Wanted

• DWM: Books on fuzzy logic.

Artificial Intelligence

AI for Games and Animation: A Cognitive Modeling Approach

*Author: John David Funge *ISBN1-56881-103-9 *Owns a copy: DWM DWM: A smallish volume. Heavy on formal notation ("situational calculus"), lots of references. Feels like a graduate thesis. See John David Funge for links related to the author and/or the book.

Fiction

For inspiration and relaxation...

The Reality Dysfunction

• Author: Peter F. Hamilton *Owns a copy: DWM A series. Actually three two-book series: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God.

DWM: The story is definitely strange and unsettling. What's inspiring are all the details of the milieu:

• A scattering of living ships, stations, and other biologically-based technology (bitek). Bitek is also used for telepathy-like communications.
• Unbound faster-than-light jumps (swallowing), with less-than-perfect controllability, range and frequency of jumps dependent on ship capability. Takes a while to charge up for a jump. Prior to jump, all external equipment (including sensors!) must be retracted into the hull.
• Coveted, rare anti-matter fuel. Illegal, by interstellar treaty. Confers huge advantages to non-bitek technology due to its immense energy density. (Illegal anti-matter production stations are an occasional focus of conflict.)
• Mental enhancement technology based on bitek.
• Alien races with strange motivations and mores.
• A bizarre and deadly threat to all of humanity, which comes from ourselves but is completely mysterious to the main characters throughout most of the story.
• Archeological evidence of a similar threat to an extinct race.

Babylon 5

Author: J. Michael Straczynski

Not a book, but a novel composed in episodic televideo. Ran 5 seasons at 22 episodes each, plus 4 two-hour movies. Situation does not "reset" every episode a la Star Trek, but evolves in some way each time. Ended after five seasons because the story was complete.

• Useful as inspiration for a well-structured and self-consistent highly realistic sci-fi environment with limited technobabble.
• Logical alien species with developed languages, cultures and attitudes, along with interrelationships which catalyze conflict within the environment
• Real Newtonian physics in a TV show! Not just eye candy.
• Excellent story arc with elements of suspense, mystery, and intrigue.

Nonfiction

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

*Author: Eric Raymond Istvan: Fascinating look at open-source and how it can be a successful model for software project development. Approach is semi-historical and semi-business-oriented. Only halfway done with it, because it was too depressing to compare its logic and conclusions about reasonable ways to do things against the way Netdevil operates.

Game Programming - General

3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics

*Author: David H. Eberly *ISBN1-55860-593-2 *Owns a copy: DWM DWM: Haven't read it yet. Looks highly technical, all the math in detail. Including those quaternion-thingies.

Black Art of 3D Game programming: Wirting your own High-Speed 3D Polygon video Games in C

*Author: Andre LaMothe *ISBN1-57169-004-2 *Copyright 1995 *Owns a copy: DWM DWM: The sort of hands-on book that lots of people prefer. A whopper at over a 1000 pages, but lots of pictures and code. Lots of low-level stuff that people (hopefully) don't have to do anymore.

Graphics

Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice 2nd edition

*Authors: Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes *ISBN0-201-84840-6 *Copyright 1996 *Owns a copy: DWM DWM: This appears to be the "bible" on computer graphics, a massive book with over 1000 pages. This edition has examples in C. (I also have a copy of the first edition, which is about half the size, and uses Pascal for examples.)

DirectX 9

Managed DirectX 9 Kick Start : Graphics and Game Programming

*Author: Tom Miller *Onws a copy: nfs nfs: Seems to be a good primer primarily focused on 3D programming. I just ordered it, should be here in a few days.