Hi all,

since some years I'm inside videogames programming, and I'm also in an indie team.

I'd like to start to create a personal 3D game engine, mainly for learning, but also to use it in my future games.

I was looking for *PRATICAL* books that teach you the basics of game engines implementation, so far I found these two:

- Building a 3D Game Engine in C++ by Brian Hook (link): this looks good, and I saw reviews that says that the book will teach you to create a complete (basic) 3d engine from scratch. The only flaw is that this book is really old (1995), so the concepts are outdated too.

- Game Engine Design And Implementation by Alan Thorn (link): this looks good too, and it is also recent, but I've read in the comments that it will not complete the game engine that is developing, and eventually it switch to ogre and leave the reader unable to complete the already developed engine.

does anybody can suggest me a good book ? has anybody tried one of those two books ??

Thank you very much!

Game Engine Architecture is fantastic. It doesn't have any code, so it may not be what you consider "practical" in that sense, but it does go into detail about the different layers and components of a game engine, and various design considerations. Honestly, books without much code tend to be better in my experience anyway for this kind of thing, as they're more "strategic" in nature. If you're still in the "Learn how to do X" phase while implementing a game engine, you're in for a world of hurt.

I haven't read either of those two books though, so I can't say much about them. The name of the first one scares me a bit though, for the reasons outlined above.

Break down what a "game engine" actually is, and work on each part individually.

A modern engine may have he following "parts"

* Physics engine

* Rendering engine

* Effects engine

* Graphics shading engine

* World engine

* AI engine

* Combat and event engine

* Script parser

Game Engine Architecture is fantastic. It doesn't have any code, so it may not be what you consider "practical" in that sense, but it does go into detail about the different layers and components of a game engine, and various design considerations. Honestly, books without much code tend to be better in my experience anyway for this kind of thing, as they're more "strategic" in nature. If you're still in the "Learn how to do X" phase while implementing a game engine, you're in for a world of hurt.

I haven't read either of those two books though, so I can't say much about them. The name of the first one scares me a bit though, for the reasons outlined above.

+1

Game Engine Architecture is fantastic. It doesn't have any code, so it may not be what you consider "practical" in that sense, but it does go into detail about the different layers and components of a game engine, and various design considerations. Honestly, books without much code tend to be better in my experience anyway for this kind of thing, as they're more "strategic" in nature. If you're still in the "Learn how to do X" phase while implementing a game engine, you're in for a world of hurt.

I haven't read either of those two books though, so I can't say much about them. The name of the first one scares me a bit though, for the reasons outlined above.

I gave a look at cybereality, and it have some reviews about 3d engine books.

By the way I've just bought "Building a 3D game engine in C++", even if it is really old I hope it will give me some hints about the basics ;)

Any other books ? :)

1. 3d Game Engine Programming

2. Others

1. This book is on my wishlist :) Only cons is that it use DirectX so it is not portable on other operating systems.

1. 3d Game Engine Programming
2. Others

1. This book is on my wishlist :) Only cons is that it use DirectX so it is not portable on other operating systems.