Image of Andre LaMothe talking about books

Hi Andre, I like reading your updates :smiley: But no mention of amico? xD xD Sorry to be off topic, just wondering, for a bonus video, if you could do a retrospective on the books you authored? The making of.. behind the scenes stuff... something not so serious I guess. I still pick up and read through your Black Art of 3D and Gurus Advance 3D books.. of all the gamedev books (new and old) I have.. these two really resonate with me. Actually I recently got a copy of Flight of Fantasy and thought of you!


Reply: Well, I am working on the Amico hardware for E3, 24/7 -- As far as behind the scenes on books, it's really simple -- imagine someone that works 120 hours a week, and never sleeps -- that's it :smiley: BRUTAL. But, the take away from writing 1600+ page books that other people would benefit from is the simple rule -- if you want to get something MASSIVE done, you can't stare it down toe to toe, it would be overwhelming. Rather, you set a pace, and maintain it - I had to write 10-20 pages a day on writing days, and on coding days, I had to write "demos" in 1-5 days. As long as I kept that pace, I got it done. Just like the project I am doing now -- its very stressful, but I have done many large projects, so I know there's light at the end of the tunnel -- the trick is to not give up, not panic. And just keep fighting -- and sooner or later, you hit a point, where you can literally see the end and then it become fun. So, in reality, people say the first 5% of a project is fun, then the remaining 95% is torture, that's why there are 1000000000 "game developers" that never finish a game.


The write some code, make a walk thru in unity, then when the ACTUAL game dev starts and the daily grind of it they give up. Anyway, I say, that the first 5% is fun, then the next 90% is BRUTAL, but the LAST 5% is actually fun, since the project is DONE! And you realize -- hey this wasn't that bad, and of course, think I could have added all these cool features :smiley: Of course, if you did that, you would have missed the deadline. Finally, Flights of Fantasy is one of a kind, just like my Black Art of 3D Game Programming, Mitch Waite the CEO of Waite Group knew how to let his creative authors do whatever they wanted, and the results were always best sellers. There will never be another book like Flights of Fantasy or Black Art. It was a confluence of things; the authors, Waite Group and Mitch, the time, how game programming was a hot new topic, NO internet to speak of really, so BOOKs really were the best way to get information -- Anyway, good times.


That's from Andre LaMothe.. I asked in his electronic course here: https://www.udemy.com/crash-course-electronics-and-pcb-design