Game Engine Black Book
Wolfenstein 3D
by Fabien Sanglard · first published 2017
78% recommend22% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Deep, readable walkthroughs of the Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM source code, showing how id Software squeezed speed from early-90s PC hardware. Suits retro-computing fans and developers curious about low-level game tricks.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D is one of the better ones I've read this year. It's a fun nostalgia trip, if you played it, and it covers some interesting stuff about historical low-level game programming and quirks…
on “Ask HN: CS and programming books of 2017” ↗Fabien's books are also phenomenal: - Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0768B3PWV/ - Game Engine Black Book: DOOM - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1099819776/
on “The Polygons of Doom: PSX” ↗…definitely made with DOS in mind, but it also ran on NeXT from the beginning. It's pretty portable actually. Since you cited Fabien Sanglard, I guess I should mention that his book about DOOM's source code (Game Engine Black Book: DOOM) explains how the portability stuff (as well as almost everything else) worked in great detail.
on “Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch” ↗The Game Engine Black Book by Fabien Sanglard[1] is a wonderful book that talks about some of the engineering challenges and tricks employed by id software to get Wolfenstein 3D working. [1]: http://fabiensanglard.net/Game_Engine_Black_Book_Release/ind...
on “After 24 years, Doom II's final secret has been found” ↗Somewhat related - "Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D" [1], by Fabien Sanglard. Of course this is a very different book: it includes detailed reviews of the engine's source code, and translates complex concepts with ease. Plus the print…
on “After 24 years, Doom II's final secret has been found” ↗For a very deep and specific dive, Fabien Sanglard has explained in detail Wolfenstein and Doom games technical implementation in his books Game Engine Black Book: DOOM and Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein. The writing is from the point of view of reverse engineering and understanding why they were implemented as they were.
on “Ask HN: How were video games from the 90s so efficient?” ↗Not only ports, but the actual original source, see Fabien Sanglard's work: https://fabiensanglard.net/ He has a "[Game Engine] Black Book" series where he touches old games, its full development history and so on. The Doom one is pretty good.
on “Quake on the Game Boy Advance [video]” ↗…Sanglard has a number of posts covering all the old id engines (doom though doom 3) work. https://fabiensanglard.net/ Also he wrote a book on Doom if you are super into it. https://smile.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Black-Book-DOOM/dp/1099...
on “Adventures with Deferred Texturing in Horizon Forbidden West” ↗I'd love to see a Fabien-style Game Engine Black Book for some of these older Macintosh games.
on “Dark Castle” ↗…Effective Learning through 2D Game Development and Play. It doesn't dive deep into the more difficult parts of Rust, but it also doesn't make you feel like an idiot. For a look back at 90's games, the Game Engine Black Book: DOOM by Fabien Sanglard really helped me understand the systems and logic of Doom and other similar games.
on “Build Your Own Flight SIM in C++” ↗…written, with the same situation. Clearly it’s worth it to him. You should just consider it a hobby project, and he’s giving readers the option to get a full color print copy of the book. The first book, Game Engine Black Book Wolfenstein 3D is fantastic. This goes back to an era where one person can read the source code for a game and understand what it actually is doing at the hardware level. It would be fantastic for an…
on “The Game Engine Black Book: Doom” ↗…https://github.com/CatacombGames/Catacomb3D I'm the current owner of the Catacomb games, and have been working on improving and porting them in my spare time (not publicly available yet, but will be When It's Done). Fabien's Game Engine Black Book has been an invaluable resource for me. I highly recommend it!
on “How Id built Wolfenstein 3D using Commander Keen tech” ↗Counterpoint (just to manage expectations - you should read it for sure!): I was hyped to read the book, but ended up finding it a bit tedious. The technical parts were not technical enough (sometimes flat-out wrong, or maybe, naive sounding?) and the rock star parts got repetitive (even a lot of the same phrases used over and over). Still great fun, but not as good as I'd hoped. I'd recommend Fa
on “John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code” ↗Best simple explanation I've seen so far. I highly recommend Fabien's Game Engine Black Book. I'm halfway through it, and it's really fun. I've only been a software dev for 6 years, so looking at how things could be hacked around in the 90s to squeeze every drop of performance out of very constrained…
on “Floating Point Visually Explained” ↗Fabien Sargland is the same guy who wrote 2 books on a deep dive into 2 game engines: Wofenstein 3D and Doom which are great reading and I really recommend them to the HN crowd (can be downloaded for free): https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/ https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/
on “Floating Point Visually Explained (2017)” ↗