the ebook from google play books but not for the kindle.
Amazon is only selling the paper book.

------
vtesucks
I don't understand the point of selling a DRM free eBook. It's going to be
pirated, wouldn't it? What could be some reasons behind him doing so?

~~~
OberstKrueger
Having it be DRM-free means he doesn't have to mess around with every store
under the sun. I'm not a Google Play user normally, but this lets me purchase
it through the web interface, download the PDF, and then read it however I
want. For his book on Wolfenstein, I did just that by reading it in Apple
Books on my iPad.

~~~
melling
What format is the book in? A regular PDF isn’t as good in Apple Books, for
example. Taking notes, night mode, bookmarks, ...

------
bni
Im confused how to buy it.

If it just was a link with PayPal or credit card I would have already bought
it.

Instead I get linked to crap sites Amazon and Google

