Technical links

Various links to papers/articles interesting to read and experiments

• General resources
• Maths
• VGA
• 2D Graphics
  • Attactors, Curves, Fractals and Knots
  • Blur algorithm
  • God rays and ligthing
  • Fluids simulation
  • Procedurals
• 3D Graphics
  • Software Clipping
• Books
• Optimizations
• i386+ Optimizations thinking
• Frameworks and libs
  • Framebuffer
  • Frame rate and main loop
• To be classified

General resources

• SWAG
• Hornet
• Phat Code
• PC-GPE
• Computer Graphics
• Assembly Programming Journal

Maths

• Fast and compact sin/Cos generator
• Optimized 3D math library in C
• Fast Log 2
• Fixed point maths
• Fixed point maths library
• Sub-pixel positioning (ie., using fixed point position for slow movements)
• sub-pixel drawing correction (good series of articles)

VGA

• Introcution mode 13h
• Tweaked 256x256x256 chained q-mode

2D Graphics

Attactors, Curves, Fractals and Knots

About knots:

• Parametrized Knots
• Decorative Knotting Using Trigonometric Parametrizations
• Lissajous Knots

About attractors & fractals:

• Fractals, Chaos, Self-Similarity (Paul Bourke)
• 2D Strange Attractors

Blur algorithm

• Fast Gaussian Blur Algorithm in C#
• A Fast Gaussian Blur implementation
• Circular & Radial Blur
• Real-Time Radial Blur
• Fatest Gaussian Blur
• Radial Blur & Rendering To A Texture
• Four Tricks for Fast Blurring in Software and Hardware

God rays and ligthing

To study after I reimplement the technics I used in milk shake and blublue

• Play with light and dark using ray casting and visibility polygons
• How to implement 2D raycasting light effect in GLSL

Fluids simulation

• GameDev Refs

Procedurals

• Cloud/Marble
• Texture generation technics
• Other texture generation technics

3D Graphics

• Quaternions (4 parts)

Software Clipping

• Faster 3D Game Graphics by Not Drawing What Is Not Seen
• Real-Time 3D Clipping
• World Class 3D Clipping

Books

Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book:

• Sliced into separate PDFs
• Browsable version

Optimizations

• Fog's Software Optimization Resources (C++ vector library, subroutines library such as memcpy, test with counters, cache misses, etc. )
• Double Blend Trick - how to scale 4 numbers, or lerp 8 numbers, in only 2 multiplies (interesting to use to lerp between RGBA components)
• radix sort for floats
• Radix Sort Redux for floatsù
• Fast cross fade using MMX (32 BPP)
• SSE Optimization case study (matrix-Vector multiply)
• General MMX Optimization technics
• MMX™ Technology Manuals and Application Notes - examples for 2D Graphics (fractal, sprite overlay), sound processing (echo)

i386+ Optimizations thinking

• LOOP: use DEC/JNZ is better than LOOP on 386+
• unroll loops (MOV/ADD) rather than REP STOS (not true for 486) : advantage is not to reorganize data for string instructions... REP MOVS is still better however.
• jump tables
• fixed point (16:16, 8:8, 12:4) : advantage of 16:16 or 8:8 is to have integer part for free
• alignment (2 bytes for 16 bits, 4 bytes for 32 bits) : ALIGN 4 Buffer32 dd ? / ALIGN 2 Buffer16 dw ?
• avoid branching to avoid emptying the prefetch queue (true accross the 80x86 family)
• minimize memory addressing, prefer using registers

Frameworks and libs

Framebuffer

• tinyPtc
• PixelToaster

Frame rate and main loop

• Fix Your Timestep!
• Fixed Step vs Variable Step
• About SDL_Delay()

To be classified

• Cubic Team & $een docs (3d, sorting, curves...)