Acknowledgments
I always hate writing acknowledgements because there are simply too many people involved in a book to
mention everybody and give them proper thanks. However, here goes once again, in no particular order.
I would first like to thank my parents for having me late in life, causing me to have so many genetic
mutations that I don't need to sleep and I can work continuously without a break. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Next, I want to thank all the people at Sams Publishing for letting me have my way with the book.
Making corporate America do anything different is surely a strain, and I am Mr. Nonconformist, but that's
what it takes if you want to break new ground. Particularly, I want to thank the acquisitions editor, Kim
Spilker, for listening to my artistic/marketing concepts and making them happen; George Nedeff, the
project editor, for making sure that my policy of less editing is more was taken seriously; Dan Scherf,
the media specialist, for making sure that all the programs made it to the CDs; and Mark Renfrow, the
development editor, for making sure that the hundreds of figures and thousand-plus pages of manuscript
didn't get mangled; and last but not least, I would like to thank David Franson, the tech editor.
And of course, thanks to all the other editors and formatters that worked on the book. It seemed like all
of you were playing musical chairs during editing, but you all did a fantastic job. And of course, for this
new revision of Tricks, Michael Stephens was instrumental in making it happen. The original book was on
a really rushed schedule before, so there were a great many details that we never had time to address,
but this revision will hopefully clear those issues up along with add some new content. At least that's the
plan!
Next I want to thank the DirectX group at Microsoft, especially Kevin Bachus, and Stacey Tsurusaki for
helping with the acquisition of the latest DirectX SDK stuff, along with making sure that I was sent to all
the major DirectX parties. Very important to send me to parties; that's a good thing.
The next group I want to thank are all the companies that had something to do with this book in one way
or another, whether it was a piece of software or whatever. The major players are Caligari Corporation
for the use of TrueSpace, JASC for the use of Paint Shop Pro, and Sonic Foundry for the use of Sound
Forge. I would also like to thank Matrox and Diamond Multimedia for demo 3D accelerators, Creative
Labs for sound cards, Intel Corporation for VTune, Kinetics for 3D Studio Max, and Microsoft
®
and
Borland
®
for their compiler products.
I'd like to thank all of my friends that I made contact with during this hellish production. To all the guys
at Shamrock's Universal Submission Academy: Crazy Bob, Josh, Kelly, Javier, Big Papa, Liquid Rob,
Brian, The Puppet, and everyone else. To Mike Perone, for always getting me that hard-to-find piece of
software at a moment's notice. Oh yes, to my friend Mark Bell or as I like to think of him, Mr. Happy you
still owe me $180 from that ski trip eight years ago! (And I can't stand always being right anymore;
please try harder, Mark. I can't keep taking your money.)
Next I want to thank all the contributing editors who allowed me to put their articles on the CDs. If it
weren't for you guys, these poor readers would have nothing more then my eccentric prose to read. A
special thanks goes to Matthew Ellis, the author of the Direct3D book on the CDs, and to Richard Benson
(Keebler) for doing the foreword to the book.
Thanks to everyone!