Andre LaMothe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
André LaMothe (born c. 1967) is a well-known game programming author and software developer. He is best known for his books written on game programming, and has written numerous computer games for 8-bit computers as well as the 3D Rex-Blade series in the mid '90s. He also developed one of the first super computer virtual reality location-based games while working at Vision of Reality[1]. He holds degrees in mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. LaMothe also worked as a research associate at NASA's Research Institute for Advanced Science (RIACS) at age 20. He was responsible for the development of hardware and software for artificial intelligence research and worked specifically on the sparse distributed memory project.
LaMothe has said that he began his programming endeavors at the age of 10 -- writing his first 2D graphics engines at that age. He wrote his first 3D engines at the age of 13 or 14, and independently developed Bresenham's line drawing algorithm during the 9th/10th grade[citation needed].
LaMothe is the creator of the XGameStation, the world's first[citation needed] video game console development kit. Recently he added a new more powerful Parallax Propeller based system, called the "Hydra game development system" to the earlier systems that were based on the SX52 Processor.
LaMothe developed the Black Art Series for Waite Group Press in the mid 90s, which was recently brought back to life by Sams Publishing.
LaMothe founded Xtreme Games LLC in 1994, which represents hundreds of small independent or amateur game companies and claims the title of "world's largest[citation needed] virtual game company." In its heyday, Xtreme Games licensed hundreds of valueware games to companies such as Expert Software, Activision, and eGames. LaMothe developed dozens of the games released, as well as supplied the graphics engines for aspiring developers.
LaMothe is founder of the Xtreme Games Developer Conference, which was licensed to Course PTR in 2002.
LaMothe is the series editor of the Premier Publishing Game Development Series, although there are many books within the series with which he had no involvement after 2003, he was the driving force behind the series initially and developed the series into the largest[citation needed] in the world.
LaMothe's books are among the most widely read and best selling[citation needed] on game development. They consist of extensive use of colloquial language and an informal writing style. He is known to be able to take very complex subjects like Windows, DirectX, 3D math, and make them accessible to anyone. His style of programming is for educational purposes and is designed to be fast, easy to read, and thus relies on straightforward coding practices. Readers don't waste time on deciphering layers of abstraction and objects. LaMothe concentrates on the algorithms and trying to show them in the simplest way and tends to iterate algorithms optimizing them over and over. He usually urges readers to recode in C++ or use more advanced OO techniques once they have the underlying concepts mastered. LaMothe generally programs in C , ASM and very occasionally uses C++.
[edit] Abridged list of books by LaMothe
- The Black Art of Video Game Console Design
- Tricks of the 3D Game Programming Gurus-Advanced 3D Graphics and Rasterization
- Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus
- Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus
- Black Art of 3D Game Programming: Writing Your Own High-Speed 3D Polygon Video Games in C
- Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days
