
Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash - nreece
http://www.byte.com/abrash/
======
bdfh42
Clearly it is going to take finite time to read all of this book and thus
comment intelligently on the whole.

Sampling chapter one tells me that this is very well written and pertinent -
if you don't get bogged down in the immediate issues of DOS calls. Performance
is always going to be crucial for all but the most trivial (or unrepeated)
tasks.

I quote from the chapter's conclusion

"This chapter has presented a quick step-by-step overview of the design
process. I’m not claiming that this is the only way to create high-performance
code; it’s just an approach that works for me. Create code however you want,
but never forget that design matters more than detailed optimization. Never
stop looking for inventive ways to boost performance-and never waste time
speeding up code that doesn’t need to be sped up."

Spot On!

------
projectileboy
I ate this book up like candy when I had my first gig at a game development
shop. It's absolutely fantastic. Especially enjoyable is the stuff about his
work on Quake - which, IMHO, was one of the greatest technical achievements in
software, ever. (Do you think _you_ could render a 3D environment at 25 fps,
all in software, on a Pentium 75?? Unbelievable...)

------
comatose_kid
It's a great book - outdated for sure, but I learned a lot just reading how he
approached the problems.

A nice throwback to when CPUs were simpler/more deterministic with respect to
optimization.

------
ojbyrne
Book has been sitting on my shelf forever since I found it in a clearance bin.
Now I'll actually (try to) read it!

------
willarson
Trying to go to their website using Camino (I realize that its working for
Firefox and other more popular browsers, was just kind of surprised):

javax.servlet.ServletException: agent.filename property not set in config file
at com.cmp.nucleus.servlet.NucleusServlet.init(NucleusServlet.java:895) at
com.caucho.server.http.Application.createServlet(Application.java:3114) at
com.caucho.server.http.Application.loadServlet(Application.java:3065) at
com.caucho.server.http.QServletConfig.loadServlet(QServletConfig.java:435) at
com.caucho.server.http.Application.getFilterChainServlet(Application.java:2809)
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.buildFilterChain(Application.java:2765)
at com.caucho.server.http.Invocation.service(Invocation.java:313) at
com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleRequest(RunnerRequest.java:346) at
com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleConnection(RunnerRequest.java:274)
at com.caucho.server.TcpConnection.run(TcpConnection.java:139) at
java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

~~~
bdfh42
Well spotted - I just assumed that the server was having traffic problems as
this link has been posted by Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror. It opens just fine
in a FireFox IE tab of course.

~~~
Raphael
Server load has nothing to do with what browser you're using.

~~~
bdfh42
Sorry - I did not make it clear. It was not a server issue but a browser
issue. The site seems to respond best to Internet Explorer so I opened it in
FireFox using the IE tab "addin".

