Good Afternoon, 

I aspire to work in 3D programming specifically on Physics and Engine Architecture, I attend a community college that has a good balance of programming, business and art (for me) with about 80-90% programming courses and 1-2, 3D programming electives each year and sometimes each term. Although the course is more about the process of making a game and teaches you every skill from business to art to audio to teams and business but with 80-90% programming the course warns that about 90% of jobs are going to be programmers and you will have to work twice as hard as an artist to land a *GOOD* job (that's just this course specifically not them all). So while I have a good setup for what I need, I find the course lacks so many fundamental graphic courses that I will need to be an engine developer, I find engine stuff more sciency and technical and this college is more hands on and get things done kinda attitude rather than study it and find out how it works (I live in Canada things differ so much in the States). My question what books should I grab to start writing my own engine along side the course, I want to do just as much of this course as I spend time on engine development, even with 90% programming theres still a lot of useless courses that truly just wont benefit me. I don't mind how much they cost as this is my career and I really want to get serious about this, but my course kinda holds me back as much as its benefiting me. 

I prefer being taught by those who have written engines before me as these are the people I want to be. 

Things to know before recommending books: 

- I have no math skills I am 4 years out of high school so you could only imagine. Although I do understand its importance and will double down on these subjects as well. (Luckily for me there is a Game Development Mathematics course first semester that can prime me)  

- I know a bit about rendering such as shaders(only Fragment and Vertex so far) and kinda understand how Unreal and Unity work to get there games together minus all the techy management and networking. 

- I'm not comfortable touching networks, I would rather someone experienced do it right the first time. I understand its part of the engine process but networks become its own ball park once you start getting serious with it. 

- I understand University is better and that Game Schools are looked down on, but Im not relying on the course to get me work, Im relying on my own engine to show that Im worth just as much as a uni student. 

TL;DR 

Im looking for any good books for someone looking to get VERY serious with engine development, more intermediate books than beginner books please as I truly want to challenge myself and my course. If those graphic guys could as well as suggesting books also suggesting tutorials/explanations on things like where to start learning, how to continue learning and what to do when you THINK you've finished learning. Please make sure they are books as I don't trust online resources for learning only for re-learning. 

You should know that reading just books dosent get ya serious with engine development. It is a topic about reading about technologies and learn how to implement them in your environment. It is all about practical experience and even experienced developers don't mean to be experts in engine development.

A good book I could recommend is Game Engine Architecture, Second Edition along with any C++ Book you could grab to improve your platform near coding skills because a game engine is an OS API consuming and user API producing ecosystem

4 hours ago, Shaarigan said:

You should know that reading just books dosent get ya serious with engine development. It is a topic about reading about technologies and learn how to implement them in your environment. It is all about practical experience and even experienced developers don't mean to be experts in engine development.

A good book I could recommend is Game Engine Architecture, Second Edition along with any C++ Book you could grab to improve your platform near coding skills because a game engine is an OS API consuming and user API producing ecosystem

Thank you very much for your reply. While I do agree books aren’t the only great solution I just find a lot of the resources rushed and skip parts they expect you to understand and I’m not at that level yet. I would prefer to get a book written by an expert who took the time to publish it to get me going. I will check out that book for sure and continue with other c++ books and resources thank you  

also would you recommend the third edition of that book over the second or no? 

I'd also second Game Engine Architecture. I believe any edition might be viable (incl. third one) - I read the first and second personally and both of them were quite good. Out of other books I'd recommend, although neither of those two is directly related to game engines are - http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ (it's a book, although available online too) and https://www.pbrt.org/ - the first one will definitely be helpful in general, the second one is a must in case you're going for graphics. While oriented on offline ray tracing, it gives quite an insight into math behind (and acceleration structures).

I wouldn't discard online materials, I literally learned everything from those - and met the named books further later on. I didn't really have much choice, as those books really didn't exist at the time I was learning. Online materials have huge advantage of easy accessibility and weight compared to books ... disadvantage is that somehow they are quite bad (although much more rare, but even book can be quite bad).

47 minutes ago, Vilem Otte said:

I'd also second Game Engine Architecture. I believe any edition might be viable (incl. third one) - I read the first and second personally and both of them were quite good. Out of other books I'd recommend, although neither of those two is directly related to game engines are - http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ (it's a book, although available online too) and https://www.pbrt.org/ - the first one will definitely be helpful in general, the second one is a must in case you're going for graphics. While oriented on offline ray tracing, it gives quite an insight into math behind (and acceleration structures).

I wouldn't discard online materials, I literally learned everything from those - and met the named books further later on. I didn't really have much choice, as those books really didn't exist at the time I was learning. Online materials have huge advantage of easy accessibility and weight compared to books ... disadvantage is that somehow they are quite bad (although much more rare, but even book can be quite bad).

 Thank you I like the second book and will take a look at them both  thanks!