Tricks of the game-programming gurus
by André LaMothe · first published 1994
16mentions
5recommended by
12HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
42% recommend50% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hands-on guide to early PC game programming, covering techniques like ray casting and graphics from scratch; readers remember it as a motivating, self-taught starting point for DOS-era game development.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I started doing game dev in DOS after reading Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe in the 90s, so keep that in mind for the following advice. Depends on what you want to do. If you want to code games because you find the programming aspect interesting, start small…
on “How Dwarf Fortress is built” ↗…of BASIC than what I had. Without the internet there wasn't really any way for me to figure out what the problem was so there was plenty of trial and error. One of my best memories was finally buying Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe. I remember reading almost the whole book the first day I got it and trying out all the great code examples. This was the first time I really saw how real games were made. It basically…
on “Ask Old-School HN: What was it like pre internet?” ↗Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe[0] blew my mind as a young kid who liked video and computer games. It took all this amazing stuff I was seeing and from more-or-less first principles[1] showed me how it all came together…
on “Ask HN: Things that blew your mind as a programmer and/or computer scientist?” ↗Andre LaMothe's prior book, Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus, was literally life changing for me. I was in my late junior or early senior year of high school when it came out. My stepfather had a 386/20 and then later a 486/33, a Borland C compiler, and a generic…
on “Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)” ↗I just want to point out how good of a dude Andre Lamothe is. I got "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" in 1994. We couldn't afford a computer though so I'd just read through it over and over through the summer of 94. I didn't understand C at all, so I just kinda reasoned my way through it. Not great…
on “Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)” ↗Wow, this reminds me of writing a very similar engine in the mid 90s after learning about ray-casting (and playing Doom of course). There was a very good book which covered the whole process called "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", which I would have killed for at the time!
on “Build your own old-school 3D shooter in a weekend” ↗> One is about doing a return to castle of wolfstein clone Is it "Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus" (https://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Game-Programming-Gurus-Andre-L...)? > a 3D engine in C++ for a space shooter The other seems to be "Building a 3D Game Engine in C++" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-3D-Game-Engine-C/dp/047112...).…
on “Game engines are more than libraries glued together” ↗I believe the sprites used in the video are taken directly from Andre LaMothe's original Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus. I still have a copy.
on “Build your own old-school 3D shooter in a weekend” ↗It's very possibly "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" by Andre Lamothe, John Ratcliff, and Denise Tyler
on “Ask HN: Old C++ game programming book” ↗And the next step is to finish what you start, no matter what. Andre LaMothe, founder of xgamestation, a video game development kit company, and author numerous programming books including "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", describes how he motivates himself. I've always found this quote inspirational when I lose steam on a project: "Hmm, that's a hard question. I guess that the best answer is that by the time you are…
on “The first step is to start” ↗On of Andre Lamothe's less popular books is Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus. It documents building a Wolf3D style ray caster. https://books.google.com/books/about/Tricks_of_the_Game_prog...
on “Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D” ↗It's by Andre LaMothe. He has written several popular books in the 90s. His first (major, I believe) book was "Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus", which revolved around Wolfenstein 3D (ray casting). In reality, it was an overrated and ultimately terrible book (amonth the other things, LaMothe's approach to the topic is misguided for several reasons,…
on “Game Engine Black Book: Doom [pdf]” ↗Possibly because it was also used by Andre LaMothe's original Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus book?
on “Hello, PNG” ↗This brings back some fond memories. I still have a copy of the book "Tips and Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", though it's not in very decent condition. It has this ray traced image on the front cover (with a crazy monster) that is very characteristic of the early 90s. Though, I could never help but notice…
on “Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)” ↗Not parent, but here's my current collection from that era (always on the lookout for more): - tricks of the game programming gurus - more tricks of the game programming gurus - tricks of the 3D game programming gurus - black art of 3D game programming - tricks of the windows game programming gurus - game programming gems -…
on “Black Art of 3D Game Programming (1995)” ↗