APPENDIX C: SUGGESTED READING
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TITLE | AUTHOR | PUBLISHER | ISBN
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Introducing to ATARI ST machine code | | ZZ soft |
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An excellent book for beginning assembly coders. Explains alot about the
basics of 68000 assembler and how to communicate with TOS/GEM. Sadly, only
the first 100 pages are global and the rest is all focussed on GEM coding
and not at games or demos at all. Also, this book is quite old, so only
the STe and TT are dealt with.
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Selbst Spiele programmieren | K.D. Pollack | Heim Verlag |
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A completely brilliant book that shows very detailed how to develop a
complete shoot 'em up in GFAbasic and continues with 680x0 assembler code.
Loads of tips and tricks for demo/game code are presented. Many hardware
bits of the ST, TT and Falcon030 are explained.
This book is probably the best tutorial to game/demo coding I've seen so
far. Only a pitty it's in German.
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ATARI ST/TT Profibuch | Jankowski | |
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Absolutely smashing hardware reference to make every other obsolete. 1400
pages of detailed and 100% (ok, 99.9) correct information about every part of
the ST(e) and TT hardware you want to know about. Nothing about the Falcon,
though.
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ATARI Compendium | | HiSoft |
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Very big and complete reference of the ATARI operating system. Also gives
information about the hardware registers, but this is not complete and
bit inconcise. But the reference of the OS is very good and even shows how
to implement every call and it's ceaveats.
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Realtime 3d graphics | Andrew Tyler | |
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I think the only book that handles 3d-graphics. I haven't got it myself, but I
have parts of it on various coverdisks from the old ST-User magazine. it dealt
with basic stuff such as flatshading polygons, backface culling. Also some
harder stuff such as polygon pattern maps. All in assembler so very cool, but
sadly this hasn't been available in a long time.
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Most textfiles can be get from the big atari archives on the internet. Some
others are a bit rare and I am even considering contacting the authors to ask
if I can bundle their work with this book.
TITLE | AUTHOR |
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MOTOROLA.DOC | ARTtbl |
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Great reference for the 68030 processor. Shows exact timings and detailed
explanation of all it's instructions and addressingmodes.
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HARD.TXT | Beweise/DNS |
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Very complete hardware reference. Shows about all the hardware registers in the
(Mega-)ST(e), TT and Falcon030. No suggestions on how to use them or ceaveats.
-------------+--------------+
RAMRAT.TXT | CENTEK |
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Very exact information about how fast the Falcon's memory and video are and how
these coincise. Since this stuff is almost unknown, you'd better get your hands
on this if you're a real clockcycle freak.
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TECH_REF.TXT | ATARI |
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Gives a good view of the old STs architecture. Alot can be learned from this.
Especially how the CPU, RAM, videochips and the rest of the system hang
toghether. Good as a referenceguide as well.
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HOWTODSP.TXT | R.J. Ridder |
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Very good doc for beginners with the Falcon's DSP. Shows a structured approach
to getting to grips with it and when to use it and when not.
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FASTIPOL.HTM | Dynacore |
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Good explanation of how to do one of the most used looping techniques in demo-
effect/3d history. It's used in lineroutines, texturemapping, gouraudshading,
phongshading and then some more.
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3DROT.TXT (?)| lithium/vla |
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Good explanation on all basic math in 3d graphics. The author is/was a PC
dude, but the info is platform independent.