So i’m finishing up my second book (an introduction to 3d game development), which is intended to be a ‘beginners’ book, and i find myself continually arguing amongst myself about whether or not i should use shaders in the last ‘sample game’. Couple this with the fact that my ‘advanced’ book which will be out a few short months after this beginner book is virtually entirely shader driven, with next to nothing using the fixed function pipeline.
The argument i’m having with myself is the potential that the shader code in the beginners book would be too difficult to be classified as ‘beginner’, while at the same time i don’t want to simply ‘ignore’ the shaders because they can be quite powerful. Right now i’m leaning towards some basic shaders for the last game, just as a small ‘introduction’ that hopefully won’t catch anyone off guard.
I’d rather have someone complain about too much (or too difficult) information than not enough.