Worth Reading (June 2015)
• reading
The following stuff is what caught my eye in the last couple of weeks. Consider these kind of posts as an entry in my personal knowledge base ;)
###Talk: Scott Meyers
Presentations by Scott Meyers are always entertaining. This one is kind of a meta presentation by him not 100% about c++ specifics but about how to present to an expert audience. He talks about how to write a book and how to transport a message in a convincing and captivating way. And of course it shows yet again some c++ guts that only amaze :D
###Book: “Game Engine Architecture”
This particular book written by Jason Gregory - an industry veteran - is new on my shelf and very good for beginner and intermediate game engine developers. I found bits and pieces in every chapter that were new to me and consider this a good reference material. Jason Gregory covers an amazing broad spectrum and shows further readings for most of the in depth details that cannot be covered in such a compendium.
###Book: “Game Programming Patterns”
This book is a must read for every game programmer - well every programmer in general! It actually is available for free online so there is no excuse :)
The author Robert Nystrom wraps up reusable patterns in such a crystal clear way that it is very worth your time. His analytical way and attitude to always improve professionally are an inspiration. No buzzwording, no nonesense - just applicable ideas and the motivation behind them. Every word in this book shows that this piece was not written by someone in an ivory tower but a dry pragmatist who openly took feedback and incorporated it even in very early stages of the book. One could argue that this book was a community effort.
The highlights in short:
- distilled knowledge based on years of professional game development
- good structured chapters
- thoughtful examples
- neat hand-drawn diagrams
- filtered and improved over the thousands of readers involed in the creation of this book
###Post: “Mercurial at Unity”
Na’tosha Bard writes about the large scale usage of mercurial at Unity and how it improved their workflows and productivity: blog post
I consider this a very good read for people still sceptical to choose mercurial for their game dev projects (yes even considering big binary blob files like graphics assets).