Welcome to the eighth edition of the Game Programming Gems series, started by Mark
DeLoura in 2000. The first edition was inspired by Andrew Glassner‘s popular Graphics
Gems series. Since then, other Gems series have started, including AI Gems and a new
series focused on the capabilities of programmable graphics, the ShaderX series. These
tomes serve as an opportunity to share our experience and best practices with the rest of
the industry.
Many readers think of the Game Programming Gems series as a collection of articles with
sections that target specialists. For me, I‘ve read through them as a way to get exposure to
the diverse subsystems used to create games and stay abreast of the latest techniques. For
example, I may not be a specialist in networking, but reading this section will often
enlighten and stimulate connections that I may not have made between areas in which I
have expertise and ones in which I do not.