Game Engine Architecture

I bought this book because I was trying to look for information on Game Engine Development so I can build my own game engine. Upon reading the first chapter, I was really locked into reading the book and definitely felt the need to take notes on almost every single page. The way the author explains things in this book is absolutely phenomenal and the way it is organized makes it very understandable. It is by no means an easy read but it is definitely informative. On top of this, in Chapter 3 the author goes over programming best practices and where you can get more information on making very performant code. He includes diagrams that depict what he is trying to explain very well. The format in which he teaches is introducing a problem, then explaining what some people have come up with as solutions, and then explaining what solution to the problem he thinks is best. He gets very low level and even gets to explaining how to avoid cache misses. Explains the why as to cache being faster than memory. I can go on all day long. The crazy part of this book is that it feels like no words are wasted. Through over 1000 pages of text, every bit of information he provides feels as though it has importance. Just getting into the 4th Chapter right now but so far this book is great! Will update when I am finished with the book.

Wow! This is the best technical book I have read this year. I have been a C++ developer for almost 20 years and have been working in the game industry for the last 8 years. I wish I had found this book 8 years ago, it would have gotten me up to speed much quicker. This is not a how to guide and it is also not a deep academic dive into the low levels of game engine architecture. Instead it fits into its own category, it is really a book designed to get experienced programmers into the game industry. It covers almost everything you will encounter in just enough detail to get you up to speed.Think of this as a jumping off point, after you read this you will be qualified to read and understand how most any game is setup, but not quite ready to write a game from scratch. But that is huge, it is often so hard to get the basics when you are going into a new field. Most books are written for users in the field who know the basics, or are written for people that can only dream of working in the field and have no depth at all.I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has less than 5 years experience in the game industry. I picked it up myself for the chapter on positional audio but it was so well written I have been reading it straight through, and enjoying every moment of it.

As some previous reviews written, this is a solid book on game engine architecture. What I like about this book is it has a detailed introduction to game animation system which other books couldn't give. However, compared to Game Coding Complete series, this book didn't give the source code of a complete game engine, which I think is essential to learn game programming. You seem to know a lot of things about game programming after reading this book, but there is no way you can put it together without previous game engine experience. I don't suggest this book to people who want to start from scratch to build a game engine, but who want to improve their existing game engine. I hope this book can go more detailed on the gameplay part.

I am not a game developer, however I want to become one, but this book is clearly not only about that.Jason has put an enormous effort into explaining things that few will tell you about.This book is a gem, because from my point of view (mainly as a .NET developer), it contains the bases that any respectable programmer must know. It explains you about memory, it gives you the programming/engineering experience accumulated over the years that is far more precious than the money you pay for the book. It explains you concepts that must be explained before anyone letting you write your first piece of code. Don't fool yourself thinking that this is only about game architecture. This book is about any architecture, about best practices, about the idea how to truly know how to program.My favorite statement from this book is the one that says something like this: Before you develop something, you must know the underlying hardware.Thank you Jason for sharing all this experience!P.S. I've started to read a lot of books, but this one is one of the bests in keeping you reading and making you want more.

The book describes industry-standard approaches to organizing a game's modules in a way that supports functional isolation, and also separates the game-independent core (or engine) from game-specific content and code. It also describes alternatives where they exist, such as the decision between a single centralized resource module vs. distributing resource-specific loaders across their associated modules.I would characterize this book as a survey just because its scope is so large, but even with that, it has plenty of conceptual, algorithmic and mathematical meat. I've used the book (and particularly Figure 1.15) as a way to establish a high-level architecture for my game, and then I drill into specific chapters targeting specific modules as needed.One gap is that by the author's own admission, the book doesn't really treat AI at all (just a single page), so if you're looking for that, you'll need to look elsewhere.

I am about 1/3 through this book. I have learned a ton. To put that in perspective, I graduated in 1991 with a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science. From 1991 to 1996 I was on a team of 13 developers creating one of the of the first NURBS 3D modelers and ray tracers. I have done nothing but develop software applications and manage teams of intense development from 1991 to today. What I have learned from this book is helping me to develop applications outside of the game market and preparing me for possibly choosing to reenter the world of 3D applications with extremely cost effective coding.

Use as a reference for the subjects covered. There are better books available.