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Comment by charlietran | Hacker News Reader

Author's note from the book:

"...I discovered Fabien Sanglard’s website and began reading his Game Engine Black Books on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Inspired by those works, I wondered whether I could do something similar for Commander Keen: open up the source code, explore the files, and piece together a picture of the overall architecture and the clever tricks used. The style, dimensions, and structure of this book are intentionally similar to Fabien’s Game Engine Black Books, as an homage to those masterpieces. To give it a personal twist, I inverted the title and cover to white."

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> To give it a personal twist, I inverted the title and cover to white.

That is a great idea.

How do you feel about this book mirroring your prior art in both format and structure? Were you consulted beforehand?

[EDIT] - I see in the Keen book's source git commit logs that you reviewed and assisted with proof reading beforehand, so may we assume that this is all above board and sanctioned by you?

I replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550425

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery!

I suppose there's still Quake 3 Arena and DOOM3 to complete the full "John Carmack" early 90s to early 2000s technical overview series.

Or maybe something with the Sega Saturn. I heard the Sonic X-treme team worked so hard to make a 3d Sonic game for that platform in the mid 90s that multiple team members had to go on medical leave!

> Imitation is the greatest form of flattery

"... that mediocrity can pay to greatness" is the rest of the quote.

This quote is attributed to Oscar Wilde, but it seems like he never said it. In fact, there is no direct source for this particular quote by anyone. Even the shorter version "Imitation is the greatest form of lattery" is much older than Oscar Wilde. The full quote apparently did not appear on the internet before 2012.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/no-oscar-wilde-did-not-say-...

I think it's a really cool homage, but that the site could be a little clearer that it's not Fabien's work. When I first clicked through and saw a different name, I was hopeful that someone had started a publishing house dedicated to high-quality dissections of classic games.

> the site could be a little clearer

I agree.

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